Tahoe Forest Products Ready to Start Construction on New Sawmill

Tahoe Forest Products (TFP), in a partnership with Washoe Development Corp., an affiliate of Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, formally announced on Tuesday (8-16-22) that they have officially leased 40 acres and plan to build the first major sawmill in the region in decades.

About 10 acres of the 40-acre site will be used for buildings and processing facilities with the rest for log storage. The new plant will include the sawmill building and rough lumber sorter, dry kilns, and a planer mill and sorter to finish lumber for shipping. In total, the buildings will cover 25,000 square feet and will not exceed a height of 35 feet.

Logs will be processed into a wide range of products, including dry-surfaced 2-inch construction lumber, timbers, fence posts and landscape products from wildfire damage, and boards and “factory” lumber for windows from the pine. Additionally, bark will be sold for landscaping and other uses, chips and sawdust will be sold to agricultural end-users and to powerplants, while planer shavings will go for animal bedding.

Initially, TFP plans on processing mostly large fire salvage logs removed from the recent Caldor Wildfire, but eventually they plan to also add a small-log line to effectively process thinnings, which hopefully will help to reduce the number of wildfires in the area.