Remember When?

80 YEARS AGO • APRIL 5, 1944

Obituary

NELSON GRANDCHAMP, Pioneer

Nelson Grandchamp, the son of Joseph and Petroniel Grandchamp, was born March 19, 1870 and died March 29, 1944. In 1884 the family traveled by an old narrow gauge railroad to Salt Lake City and came north to this region. They got off the train at the old Woodlin station (east of Thompson Falls) and remained on the Woodlin Flats for a number of years where they operated the first of several sawmills there in the midst of a stand of magnificent timber. Nelson helped his family in the saw mill and on the farm which they cleared out of the forest.

In the 80s, he, along with such pioneers as Johnny Stiles, Bill Davidson and others, freighted over the divide into the Coeur d’Alenes taking general freight as well as farm products raised by the family.

In 1898, Nelson, by this time a most expert sawmill man, helped his father move the mill to Belknap over a road they practically hewed out of the forest. There on Mosquito Creek they operated the mill until 1905. In the fall of 1905, he took over the mill himself and moved it to Cedar Spur just west of Heron. He operated there until 1907 when he sold the mill and went to California for a number of years.

He later returned to this region and worked in various sawmills and as a carpenter and many are the monuments to his skill in that trade that remain.

Nelson Grandchamp was truly a pioneer of this region, one of those hardy, industrious, hard working men who created an empire out of a wilderness. Much do we owe him and his kind for what they have done for this country.

30 YEARS AGO • MARCH 24, 1994

CROWN PACIFIC BURNER RESISTS IT TOPPLING

After standing for nearly 50 years, it didn’t want to come down easily. And it didn’t.

The pervasive symbol of lumber mills, the outdated teepee burner, fought hard but then gracefully laid down at Crown Pacific’s lumber mill in Thompson Falls.

The 60 foot tall burner, which has been cold for a number of years, was toppled and will be sold for scrap and the mill will be utilizing the space for other needs. Mill Manager Steve Rossing commented that the state’s Air quality Bureau requested that it be torn down, lest an impression be given that it still could be used.

A demolition crew from Missoula directed the effort to tumble the burner and then during the following week they were going to cut the burner up and salvage the metal for scrap. One worker quipped they had thousands of bolts to undo but their “smoke wrenches” or torches, would make short work of loosening the bolts.

Although the actual toppling of the burner was scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, it wasn’t until nearly 2 p.m. that the job was done.

The first effort, with Norm Williams tugging on the structure with a bulldozer, succeeded in leaning the tower about 10 feet before the cable tied to the top of the burner broke.

The second try, an attempt to topple the burner from behind using the mill’s monstrous LeTourneau failed when the sheet metal wouldn’t hold up.

A third attempt, again tugging cables and the dozer, ended again with a broken cable. The fourth did the same, although the crew did manage to lean the structure more off center.

Then finally, after a daring climb up the leaning back side of the burner and the attachment of more cables, the burner fell, not with a sudden crash, though, but slowly in a cloud of dust, sawdust.

Williams estimated the burner may have weighed as much as 40 tons with the mass distributed between structural support steel and the thin gauge plating.

Virtually all of the products that used to be consumed in the teepee burner are not sold by the mill. Wood scraps are chipped and marketed to paper mills and the sawdust has been going to a firm in Sandpoint. Rossing said that Stone Container in Missoula is gearing up to take the sawdust and when their operation is ready that by products will be transported there.

A newer, high efficiency burner is in place at the mill site and the operation is licensed to use that device on a limited basis and only under careful monitoring. The burner is virtually smoke and pollution free, utilizing newer technology and a hotter fire.

The old teepee burner had been standing since the mill was built in 1943.