Return to Virginia Business - June 2002

If floors could talk

You could say that Mountain Lumber Co., a manufacturer of wooden floors, is in the rescue business. The company specializes in reclaiming - or rescuing - lumber from demolition sites and re-milling it for use in any sort of structure, from private homes to historic renovations at the University of Virginia.

In its 28-year history, the Ruckersville company has made floors out of Guinness ale barrels, English Cider Oak barrels found at Bulmers Cider in Hereford, England, and Russian Oak from old train cars used in the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Founder Willie Drake conceived of transforming antique structures into fine wooden floors - not to mention great conversation pieces. He began while salvaging chestnut lumber from a few forgotten, weather-beaten buildings in West Virginia in 1974. Since then, Mountain Lumber has reclaimed roughly 20 million board feet of salvaged wood. His search for salvageable lumber has taken him all over the country, from railroad warehouses in Baltimore, to the Boston Wharf, to the original John Deere factory in Moline, Ill.
But why would anyone want to use old, worn wood when there is an abundance of freshly cut lumber? The answer is simple, says John Williams, vice president: It's all about quality.

When European explorers first arrived in North America in the 1600s, they encountered an immense forest, centuries old, that stretched from southern Virginia to Texas. Consisting almost entirely of massive Longleaf Pine trees, the forest had grown virtually untouched for thousands of years and produced a quality of wood not found anywhere else in the world. Noted for its rich, tawny color, tight grain and exceptional weight, the Longleaf Pine has a 400-year growth cycle. Today it covers about 1 percent of the original area of the forest, having been timbered out of existence by the 1930s. There is no other wood like it, and there probably never will be.

Mountain Lumber is finicky when it comes to reclaimed wood. Over the years Drake has become an authority on antique lumber.
"We research every old building we buy," Williams says. "We are very careful about what a site was used for. Any site that used chemicals, like a tannery, is immediately a no-buy situation."

- Matthew Philips