05/15/2026
The Starker Forests, Inc. Community Oral History Collection is chiefly comprised of interviews conducted by long-time Starker Forests employee Gary Blanchard with individuals who have mostly lived in rural areas of western Oregon for the majority of their lives, making their livings as loggers, foresters, tree farmers and millworkers. Nearly all of the interviews were videorecorded and saved to DVD, and have since been migrated off of the original discs, transcribed and made available online through SCARC's Voices of the Forests, Voices of the Mills web portal. The paper transcript of a lengthy group interview focusing on the life and impact of T.J. Starker has also been digitized and is available on request.
Corvallis-based Starker Forests, Inc. was founded in 1936 by T.J. Starker (1890-1983), an alumnus (1910) of Oregon Agricultural College's first class in Forestry, and later a professor in the OSC School of Forestry. Today, Starker Forests manages more than 95,000 acres of forestland in Benton, Lane, Lincoln, Linn and Polk counties.
[Screenshot of narrators from the oral history collection]
