20 – Buffalo Bulletin, Heritage 2019
Bulletin photo by Andrew D. Brosig
Bloedorn Lumber moved to its current location in 1970, and in 1996, the company built a new showroom.
Half a century of service
Bloedorn Lumber celebrates Golden Anniversary in Buffalo
By Andrew D. Brosig
andrew@buffalobulletin.com
It was the year Neil Armstrong took “one giant
leap for mankind,” Big Bird and Kermit took their
first walk along “Sesame Street,” and hundreds of
thousands gathered in the Catskill Mountains of
New York for Woodstock, the music festival which
would define a generation.
It was the year Torrington-based Bloedorn
Lumber Co. came to Buffalo.
“1969 was the year the company purchased
W. F. Smith Lumber,” said Lonnie Holmes,
only the third general manager the local concern
has had in its half-century in the community.
“There’ve been several lumber yards in Buffalo
since 1927.”
Prior to Bloedorn’s arrival, Buffalo was
served by three smaller lumber yards, one of
which worked more as a native sawmill rather
than catering to retail lumber sales. There’s
historically been a timber industry in Johnson
County, with thousands if not millions of rail-
road ties, fence posts and rails and dimension-
al lumber coming out of the nearby Bighorn
National Forest, Holmes said.
The Bloedorn family and others entered the
business in Torrington and nearby Lingle as the
Torrington Lumber and Coal Company short-
ly after World War I, according to a company
history. In the intervening years, as the com-
pany grew, representatives would pass through
Buffalo, but no inroads would be made to the
community for several years.