Ochoco Lumber Co. has put up for auction much of its remaining Central Oregon timberland, 32,475 acres in Crook and Jefferson counties.

The company, headquartered in Prineville, intends to focus on its operations around John Day, where it has a sawmill, a pellet plant and 14,000 acres, according to Bruce Daucsavage, Ochoco Lumber’s president.

“We want to reinvest our capital into John Day,” he said.

At roughly 50 square miles, the Foley Butte Block in northwest Crook and southeast Jefferson counties is bigger than the city of Bend, which covers 32 square miles.

Portland-based Realty Marketing Northwest, which is handling the auction, has published a 52-page color sales catalog, pitching the property’s potential for timber, recreation, conservation and development. The auction has set a reserve price of $18.5 million.

Some of the features in the Foley Butte Block read like a highlights list:

• More than 36 springs and 147 miles of creeks flow through the property, which is north of Prineville.

• It has 141 miles of logging roads.

• Elevations on the property vary, from about 3,100 to 5,484 feet, and the Oregon Department of Forestry maintains a lookout tower.

• The property has about 80 million board feet of timber, which Ochoco Lumber expects will increase by 300 percent within 25 years. The company planted about 1.3 million seedlings between 1992 and 2003. As they mature, the amount of timber, and trees available for carbon sequestration, will increase.

• Environmental groups planted 72,000 native plants and trees on 257 acres, covered by a conservation easement, as part of the Deschutes Riparian Restoration Project.

The Foley Butte Block has been managed for commercial timber since the early 1900s, according to the catalog, and Ochoco Lumber picked it up over several purchases, the largest in 1991-92 from Crown Pacific.

While bids will be taken on the whole property, or on three parcels, the total price must meet the $18.5 million published reserve, according to the catalog. If bids do not meet or exceed the reserve price, Ochoco Lumber can reject the high bid or make a counteroffer. Bids are due by July 25.

The land represents the last major chunk of Ochoco Lumber’s Central Oregon timberland, Daucsavage said. At one time, the company owned 100,000 acres total.

But the timber industry has changed, he said. Ochoco shut down its Prineville mill, the city’s oldest, in 2001. St. Charles Health System chose the site last month as the location for a new hospital.

Along with operating a timber brokerage, Ochoco and its subsidiary Malheur Lumber still have 14,000 acres of timberland in Grant County, along with the mill, built in 1983, and the pellet plant, constructed in 2010.

Ochoco wants to use proceeds from the Foley Butte Block sale, Daucsavage said, to invest in equipment and operations centered around John Day, where it’s building a market for biomass with its pellet plant and stewardship contracts in federal forestland.

The company gets slash and small trees, and some marketable timber, from thinning and restoration operations and turns it into pellets and bricks that schools and other public agencies in the region use for heat.

“We’re not going anywhere,” he said. “We’re still here.”