The wood-planing machines at the Opco Inc. mill in Midland are noisy, but neighbor Leona Turosik, 86, doesn’t mind – especially now that the mill might close.

“Keep it goin’,” she said, patting the arm of mill owner Eric Opgenorth during a recent visit. “I love that music.“

It’s a tune she’s heard those same machines hum since her family, the Basketts, opened the raw lumber mill in 1929.

“They’d start out with a chug, chug, chug,” her brother Steve Baskett Jr., now 83, said of the boilers he’d fire up early each morning when he worked at the mill.

But the music could stop soon. Crumbling profits have forced Opgenorth to put the business and its 1.5-acre property at 9710 E. Portland Ave. up for sale.

Teeterering on the edge of extinction, the Opco mill is a symbol of Midland’s search for identity in an economic landscape that has, in many ways, left it behind.

LUMBER INDUSTRY LULLS

Though the real estate sign out front beckons buyers, Opgenorth said he’d rather see business pick up so he could keep running the mill, which his father bought from the Basketts in 1992.

“It can’t get any worse,” said Opgenorth, who’s been taking paychecks sparingly the past few months to help keep the mill afloat. “Hopefully, it turns around and gets a little busier, and I might take my for-sale sign down.”

He said the $250,000 worth of business his company did last year is one-fourth of what it’s earned in years past.

Two workers pushing planks through an 87-year-old planing machine are what’s left of the 12-person work force Opco once had.

Before the downturn in homebuilding began in fall 2007, Opgenorth said his custom milling outfit produced nearly $1 million worth of business per year by re-manufacturing two-by-fours and scrap lumber from wholesalers and other mills.

But with lumber companies as large as Weyerhaeuser falling victim to the slumping housing market, there’s little hope Opco will survive much longer in its rusted state, with most of its equipment dating back to the 1920s.

Opgenorth said he’s gotten a couple of calls from people interested in the property, even one who hopes to maintain the business, which is one of Pierce County’s oldest continuously operating mills.

Residents of Midland’s semi-rural community fear the property is more likely to become another strip mall, senior citizen condominium or empty lot if sold, said Ed Hennings, a Central Pierce Fire & Rescue firefighter and Midland resident.

But their greatest loss, should the mill disappear, would be a treasured piece of history that bears the marks of nearly every economic season of the past century.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

The mill once marked the center of the community at 97th Street and Portland Avenue, said Hennings, a passionate historian of all things Midland. He said Midland first got its name in 1890 for being the midpoint on the trolley line from Tacoma to Puyallup.

Opgenorth said the only reason Portland Avenue first ventured as far south as 97th Street was to accommodate the mill, joined by a frenzy of others that sprang up along the railroad tracks during a lumber boom in the 1920s.

Turosik said her father, Steve Baskett Sr., bought the land for the mill in 1919 and, after losing his $3-per-day job at one of the many lumber companies that closed during the Depression, began building the Baskett Lumber Co.

In the meantime, he used the wheel from his Ford Model T truck as a power source and planed lumber at half price after driving home from part-time work.

With the help of nine children, especially the six boys, the Basketts built the mill and started doing business in 1929.

“After he opened the mill, it just kept growing and then things got better,” said Steve Baskett Jr., who ran the mill with his wife and Turosik, his sister, from 1985 to 1992. “I used to kiss people’s shoes in order to get business when I had it. You’ve got to want to do it.”

Baskett, along with his eight siblings – and eventually most of their children and grandchildren – devoted his working years to the mill, not counting the two years he served in World War II with his brother.

“We started out as little kids,” Turosik said over a spread of black-and-white photos on her coffee table. “I was 10 years old and I was taking lumber away from the planer.”

Turosik did more than that. A newspaper clipping titled “Pauline Bunyans” shows her posing with a massive log she had harvested while two of her brothers were off at war.

And business was often good during Baskett Lumber Co.’s 63-year tenure. Baskett and Turosik bought the mill from their father for $20,000 and sold it in 1992 for $80,000 after shifting its focus to re-manufacturing lumber.

REVIVING THE GLORY DAYS

Turosik recalls the mid-40s as Midland’s economic peak, with small mills such as Baskett lining the railroad tracks and drawing families to the intimate and affordable community.

“Baskett Lumber, in so many ways, was a lot of the binding of the community,” Hennings said.

“In our community, everybody knew everybody back then. Now you don’t know anybody,” Turosik said of the community she has watched change around her 60-year home nestled beside the mill.

“The mill was sort of the centerpiece of the Midland community in terms of its economic engine,” said Pierce County Councilwoman Barbara Gelman, whose district includes Midland.

She said she is working with the newly formed Business Administration of Midland to rebuild commerce in the community, which has sloped from its 1940s height to, in many cases, mere shells of the businesses that once boomed along Portland Avenue.

Mike Kruger, legislative analyst for the council, said the new business group is working to establish a business district that roughly includes clusters of businesses dispersed from 72nd to Highway 512.

Gelman said she has plans to apply the same makeover to Portland Avenue as she did to Pacific Avenue two years ago, adding sidewalks and lighting to make the area more “pedestrian friendly” and encourage economic traffic.

Cindy Beckett, a founding member of the new business group, said she and other active Midland residents are “gung ho” about revitalizing the community.

“It’s really just recovering what we used to have here,” Beckett said. “When you look at that, we were a thriving shopping district and now we look like a Detroit slum. That tells you something.”

IDENTITY STRUGGLE

Conflicting goals and visions aren’t unusual for a community that has long seesawed between its rural and urban identities. Cows and sheep can be seen roaming across pastured portions of Midland, where older homes rest on comfortable plots of land in an oasis from Tacoma’s otherwise urban landscape.

Blocks away on Portland Avenue, apartment complexes and chain grocery stores have slowly replaced the rundown five-and-dime shops.

Hennings said even with all his historical research, he can’t put his finger on what brings folks to Midland.

“There’re a lot of people that have been here for generations, and they have a lot of pride and a lot of genuine feelings for the area,” Hennings said while flipping through documents he’s compiled about Midland’s history. “I’ve kind of fallen into that myself.”

But Hennings said despite residents’ efforts, Midland’s glory days have long since passed.

He said the potential passing of the mill – which thrived at Midland’s peak – would be yet another indicator of the community’s economic state.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be any Microsoft town,” said Hemmings, who prefers Midland’s unique feel.

“Anymore, there’s really not too much of an attraction.”

Whitney Coleman: 253-597-8546

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