The site of Dragon Woodland Sawmill in Helena-West Helena.
He’s mayor of Helena-West Helena now, and he’s watching his town’s old Chicago Mill property come back to life. (Read more about that in Dragon Woodland Ramps Up $10M Hardwood Operation.)
But in 1982, Kevin Smith was starting his first day on a summer job as a reporter with the Helena World when he was told: “Go to the Chicago Mill. It’s on fire.”
“There was already talk that the mill was going to close, so the real question was: Are they going to rebuild?” he remembers. “Everybody had a sense that this was it. They weren’t going to rebuild.”
Since the fire, the property served as an on-again, off-again location for a small-scale sawmill or log yard.
Smith said the grand opening of Dragon Woodland on the former Chicago Mill property in April was an emotional moment for him.
“It was a very bittersweet experience,” he said. “My grandfather retired from Chicago Mill. My father told me stories about walking to work with him as a boy and eating lunch with him at the mill.
“Hundreds of people worked there over the years. But after the fire, it was a wasteland, an abandoned log yard for the most part.”
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