Here’s how Blixseth did it

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

Early in 1992, The Nature Conservancy, with $10 million in backing from CNN founder Ted Turner, was trying to buy 165,000 acres from Plum Creek Timber Co., most of it inside the Gallatin National Forest.

The Nature Conservancy planned to trade some of that land with the U.S. Forest Service and launch an experiment in sustainable logging and recreational development. Negotiations dragged on for months, but fell apart after the news became public.

Within a few weeks, Tim Blixseth, along with partners Mel and Norm McDougal, announced they had bought the Plum Creek property. They paid $27.5 million for the land and a sawmill in Belgrade that employed scores of people. But before the papers were signed, they had arranged to sell some big chunks.

“We went to work and found buyers,” Blixseth said in an interview.

He and his partners, calling themselves Big Sky Lumber Co., arranged for other investors to take a 25,000 acre parcel west of Big Sky, the Jack Creek property, for $6.5 million. Today, it has become the ski and golf resort called Moonlight Basin, a place where 20-acre lots are listed for $3 million.

At the same time, timber giant Louisiana Pacific bought the Belgrade sawmill and a multi-year timber contract with BSL for $9 million, Blixseth said. The mill shut down after the lumber contract was complete, and the property became bustling retail space on the west end of Belgrade.

The sawmill and Moonlight sales reduced BSL’s overall price to $12 million, or about $86 an acre for the remaining 140,000 acres. The partners borrowed half of the purchase price.

Blixseth put up “about $3 million” in cash, he said. Today, condos at the Yellowstone Club cost more than that.

LOGGER FIRST

But it took a lot of work to make the Yellowstone Club happen.

Most of the Plum Creek land was in a checkerboard land pattern that stretched from Yellowstone National Park to the north end of the Bridger Mountains. Plum Creek had tried for decades to arrange land swaps that would allow it and the Forest Service to consolidate their holdings.

Some of the property was pristine, untouched and unroaded, while much of it had been heavily logged.

The Plum Creek swaps had a lot of support, but never made it past Congress.

Enter Blixseth.

He told the Chronicle in 1992 that he had come to saw logs and make money and wasn’t worried about battles with environmentalists.

“Maybe someplace in this United States of America, somebody needs to draw a line and protect private property rights,” he said at the time. “Maybe I’m the guy and that’s the place.”

He referred to the property as a “tree farm” and once said he was “tired of people saying clear-cutting is a bad word.”

Statements like that got people’s attention.

Meanwhile, he worked behind the scenes with members of Congress, the Forest Service and environmental groups to hammer out a deal.

By 1993, Congress had approved the first of two land swaps. BSL gave up 38,000 acres, mostly roadless land along the crest of the Gallatin Range, and got 16,300 acres of prime timberland scattered across western Montana. That property, lower in elevation and easier to reach, was logged and/or sold quickly.

By 1995, land prices were still climbing and BSL sold another 8,100 acres to the Forest Service in the Porcupine drainage — prime elk and grizzly bear habitat southeast of Big Sky — for $16.4 million, the appraised value.

Later, it completed another swap with the Forest Service.

By the time it was all said and done, the company traded to the government 101,000 acres in exchange for 47,000 acres, plus $25 million.

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