Alex Paul
Howard Dew picks up the thick photo album and thumbs through its pages filled with memories of the reconstruction of the Weddle Bridge in Sankey Park almost 15 years ago. The 126 foot long bridge was the longest ever moved and rebuilt in the state and today is the focal point of any Sweet Home tour.
“It was the turning point for the community,” Dew said of the effort that took more than a year by a dedicated team of volunteers. Dew was one of the core group that saw the project from concept to completion, the brainchild of the Cascade Forest Resource Center. Original plans called for developing a logging museum to complement the covered bridge project.
Dew, a Corvallis native, will take many such memories with him when he retires today after 34 years at Cascade Timber Consulting, although when he first came to work it was called Timber Services Inc. and then Barringer and Associates.
A 1960 Corvallis High graduate, Dew spent some time working in a sawmill and was a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam before he entered community college in Santa Barbara, Calif.
“Oregon didn’t have a community college system in place at that time,” Dew said of his move to California. He completed his degree in forestry at Oregon State University, graduating in 1970, and taking a job in Sweet Home.
“Our office was downtown in what is now the Chamber of Commerce building,” Dew said. “Gene Ellis was the company manager, there was Jack Barringer and Larry Blem and me.”
Since that time, the company that manages land for the Hill family of Minneapolis, Minn., has grown to a include 45 employees .
“We used to replant about 500 acres each year, now we plant about 4,000,” said Dew, the company silviculturalist. “We’re up to almost two million new trees each year. In the early years, we did most of the work with our own crews but now we contract out.”
Dew said that for many years, timber harvesting was contracted through Willamette Industries.
“When we changed from contracting out to in-house, it was a huge change for the company,” Dew said.
His career has been fun and fulfilling, Dew said.
“Sometimes the government bureaucracy gets to you but the tree growing, learning, all the study about growing trees is great fun,” Dew said.
As the company’s silviculturalist, Dew has been active in genetic research projects at its Mason Seed Orchard near Sweet Home.
“Genetics has changed so much,” he said. “We have shorter rotations, better quality wood and better looking trees. We haven’t done it with gnomes but through tree breeding.”
Dew is proud of the seed orchard that has operated since 1974.
“It has evolved through generations, tested for 25 years and we’ve drawn the best from the testing,” Dew said. “It’s the oldest producing Douglas fir seed orchard on the West Coast. In the last five years we’ve made tremendous strides in seedling improvement. We’re capitalizing on all that we’ve done in the past.”
Dew said foresters have to be long-term thinkers since there crops take 45 years to mature. Dew will continue to represent the company on a number of cooperatives devoted to tree genetic improvement. His successor at CTC is another long-term staff member, Bill Marshall.
Computerization has greatly aided study efforts, Dew said.
“When we first started crunching numbers for the tests, it might take all day, now it takes minutes,” Dew said.
But, Dew says, the very best part of his job has been “the people I’ve worked with, the projects we’ve designed. This place has never been short of action. We’ve gone from one project to the next. It’s been tremendous fun.”
Dew and his wife, Cathy, moved to a new home in Marcola in 1990. She retired a year ago from a career in education and administration. They have cultivated a 15 acre tree farm featuring black walnut, noble fir and Douglas fir trees.
Their immediate plans are to travel in their new motor home but in time they plan to move to Central Oregon.
“I’m also going to go fishing,” Dew said. “I just bought a new fly rod from Cabelas.”
He would also like to spend some time in New Zealand.
As for traveling by motor home, Dew said it makes him slow down and enjoy the scenery more.
“All of my life I’ve gone fast,” Dew said. “In a motor home you slow down and drive 65 in a 65 zone. You see so much more.”
Dew was celebrating another special event this week as well. Since 1995 he has been restoring a vintage 1962 Porsche 356. He has guided its rebirth from a rust bucket to sleek black beauty through many highs and lows. Sunday, he planned to turn over its engine for the first time.
“I like guns, too,” Dew said. “I used to do quite a bit of skeet shooting at one time and I’d like to do that again. I like to bird hunt.”
As he looks back over his 34 year career, Dew shakes his head and says, “It’s been a blur, it went very, very fast. It’s been lots of fun, a challenge. It gave me so much more than I gave it.”
One project of which he is especially proud is the resurgence of Valley Ponderosa Pine into the Willamette Valley.
“As a cooperative, we’ve planted one million Valley Ponderosa Pine a year since 1996,” Dew said. “We’ve also worked together and written a book about it.”