Click above to watch a video from the Greenville, Maine, Forest Heritage Days, where the company continued celebrations of our 125th anniversary.
Forest Heritage Days is an annual event in Greenville, Maine, dedicated to honoring and illuminating the rich legacy and promising future of Maine’s working forests.
“Forest Heritage Days brings the past to life,” says Drew Wopat, a harvest and transport manager in our Greenville office who got his start as an intern with Plum Creek in 2011. “This community has been shaped by the logging industry and the timber industry for more than 100 years. Weyerhaeuser’s kind of the newer generation of that.”
The 34th annual Forest Heritage Days took place Aug. 8 to 9 this year, with educational and celebratory events held around town. A timber harvest bus tour brought about 40 visitors out to see a working forest. Colby College’s logging team, the Woodsmen, performed an exhibition of chopping, axe throwing, log rolling and other lumberjack events. A traditional loggers’ bean hole supper was served at the local lodge, followed by a presentation marking Moosehead Lake’s last log drive 50 years ago.
Rocky Rockwell, a local forestry legend who took part in that log drive as a young logger, was on hand to share stories about the life of a logger, the camaraderie with his fellow loggers, and the transformation of Maine’s timber industry.
“It’s been a marriage made in heaven for our community,” Rocky says. “Being able to tell the stories and keep these things in the forefront of people’s minds is important. There’s a lot of history behind what’s going on right now.”
Saturday’s events saw presentations at the Moosehead Historical Society’s Lumbermen’s Museum, including “Stories from the Timberlands” by Clarence Begin, who worked the land in and around Greenville for over 48 years with Weyerhaeuser, Plum Creek and their predecessors.
“Weyerhaeuser takes care of the land and the people who are visiting the area,” Clarence says.
The event finished with an open house at our Timberlands office, located across the street from the Lumbermen’s Museum, and a crafts fair.
