Tuolumne, CA — The community of Tuolumne celebrates the 76th Lumber Jubilee this weekend.
The event started in the mid-1930s and highlights Tuolumne’s rich logging and timber industry heritage. There will be numerous events and competitions.
It runs Friday through Sunday in downtown Tuolumne. Click here to see a schedule of the activities. Day one highlights include the carnival and vendors opening at noon, the Queen Coronation at six o’clock, and the musical headliner North Fork from 7 – 10 pm.
This year’s queen candidates are Alyssa Davis, a recent graduate of Sonora High, and Bailey Kraus, who will be a Sophomore at Sonora High.
Saturday’s parade will be at 10 am.
Tuolumne Lumber Jubilee – archive imageNate Hodges, the 2024 Stihl World Champion, will be competing on Sunday. He currently has the fastest hotsaw in the world. The Jr Tug-a-War is back this year, for those 21 years and under. Logging events start an hour earlier this year, 10 am.
Lumber Jubilee spokesperson Aaron Rasmussen notes that it is becoming harder to put on the event each year as sponsorships and donations have been down. Costs are also going up for insurance, facilities (restrooms), and general expenses. The Mother Lode Fair has been moving closer to the event, which he notes also stretches local sponsorship dollars. He says, “There is a great possibility the next and future jubilees will have to downsize.”
He adds, “The Queens, Parade, Logging Events, and the Tug of War will always be the main focus. This year we are looking at about $11k in placement prizes; from Queen Candidate awards, door prizes, logging events purses, and Tug-a-War purses.”
Tuolumne County native of Long Barn, Jim Armstrong, will be the Grand Marshall this year.
His biography is below:
Jim Armstrong was born in the old Sonora hospital on Columbia Way in 1950. He and his wife, Ginger, live in Long Barn. A graduate of Summerville High, Jim’s class was the first to graduate from the “new” high school.
At the age of 17, after the death of his father, Jim took over his father’s Sugar Pine shake making business. As he cared for his aging mother, he helped her raise her 300 chickens, providing eggs for Pinecrest resorts and businesses.
Since then, he has continued making shake, estimating that he has made more than 1 million shakes. Yosemite, Lassen and other national parks are restoring their historic buildings with Jim’s shakes. Concerns of Fire Marshals regarding fire-risks and shake roofs led Jim to find ways to make shakes more fire resistant. He purchased a formula for a spray-on product and recalibrated it for application to shake roofs. His journey as an entrepreneur had begun. With another partner, Jake Clark, they developed a product to treat wooden decks. He sold The Armstrong-Clark Company to his partner, who still produces wood stains locally, and sold across the nation.
Jim Armstrong and familyFor more than 25 years, Jim was the voice of weather prediction in the Union Democrat and on KKBN radio. His interest in weather and prediction began at age eight and a trip to the National Weather Service office in Sacramento was a highlight of his childhood. Later, he and a business partner began the weather prediction consulting business. Weather continues to interest him on a daily basis.
Jim’s logging career began with timber falling. That two year short career ended when he purchased a 745C Log Loader in 1987 and Jim Armstrong, Inc., aka Armstrong Logging, was begun. Jim’s love and respect for the woods demanded that all his logging operations were operated as carefully and respectfully as possible. Proper forest management is of the highest priority for him. He has logged in Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador, El Dorado, Plumas & Butte Counties. His son, Matt, began working in the woods with Jim when he was 11. He now runs Armstrong Logging full time.
Entrepreneur Jim and his wife owned and operated a Christmas tree farm for 21 years. Following the sale of the farm, Jim now operates a wholesale silver tip Christmas tree business, selling over 1500 trees to lot owners in California and Arizona. At Christmas time, Armstrong’s Sierra Silvers also sells trees to the San Francisco Opera Hall to aid a major fund-raising event.
Jim & Ginger have 2 children /step-children, Matthew and Haley. Matthew runs the logging business while Haley is the instrumental instructor and conductor at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Jim & Ginger are the proud grandparents of 3 grandchildren. Peyton is 16, a sophomore at Summerville High, Mattison 12, a sixth grader at Summerville Elementary and Ryland a very busy 5-year-old preschooler in South Dakota.
In 2015, Jim and Ginger purchased her childhood home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Both feel very blessed by the unique situation that allows them to live in both their childhood homes. While he has readily adopted New Mexico as his second home, Jim’s heart and soul remain in Tuolumne County and especially his beloved forests and trees of our Sierra Nevada mountains.
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