It’s been 75 years since Curly and Red Emmerson threw in together and leased a mothballed sawmill off Jacoby Creek in Humboldt County, California. Like most mills in Northern California back then, it had no electricity. Instead, it ran on diesel fuel. The Emmersons had no timber contracts. They had no land. What father and son did have was a business plan: Curly would buy open-market logs — and Red would saw them.

Iconic American Startup

Unlike Bill Hewlett and Dave ­Packard at Hewlett-Packard or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple, this bootstrapped start-up is rarely recognized as one of America’s greatest success stories. It should be.

Although Curly and Red operated the Olson Mill for a little more than a year, that diesel-powered contraption launched them on a trajectory that would culminate in the Emmersons ­becoming America’s largest private ­landowners in 2021. Along the way, their Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) went public, then was ­privatized, and ultimately acquired more than 2.4 million acres in California, ­Oregon, and Washington.

300 Millionth Seedling

This spring, the Emmersons celebrated another major milestone when Red, surrounded by three generations of his family, planted Sierra Pacific’s 300 millionth seedling. “I wouldn’t have imagined 75 years ago when we started without any land and one very small ­sawmill that I would see the day we planted 300 million trees. This is a legacy I am proud of, and I am proud of our team that made this possible,” he said.

It goes without saying that nine decades in the forest-products industry have given SPI’s founder a profound understanding of the inputs required to sustain his company — and his forests.

“As we started acquiring timberland, we knew we needed to make sure we were managing the lands sustainably and responsibly. Not just for today but for the generations to come. That’s why we started planting seedlings when we harvested trees. We want to maintain the forest. We want to grow trees. Sierra Pacific wants to take care of the forests. These 300 million seedlings planted on our timberlands are a part of that ­responsibility. We are ensuring we will have forests not just for today but also for the future,” he said.

Conifer Seedling Nursery

Sierra Pacific has also initiated another program to sustain not just their own landholdings but public lands ­ravaged by wildfires and even those of its competitors. In 2023, construction of the Sierra Pacific Industries Conifer Seedling Nursery in Siskiyou County got underway. To date, more than 6 ­million seeds have been sown at the recently completed Northern California nursery. Production will double to more than 12 ­million seedlings in 2025.

Thanks to timber’s decades-long growth cycle, forest landowners adopt an exceptionally longtime horizon. (At least the successful ones do.) None more so than the energetic 95-year-old. Says Red, “The trees we plant today are a legacy for future generations.”