”Gilchrist!” the cheerleaders yelled, their voices echoing through the small gym, off its floors, walls, bleachers and ceilings all made of wood.

“Power! Gilchrist! Power!” they chanted, joined by families in the bleachers who watched the Grizzlies take on, and defeat, the Triad High Timber Wolves on Wednesday night.

Greg Purvis, Gilchrist School class of ’04, sat in the stands, following the basketball team he used to play for. He remembers the stands being packed, he said — now, the crowds are dying down a little.

He has stuck around. He’s lived in Bend and Redmond but moved back to Gilchrist.

“I just don’t like the city,” he said.

So when he decided he needed a full-time job after fighting fires for a couple of seasons, he started at Interfor Pacific’s sawmill in town, where he works as a grader, determining the quality of the boards produced by the mill.

But he’s only worked, at most, three weeks since the beginning of January, he said.

And he’s not the only one. Others among the mill’s 100 or so hourly employees have worked off and on for the past several months, as the mill has cut back on operations. And the impacts are being felt by many in the small mill town of Gilchrist and neighboring Crescent.

“It’s kind of been a little hard,” Purvis said. “We just know from week to week.”

If the situation doesn’t get better by spring, he said, he might have to go back to fighting fires.

The sawmill, started by Frank W. Gilchrist in 1938, shut down for two weeks for routine, holiday-season maintenance, but has only been cutting logs for two weeks since then due to downturns in the construction and housing industry.

As a result, during the mill’s off-weeks, somewhere between 50 percent and 80 percent of the facility’s 120 employees are temporarily out of a job, said Mike Zojonc, mill manager. About 20 of the employees are salaried.

“What it’s all about is you can’t shove product into a market that doesn’t want it,” Zojonc said. So now, the mill’s operators will decide on a week-to-week basis whether to operate the mill.

The sawmill sits across U.S. Highway 97 from the town of Gilchrist. It’s a company town that, when it was built, included about 130 residences for employees, as well as stores, a restaurant, bowling alley and movie theater, according to Jim Fisher’s book “Gilchrist: The First Fifty Years.”

Although the buildings and homes are now owned by individuals, including retirees and U.S. Forest Service employees, what happens at the mill still ripples through the community.

And the mill is concerned about losing its skilled employees, Zojonc said. But what it’s relying on, he added, is that it offers good employment, good benefits, and has been pretty steady work up to this point.

“Now, we just happen to be in a downturn and are hoping people will stick with us,” he said. “It’s not easy for anyone.”

Company town

When Gilchrist’s family still owned the mill, Gilchrist was a company town known as “Brown Town,” because all the buildings were one shade.

“Up until 1991, you could charge your gasoline at the company gas station; the grocery store was company owned, and the rent,” said Terri Anderson, office manager of the mill. “So you could payroll deduct just about anything.”

But when Crown Pacific bought the mill in that year, it was not interested in buying the town as well, she said. So the brown buildings and houses were sold to individuals.

“I think the billboards said, ‘Gilchrist is for sale,’” Anderson said. And lots of the people who were buying were retirees or people looking for an affordable second home, close to snowmobiling spots in the winter and the lakes in the summer.

Now, between a fifth and a quarter of the mill’s employees live in the Gilchrist and Crescent area, she said; many of the employees live in the La Pine area. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2000 count, about 440 people live in its zip code.

“This whole entire town was brown, beautiful, gorgeous,” said Linda DePue, who grew up in Gilchrist, describing the lawns that looked more like rolling hills in previous years.

But now, with new people moving in, the character has changed, she said. There’s not as much of a sense of community in the town, she said.

The population has shifted in Gilchrist and Crescent, said Betty and Lee Wagner. She was raised in the area, while he moved to Crescent in 1969. He used to work for the mill, but for the last year, the two have run a quilting shop out of their converted garage.

Now, there’s a lot of retired people that live in the area, Betty Wagner said.

“I think the timber industry is phasing out,” Lee Wagner said. “Most people, younger kids especially, they’re going to have to start looking for a new line of work.”

Small paycheck, missing unemployment

In a bright blue shirt and metallic tie, the Grizzlies’ assistant coach, Adam Ernst, sat on the bench during the basketball game. His grandmother’s parents, the Gilchrists, were the ones that built the mill and the town, the school and its gym.

“I love playing there,” he said of the basketball court. “It’s small, you get around quick.”

He has worked fighting fires as well, before going to work at the mill for the benefits and to learn a little about his family’s business.

“I wanted to see how it worked, how it operated because my family built it,” said Ernst, 24. But, “it’s not my cup of tea.”

It pays the bills, but there aren’t many places to go from there, he said. And when the mill’s down, it affects a lot of people.

People wanted to stay with the mill when Interfor bought it in 2004 from Crown Pacific, since the company had the money to keep it going, he said, adding that the employees seem to like Zojonc, he said. But if the furloughs continue for too long, people are going to have to find other jobs.

“What kills people is that fact that we’ll get laid off, then work a day or two, then laid off again, so we’re missing the unemployment,” he said. This week, some employees like Ernst are working three days.

“It’s just enough to keep our medical benefits, but not end up with a lot of money in our paycheck,” he said.

He’s been saving money, he said, but not working full time means sticking to a budget and not having as much money for fun things.

That could be one of the reasons for a drop in the basketball game attendance, he said. People might not have the money to spare for admission to the game or the drive into town. Or it could just be people being lazy, he added.

