Mack Winfrey has worked on the Harris Road sawmill since before it closed. When Wilkes Lumber brought it back this spring, he was director of operations, and WRDW reported that he had helped design the facility and put it together. "They don't have to take them 150 miles," he told the station, talking about the logs local landowners grow. "They can bring a 40 mile, 50 mile haul."

That's good news for the landowners around Washington, but it doesn't help every tree equally. A stand of pine holds several different products, and each one sells into its own market. The new mill shortens the trip for some of them. For the wood most stands produce during thinnings, the trip is still long, and that wood remains the weak spot in a Wilkes County timber plan.

What reopened on Harris Road

The mill sits on the former International Paper site on Harris Road. WRDW's May 12 report described it as a chip-and-saw mill on 80 acres that had been producing finished untreated lumber since April 1. Lifelong resident Wilkes Barnett owns it, and the station reported that he and Winfrey wanted local logging companies and residents to have a place to deliver logs without hauling them out of town. In the Georgia Forestry Commission's wood-using industries directory, Wilkes Lumber, LLC appears at 371 Harris Road as a softwood sawmill that uses yellow pine. The listing shows rough, planed and kiln-dried lumber as its products, with bark, chips, sawdust and shavings as by-products.

In May, WRDW reported a first phase running with about 50 workers. A second phase was expected within a few weeks, with 60 to 65 people employed eventually. Winfrey said the lumber would go to big-box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's for homebuilding. The industry newsletter TimberMart-South also noted the reopening in its second-quarter 2026 bulletin and put the restart in early April, after a 25-year closure.

So the market that came back to Washington is for pine logs big enough to saw into boards.

The price gap that a shorter haul goes after

A landowner sees two prices. Stumpage is what a buyer pays for standing timber. The delivered price is what a mill pays when the wood shows up at its gate. The difference between the two covers cutting the wood, loading it and trucking it to the mill. Shortening the drive makes that difference smaller, and that's the only mechanism by which a closer mill can leave more money with the person who grew the trees.

Here are the South-wide averages in TimberMart-South's third-quarter 2026 bulletin. They are regional figures for the whole South, not a quote for any Wilkes County tract.

The gap column hardly changes. Whether a ton of pine is a prime sawlog or a skinny thinning stem, it costs about the same $21 to $24 per ton, South-wide in 3Q 2026, to get it from the stump to the mill. The value of the wood is what changes. On a sawtimber ton, the landowner keeps a little more than half of the delivered price. On a pulpwood ton, the landowner keeps less than a fifth, and the rest goes to getting the wood out of the woods and down the road.

That's why haul distance matters most at the bottom of the table. A long trip takes a moderate bite out of sawtimber. For pulpwood, the trip can decide whether a thinning pays anything at all. The Georgia Forestry Commission's timber sale guidance puts it in general terms: tracts close to a wood-using facility often get a premium, and tracts with poor access often bring lower prices.

Wilkes Lumber sits at the top of the table. It buys the sawlog and chip-n-saw products, where a landowner already keeps the biggest share. The pulpwood row, where a shorter haul would make the biggest proportional difference, still needs some other buyer.

Why the pulpwood row decides the plan

Pulpwood has been losing outlets across Georgia and South Carolina. In UGA Extension's 2026 timber outlook, published January 23, 2026, closures of Georgia-Pacific's Cedar Springs containerboard mill and International Paper's Savannah and Riceboro facilities removed the immediate market for about 8.3 million tons of timber a year. About half of that wood came from Georgia counties. In 3Q 2026, South-wide pine pulpwood stumpage was down $0.22 from the previous quarter and $0.99 from a year earlier, according to TimberMart-South. The bulletin also says delivered pine pulpwood has stayed under $30 a ton for five straight quarters.

The same weakness affects sawmills, because every sawmill makes its own low-value wood. Sawing a log leaves chips, sawdust and bark, and a mill needs a buyer for those leftovers. WRDW reported that the Harris Road mill closed the first time because chips became costly and hard to get rid of after paper mills, which used to buy them, lost demand as digital replaced print. When West Fraser announced on November 6, 2025 that it would close its Augusta lumber mill by the end of that year, the company cited "challenging lumber demand, and the loss of economically viable residual outlets." That closure affected about 130 employees and removed 140 million board feet of capacity.

So the region lost a large sawmill near Augusta and got a smaller one back in Washington within about half a year, and both stories turn on what happens to the wood that isn't lumber. That makes a stand's pulpwood more than a side issue. The pulp market supports the sawmill market around it.

What this changes for a stand around Washington

The effect on any one property depends on what's standing on it.

Mature pine sawtimber and chip-n-saw. These are the products a chip-and-saw mill exists to buy, and they now have a buyer inside Wilkes County instead of one far down the road. Whether that turns into a better stumpage bid depends on the tract, the logger and what the mill is paying the day the wood moves. No published data yet measures a price effect from this mill, and the regional averages above can't show one. Proximity is exactly the factor the Forestry Commission says can earn a premium, though, and it now favors this kind of wood in Wilkes County.

First and second thinnings. These loads are mostly pulpwood, and the pulpwood math hasn't changed. A thinning that looked marginal last year probably still looks marginal. If you're holding a young stand, the reopened mill helps the logs those trees will become, not the stems you remove along the way.

Storm-damaged or mixed stands. WRDW tied the reopening to an industry worn down by mill closures, Hurricane Helene damage and recent wildfires. Damaged wood often grades down into lower-value products, which puts more of a stand into the rows where a nearby sawmill helps least. Hardwood falls outside what the Forestry Commission listing shows for this mill, which is yellow pine.

For buyers sizing up timberland around Washington, what matters is the product mix of the stand you're buying. A tract heavy in merchantable pine sawtimber now sits near a buyer for that wood. A tract planted a few years ago has its first sale in the pulpwood market, and that market is still searching for a floor.

Before you put a sale on the calendar or set an offer on a timbered tract, it's worth getting answers to a few questions:

1. How does the timber cruise break down by product? Ask for tons of sawtimber, chip-n-saw and pulpwood, not one blended number.
2. Which mills are realistic destinations for each product from this specific tract, and how far is each haul?
3. Is the Harris Road mill buying the log sizes this stand can produce, and on what terms right now? The Forestry Commission directory lists a phone number for Wilkes Lumber, 706-401-8403.
4. Does the timing of a thinning depend on pulpwood prices recovering? If so, what's the cost of waiting?
5. How do access and operability affect bids? Road frontage, wet-weather logging and terrain shift price as much as distance does, according to the Forestry Commission's guidance.

A few questions we hear

Does a mill in town raise the value of all timberland in Wilkes County? No. It improves the outlet for the pine products it buys. Land value also reflects soils, access, recreation and the age of the timber, and a young stand's next sale is mostly pulpwood.

Are the 3Q 2026 prices above what I'd get in Wilkes County? No. They're South-wide averages from TimberMart-South for July through September 2026. A specific tract is priced on its own volume, quality, access and haul, so treat the averages as a sense of scale, not a bid.

Why does a sawmill care about the paper industry? Because a sawmill makes chips and sawdust with every log it cuts. The Harris Road mill's first closure and West Fraser's Augusta closure both come back to finding buyers for those leftovers.

If you own pine around Washington and want to know how much of your stand is sawtimber and how much is pulpwood waiting on a better market, J Brand Realty can walk the tract with you. Jenny Brown Strother is a Georgia Registered Forester, and she can help you weigh a timber sale, a land sale or holding a while longer. Request a Property Valuation & Consultation, and we'll start with what's actually growing on your land.