Celebrating the Headwaters Forest Reserve’s 25th Anniversary Event

A rapt audience of north coast Californians was treated to stories of youthful exuberance, societal change, and individual resilience, when Eric Hollenbeck, a nationally renowned woodworking craftsman, led a special storytelling event, Wednesday, Sept. 17, to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of establishment of the Headwaters Forest Reserve.

The event at the Headwaters Education Center, along the Elk River Trail near Eureka, was part of an ongoing Bureau of Land Management series celebrating the anniversary.

Clad in his signature red flannel shirt and relaxed in a canvas director’s chair, Hollenbeck recounted exploring the Headwaters ghost town of Falk as a youth (he and a friend were caught twice by the caretaker), toiling there in his teens as a timber worker during the north coast timber boom days (“you could quit three jobs in a day and have another by that night”), and his founding of Blue Ox Millworks in 1972 using a $300 bank loan, a chainsaw, and 1950 flatbed truck.

Blue Ox Millworks grew from a four-man salvage logging company that survived a timber industry decline and shift toward conservation forestry into a millwork company so highly regarded that it completed projects for U.S. presidents and two governor’s mansions. Hollenbeck and his wife, Viviana, continue to run the company that now has an educational component, teaching at risk youth skills ranging from woodworking to masonry, while continuing to turn out intricate woodworking pieces essential to restoring historical properties.

His work is the focus of “The Craftsman,” a television series streaming on various services.

BLM Deputy Director for State Operations Karen Kelleher and BLM California Acting State Director Gordon Toevs attended the event and toured sites where the BLM and Tribal partners work together on ecological forestry and watershed restoration projects. Through the partnership, the Wiyot Tribe uses indigenous knowledge in stewarding lands within its ancestral territory.

The BLM has committed $300,000 in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds to support a “wood is good” project, which places trees in streams to improve habitat for various fish species including salmon and eel.

The 7,472-acre Headwaters Forest Reserve was established in 1999 after a decade-long grassroots effort to protect the world’s last unprotected, intact, old-growth redwood forest ecosystem. It supports threatened species, including coho salmon, the northern spotted owl, and the marbled murrelet, a seabird.

The BLM Arcata Field Office manages the Reserve in consultation with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.