Bronze lumberjack makes historic trio of titans

Terry Lee’s newest addition to what he calls Front Avenue’s “History Walk” will be dedicated Aug. 15 on the corner of Front and Sixth.

“The Idaho Lumberjack,” Lee’s bronze tribute to the lumber and logging industry of Coeur d’Alene’s past, has been erected alongside his other monuments to the city’s past. Commissioned by the Idaho Forest Group and donated to the city, the statue is the latest in a towering reminder of the industry’s past.

“We need to show that Coeur d’Alene was a lumber industry timber town,” Lee said. “I wanted it to be known that back then, you couldn’t go through Coeur d’Alene without running into a lumber mill. That was a big deal to the area, and there are a lot of people in this town that have no clue there were a lot of mills back then.”

His previous works of a carpenter and a farmer — and now the logger — are the first in a series Lee is creating to memorialize the area’s history. His next work, which Lee estimates will take upward of a year, will commemorate the centennial of the Women’s Suffrage movement.

“It takes me about three months [to create],” Lee explained. “I start with foam, add the clay, then do all the detail work before it goes to the foundry. They usually take about a year to build from scratch.”

The plaque at the base of “The Idaho Lumberjack” states the statue was built “in tribute to Idaho loggers, working to enhance the health of our forests and ensure the availability of our precious resource to sustain our rural economies for future generations.” For Lee, the statue was more personal.

“My dad owned a surplus store,” Lee recalled. “He used to service the loggers with their boots, their jeans, their clothes. The lumber industry was really a big part of Coeur d’Alene. I’m pretty sure there were four or five lumber mills in the city of Coeur d’Alene … That was a fond memory of my youth, and it needs to be remembered.”

The dedication Aug. 15 will include speeches from representatives from the city’s Arts Commission, Marc Brinkmeyer from the Idaho Forest Group and Lee himself. The event runs from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.