By Leah Leach

Olympic Peninsula News Group

FORKS — Trucks, saws and other equipment from the last lumber mill on the West End will be auctioned off today and Friday.

Some $1.5 million in equipment from the Allen Logging Co., will be auctioned off at the mill site at 176462 U.S. Highway 101 on the Hoh River in West Jefferson County.

Auctions begin at 9 a.m. each morning. Bidders can register at the mill site beginning at 7 a.m. each day and anytime throughout the auction, said Amber Hudson, auction clerk with LPS Associated Auction and Liquidation Co., of Clarksville, Tenn.

All the rolling stock — trucks, chip trailers, loaders, “anything that has wheels” — will be auctioned off as well as the buildings and their contents, such as band saws and barkers, said Rick Atkins, the former maintenance supervisor for Allen Logging.

The mill was closed in July, idling 45 workers.

“Some have gone back to school. Others have been able to find work. Some are still looking for work,” said Atkins, who is now working for LPS, which he said purchased the equipment.

Allen Logging was the last production softwood mill west of Port Angeles.

Gerry Lane, president of the company, said last June that the closure was prompted by foreign competition for domestic private timber, regulations on harvesting trees from state and federal lands, a chancy supply of such wood and the low prices of foreign logs.

Panel formed

The mill closure, coming on the heels of three mill closures in 2014, was among those that spurred the formation of the Clallam County Trust Lands Advisory Committee.

The panel now is in the early stages of a yearlong effort to determine whether the county should reclaim the management of 92,525 acres of revenue-producing state Department of Natural Resources timberlands.

The Natural Resources arrearage — the timber it is authorized to cut but never has harvested — stood at 60 million board feet a year last year, according to Rod Fleck, Forks city attorney and city planner.

One year’s arrearage, Fleck said last summer, could have supplied Allen Logging Co. for several years.

Two West End mills closed in July 2014: the Interfor sawmill in Beaver, idling 52, and the Interfor planer mill in Forks, which employed 35.

In October of that year, Green Creek Wood Products in Port Angeles was closed. It employed 35.

A single Interfor mill remains in business on the west side of Port Angeles. The nearby Port Angeles Hardwood mill processes alder.

Lloyd Allen came to the area in 1937, built a veneer mill on the Hoh in the 1950s, and added a sawmill in 1968, according to Lane.

In 2014, Allen Logging produced 15 million board feet — 35 million in its heyday 15 years ago — of 8-foot-long 2-by-4s, 4-by-4s and 2-by-6s, plus railroad ties and wood chips, Lane said.

Lane said he could not estimate Allen Logging’s payroll, but Fleck said it was between $3 million and $4 million.