“I wish that people would come and watch,” Ernst said.

Everyone’s surviving

Saw filer Craig Hansen, who started at the sawmill in 1983, has worked two weeks so far this year.

The timber industry has always had its ups and downs, he said, so he’s learned not to spend on extravagant things, and to save. But still, he said, he probably would start hurting financially in three or four months, depending on how much the mill runs.

“I don’t let it bother me; I’d have a heart attack (otherwise),” he said, sitting with his wife, LaVonna, and their two dogs at their home in Crescent.

People are dealing with the temporary layoffs in different ways, he said: “It depends on what’s in their bank account.”

While some of the younger workers might consider changing jobs to find something more steady, he said, he’s going to try to stick it out at the mill.

“Where would I go in my profession?” asked Hansen, who’s worked in the wood products industry for about 35 years. “If I go take a job at Wal-Mart, that’s a big (pay) cut.”

And he has made a home in Crescent, he said. He has mortgage payments to make on his house, and doesn’t want to leave the hunting, camping and other outdoor activities he and his wife enjoy.

When weather allows, the two usually spend all of their time outside, he said, and the sets of antlers on the wall, including one elk trophy for the record books, demonstrate his love for hunting.

This winter, although he’s had a lot of free time, he’s spent a good deal of time plowing the road with his ATV, so he and his neighbors can get out through snowbanks several feet deep.

But if he was to start over again professionally, he said, he wouldn’t go into the sawmill industry. Perhaps he would get a college education and try to find a job in a government agency.

“I’m just glad the kids aren’t in the industry,” said Hansen, whose son works for the state and whose daughter helps abused children and is working to get her doctorate.

Having the mill shuttered for weeks at a time affects many people, he said, but most of them are probably just sitting back, waiting and hoping for things to pick back up again.

“Everyone’s surviving, I think,” he said. “I think most of them are just hanging on like I am.”

Other businesses

Gilchrist and Crescent aren’t real big, said Bob Haynes, a Gilchrist resident since 1975, so when something happens at the mill it has an impact.

“I’m concerned because that’s a huge part of the community,” he said.

His business, which delivers oil to the mill, depends on it operating, and there are others as well, including shops and other businesses.

“It’s just quiet around here,” he said, standing in the Gilchrist Family Restaurant, where only a few of tables were occupied late in the lunch hour. “You come into businesses and you can tell.”

And the community has changed as well, he said.

“Back in the Gilchrist days, we knew everyone,” Haynes said. “Nowadays, people come and go. I wonder if we’re going to have people moving out of here.”

The one thing that could bring jobs and improvements to the area, Lee Wagner said, is the destination resort proposed west of town.

“That’s about the only thing this area’s got, is this resort,” he said.

The resort would cover about 5,000 acres, with about half of it open space, said Nancy Craven with Fidelity National Timber Resources, the developer of the property. While the plans are still being finalized, it would probably have around 2,700 homes and overnight units, and a 3,000-acre parcel set aside for wildlife is in the works as well.

The company is hoping to have the application to Klamath County for the destination resort finalized within the first quarter of this year, she said.

“That’s going to be a big boost,” Craig Hansen, the saw filer, said.

Only if people can hang on until then, LaVonna Hansen added.

Ernst sees potential in the destination resort as well, he said. If the timber market stays the way it is, some people might chose to get construction jobs with the resort instead.

“That’s a plus; it just gives people hope for the future.”

Quiet mill

Bright green earplugs, standard on most mill visits, weren’t necessary in Interfor’s sawmill Wednesday. The hum of air compressors was the only background noise, while a red LED sign flashed “Control Power Off.”

In a control room, where 10 monitors showed different views of the quiet mill, another screen showed an image of the last log processed the week before — a 6-inch diameter trunk that had been cut into three 1-by-4 inch boards.

Sawdust collected under a sorter that usually stacks the boards by size. Sometimes, when the mill is running full-steam, it is churning out 54 different types and sizes of boards, said Vojonic, the mill’s manager.

Next week, the mill plans to run the small-log machines again, he said. But in the meantime millwrights were catching up on maintenance and doing preventative work so that when it does start up, things run as efficiently as possible.

“It gives us more time to do maintenance,” said William Noice, a millwright.

“When it’s running, the pressure’s a little bit different,” added Reggie Rush, who was changing feed rolls with Noice. “It’s easier doing it now.”

In the saw-filing room, Dave Londborg stared at a monitor, checking the mill’s giant circular saws to make sure everything was in working order.

“I’ve been off three weeks, but I’ve worked a lot more than most people,” he said.

He’s seen the ups and downs of the timber industry before, he said, and knows not to overextend himself financially.

The saw-filing department has already lost one employee, said supervisor Larry Averett, although part of the reason he left was to be closer to his family.

But in general, the whole industry is in a slump, Londborg said, and there’s not a lot of opportunity.

“The only place that has any work possibility is Bend, and that’s 50 miles away,” he said. “I’m hoping things pick up enough so we can just start working more … it’s tough, it’s really tough, but we’ll survive.”

Mill facts

1938

• Year Frank W. Gilchrist started the sawmill.

120

• Employees, hourly and salaried, at the mill.

50 to 80

• In down weeks, percentage of workers who are temporarily out of a job.

1/5 to 1/4

• Number of mill’s workers who live in Gilchrist and Crescent.