In early December, Noah Simonet’s life was going pretty well. The 22-year-old was recently engaged, and his fiancée was expecting their first child.
There are few jobs in rural Siskiyou County that can support a family, especially for someone without a college degree. But Simonet had found just that at the Roseburg Forest Products mill in Weed.
“You have a lot of guys in that mill that started from nothing,” Simonet said. “They learned everything there.”
He liked the physically demanding work and his union health benefits. He and his fiancée were saving to buy a house so they could raise their child near family in the area. He had an upcoming interview for another position at the facility with more family-friendly hours.
One night, Simonet’s bosses told the crew to make sure everything was extra tidy after they finished their shift —- some people from corporate were coming to the mill. “So we cleaned it good,” he said.
A few hours after he left for the night, Roseburg permanently shut down the mill, laying off Simonet and about 140 other workers. The company said in a statement that it closed the plant to consolidate production in Oregon. Workers would get paid and keep their health insurance for 60 days. But Weed was no longer a mill town.
Simonet’s fiancée, Carly Turner, said the closure has put their long-term plans on hold.
“Before the mill shut down, we're like, ‘Okay, we're stable. We can buy food, everything's great,’” she said. “And then it just went downhill so fast.”
Simonet has started looking for work, but he describes the process as “sad.” Few jobs pay as well as the mill. He recently saw a posting for a janitorial position at the local college, but as the holidays approach, he said he doesn’t have high hopes.
Always a mill town
Weed takes its name from Abner Weed, a timber entrepreneur who bought the Siskiyou Lumber and Mercantile Mill in 1897. Built near the base of Mount Shasta, the town benefited from strong winds that helped dry lumber for the mill. By the early 1900s, the area boasted the largest veneer plant in the world, according to the Weed Lumber Town Museum. At its peak, the mill employed an average of about 1,700 workers.
As the timber industry declines, so did Weed. The town’s population fell from a high of 3,223 in 1960 to 2,633 in 2024, and downtown has struggled to attract and retain businesses.
That decline already hits close to home for Simonet and Turner. They had family members who worked at other mills in the county until they shut down.
When a mill closes, workers aren’t the only ones hurt.
“This affects everything from grocery stores, gas stations — the schools have been an ongoing conversation,” said AJ Brown, with the Siskiyou Economic Development Council.
She said that while 140 jobs might not seem like a lot for a large company like Roseburg, for a town the size of Weed, the loss is devastating. “One major closure like this can shift the entire employment landscape,” Brown said.
‘We’re resilient’
Brown said this corner of far Northern California knows how to rally. Within hours of the mill's closure, she saw local residents flood social media with offers to help.
“That's one of the unique, maybe silver linings of this entire experience,” she said. “Seeing the example of how resilient and then how responsive our community is to one another.”
In 2014, the Boles Fire destroyed hundreds of structures in Weed. Another fire, which started at the mill in 2022, killed two people and destroyed over a hundred more buildings and homes.
“It’s almost like we’ve been trained to respond to crises,” Brown said.
“This may not be a fire,” said Donnie Slabaugh, director of public relations at the College of the Siskiyous, “but it is of a sort, the same kind of trauma being experienced by people — the unknown, the fear.”
Less than a week after the mill closed, the college organized a job fair for former workers. Union representatives led a meeting about unemployment benefits. College staff helped workers draft resumes and enroll in classes.
Sean Buchan, who worked at the mill for six years, moved from table to table, browsing job listings. He said he would miss the paycheck that supported his wife and son, but he would also miss the people at the mill.
“Half the fun of working there was working with the other guys,” he said. “We were a family, and we still are.”
Buchan said workers collected donations when a colleague’s wife was diagnosed with cancer. Now he may have to leave the county — and his former co-workers — to find work.
Roseburg hasn’t announced plans for the mill, but it could sell the facility to another company. Roseburg CEO Stuart Gray said in a statement that it was “actively evaluating options” for the site that would continue to support jobs and the local economy.
Buchan’s former crew member, Jermaine Paul, said he’s not letting the situation get him down.
“We’re resilient,” Paul said. “You work at Roseburg, you got to be tough.”
Buchan agreed. “We'll figure it out,” he said.
