Big Creek Lumberii Company is a family owned and operated business, headquartered near Davenport, California. The business was founded in 1946 by Frank McCrary, Sr., his sons Homer ("Bud") McCrary and Frank ("Lud") McCrary, Jr. and his brother-in-law, Homer Trumbo. Big Creek owns timberland and manages timber for other private landowners, harvests timber, operates a sawmill, wholesales the lumber it manufactures, and has five contractor/retail sales yards.

1800's

Big Creek's history is an integral part of what the company is today and goes back much further than the over 60 years the company has been in business. In the 1850's, Joshua Grinnell worked on whaling ships along the California coast before returning to Iowa to see his family. In the spring of 1863, together with his wife and four-year-old stepson Vid Trumbo, he moved west via wagon train. A year and a half later, the family arrived in Santa Cruz County. By 1869, Grinnell was able to mine enough gold along Majors Creek and its tributaries north of Santa Cruz to buy a 147-acre tract of land on Big Creek in the area now known as Swanton. There he supported his family with a small farm. He built his family home in a flat spot along Big Creek; six generations later, his descendants, the McCrarys, still call the area home.

1900's

Frank McCrary came to the Swanton area from Alaska in 1920 to join a brother who had preceeded him by two years. They eked out a living making redwood split stuff, doing carpentry and operating a shingle mill. McCrary woodsmanship and Big Creek land were joined when Frank married Vid Trumbo's daughter, Agnes, in 1924.

 

Big Creek Lumber Company got its start in 1946. Frank McCrary and his two sons, Bud and Lud, had just returned from overseas service in World War II. They joined Agnes's brother, Homer Trumbo, and formed a partnership, Big Creek Timberi Company. The partners pooled the $7500 in cash and war bonds they had among them and bought surplus military equipment they modified to serve their needs. Utilizing a mill built by Frank in the 1930's and nicknamed The Termite, they set out with crosscut saws and axes to log portions of Mill and Scotts Creeks.

 

In 1947, Theodore Hoover expressed interest in selling stumpage rights on his land in the Waddell Creek canyon. Big Creek Timber Company and Hoover negotiated an agreement - $6.00 per thousand board feet of redwood and $4.50 per thousand board feet of Douglas fir. The business was set for expansion. The company constructed a sawmill several miles up the Waddell Creek canyon, using war surplus landing craft diesel engines for power. As they worked farther into the canyon and distances became too great to skid logs, they built truck roads. In 1948 a small planing mill was built on Highway 1 near Greyhound Rock, where lumber from the sawmill was surfaced. The sawmill started with a capacity of 10,000 board feet per day; by 1955 it was producing 35,000 board feet per day.

 

In December 1955, the second "100-year storm" in 15 years struck California. By the time it subsided, five bridges had been washed out in the Waddell Creek canyon and major damage had occurred. In order to be closer to other sources of logs, the partners decided to move the operation to the coast and built a new sawmill, opposite the planing mill, on the inland side of Highway 1. They chose Big Creek Lumber Company as the new name for the business when they filed for incorporation on April 22,1960. The partnership, Big Creek Timber Company, was retained to own the land and timber.

 

Shortly after midnight on June 21, 1960, fire broke out in the uninsured, wood-framed sawmill, reducing it to tons of scrap metal in a matter of minutes. The cause of the fire was never discovered. The McCrary family, however, looked upon the disaster as an opportunity to upgrade the mill and increase production. Within days, they began to operate with a portable sawmill and to search for sawmill machinery. A new concrete and steel mill was producing lumber before the end of the year.

 

The sawmill was located on leased property and shortly after construction of the new mill, the landlords raised the price of the lease to a prohibitive sum. Meanwhile, adjoining property, which offered a much better site, came up for sale. By 1964, the entire operation had been reconstructed on the new site, complete with office, sawmill, planing mill, warehouse and maintenance shop. A short time later, the old site was offered for sale and Big Creek acquired it for storage of logs and by-products.

Current 

Today, Big Creek's mill cuts, planes and processes over 100,000 board feet of lumber per day. The company has approximately 235 employees at six locations. The Davenport location includes manufacturing, wholesale, retail, maintenance and administration facilities. Big Creek also has contractor/retail sales yards in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Paso Robles, Half Moon Bay, and Atwater.

 

Over the years, Big Creek has acquired timberland throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains, and in 1991, bought a 4300-acre tract in the Butano Creek watershed of San Mateo County. Big Creek now owns nearly 9000 acres of land, helping insure an adequate supply of timber for its sawmill. It also owns timber rights to or manages for other private property owners, several thousand additional acres of local timberland.

 

Since Joshua Grinnell's arrival on Big Creek in 1869, his descendents have recognized their essential relationship with the land. From it, the McCrary family receives its livelihood, identity and lifestyle. The success of the business allows them to retain the land and maintain its nearly natural state.

 

The McCrary family's reverence for the land is probably one of the main reasons Big Creek Lumber Company has become widely recognized for its strong environmental ethics. Over the past 60 years, Big Creek has taken the initiative to find solutions to the environmental and aesthetic problems frequently associated with logging and has been a leader in setting standards for forestry practices. In 1991, Bud McCrary was honored with the prestigious Francis H. Raymond award "in recognition of his outstanding contributions to forestry in California". In 1995, Big Creek received the California Department of Fish & Game's Private Sector Award "in recognition of outstanding wildlife achievement". In 1996, Big Creek became the first forest products company, operating in a redwood forest, to be awarded the "Well Management Forest" certification by the Forest Conservation Program of Scientific Certification Systems (SCS). SCS, the oldest and largest independent organization to certify environmental claims made by businesses, is accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international, non-profit association striving to improve forest management worldwide.

 

Lud and Bud McCrary like to point out that the forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains are in better health today than when they first started logging with their dad and uncle. Today, from the stump of the first tree that Lud McCrary and Homer Trumbo cut by hand, sprouts a 30-inch diameter, 150-foot tall redwood.