The saws at Marks Lumber in Clancy will stop for good on Nov. 6. After 37 years of steady operation off Lump Gulch Road, the family sawmill south of Helena is winding down, and owner Steve Marks says the decision came down to arithmetic he could no longer make work.
Marks, 67, announced the closure in a post on the company’s website on Oct. 5. The mill stopped taking special-cut orders on Oct. 20. Once sawing ends, the yard will keep selling off its remaining lumber, a process the family expects to stretch into 2027.
Five generations in Lump Gulch
The Marks name has been tied to this corner of Jefferson County for a long time. As the family tells it, Ernest Marks arrived in the area in the 1880s. Merle Marks installed a sawmill in 1938. Bob Marks, born in 1932, carried the family’s work on the land into the next generation.
Steve started his own outfit, Marks Logging, in 1978. The sawmill became a full-time operation in 1989, which is the date the family counts from. A new mill went in during 2000, and an office and showroom followed in 2008. The business, long known as Marks Ranch & Lumber, was incorporated as Marks Lumber in 2014.
For most of that run, it was a meaningful employer for a small place. At its peak the mill had 23 or 24 workers. It had 14 this fall and will drop to about four as the yard sells down its inventory. In a normal year the mill processed roughly 1.5 million board feet of logs, about 600 truckloads, and it filled specialty and custom-cut orders alongside its regular stock.
It has stayed a family business throughout. Steve’s wife, Laura, studied accounting at Carroll College, and office manager Lori Hassler has been part of the small crew that keeps the front office running.
Why now
In interviews with KTVH and the Jefferson County Monitor, Marks pointed to costs rising on one side of the ledger while income fell on the other. He said diesel had climbed 72%, to about $6.30 a gallon, and that the company’s revenue was down 18% since 2023.
Timber supply is part of the picture too. Small mills depend on a steady flow of logs from public and private land, and the Monitor’s reporting noted that the Larabee Hat timber sale, one of the projects mills in the region had been counting on, has been held up by a lawsuit. When the wood doesn’t come, a mill either pays more to haul logs from farther away or runs short.
Two local legislators, Rep. Becky Beard of House District 38 and Rep. Mark Reinschmidt of House District 75, spoke to the press about the closure and the broader pressure on Montana’s wood products industry.
Part of a longer pattern
Marks Lumber is a small operation compared with some of the mills Montana has lost. The state has seen a string of larger closures, including Roseburg’s plant in Missoula, UFP Edge in Bonner and Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake. The Montana Wood Products Association counts more than 30 mill closures since the 1990s.
Each one leaves a hole that goes beyond the payroll. Mills buy logs from family-owned logging crews, keep truckers busy, and give ranchers and builders a nearby source for fence posts, beams and odd sizes that big-box stores don’t carry. Customers in the Helena valley who have relied on Marks for custom cuts will now have to look farther afield.
What stays open
Not everything with the Marks name is going away. Marks-Miller Post & Pole, run by Steve’s brother Gary, is a separate business and is staying open.
The family has also been a supporter of Warm Hearts, Warm Homes, a Helena-area charitable effort.
For now, the yard at 30 Lump Gulch Road remains open for sales of stock on hand. Anyone looking for lumber from the last cuts at the mill can contact the company directly through its website as inventory is sold through next year.
After nearly four decades of sawing in Lump Gulch, the closure leaves Jefferson County with one fewer place where logs from nearby forests are turned into lumber close to home, and it adds another name to a list Montana’s timber towns know too well.