Full-time store manager helps historic Butte Creek Mill return to normal after fire

Published 3:00 pm Friday, February 9, 2024

Eight years since the historic Butte Creek Mill in Eagle Point burned in a Christmas morning fire, the freshly rebuilt landmark is slowly regaining a business-as-usual vibe.

Customers saunter in for spice refills, a jar of jelly, a bag of the mill’s “world-famous” pancake mix.

Kids deliberate at the old wooden sales counter about their preferred candy stick flavor.

Locals stand around a wood stove, catching up on town news, while volunteers wander in to help work the front counter or package the mill’s signature products.

Decimated in the 2015 blaze, the mill has been a labor of love for former owner Bob Russell and the Butte Creek Mill Foundation that formed amid the ashes of the local landmark.

Originally built in 1872, the mill is the only water-powered grist mill still operating west of the Mississippi River.

Since mere days after the fire, the foundation has helped to fundraise about $2.4 million for fire repairs and restoration efforts. In the latest sign of a return to pre-fire normalcy, the foundation board of directors recently announced it had hired a full-time store manager.

Longtime Rogue Valley resident Marcie Van Ness signed on Jan. 24.

Bringing decades of retail and management experience, Van Ness plans to strike a balance between celebrating the mill’s historic significance and nudging the general store out of the past century with modern retail practices.

She plans to swap price tag “stickers” for scannable bar codes that will allow for more accurate inventory. She also hopes to expand the mill’s operating hours and days to make the store more accessible to customers.

Van Ness said the nostalgia factor at the mill, and the quality milled ingredients sold at the site, are a stark contrast to the big-box retail and processed, prepackaged foods of the past few decades of her career.

Having grown up in Southern Oregon, she remembers trips to the mill as a young girl. She also remembers sharing the community’s devastation after the fire.

“I was out here the morning of the fire. It was just so hard to believe,” she said.

“To think it was gone. Everyone has such a connection to this old place.”

The community spirit that showed up after the fire, by way of bucket brigades, donations and well wishes, Van Ness said, has been just as evident in her first weeks on the job.

“Volunteers will come in and point to a board and they say, ‘My footprint is on that board. I nailed that board down,’” Van Ness said during a recent morning at the mill.

“There were so many hundreds of people who helped bring it back. I’ve talked to people who were here from the time the ashes had just barely been quenched. Two days after the fire they were out here trying to do what they could … and they’ve done it every day since.”

Board member Bob Russell, who owned the mill prior to the fire, said Van Ness was a great fit for the store.

“I think what Marcie is going to bring is common sense procedure at the mill. She’s got a very good marketing background, and she really understands retail sales,” Russell said.

“Some of our prices, I think, were too low, and some of them might have been a little too high. In the whole process of rebuilding the mill, sometimes we took our eye off the basics of retail sales, so we’re going to take a complete look at our products. We’re going to get universal product codes on them.

“And, with Marcie’s help, we’re going to very slowly expand our offerings. … It’s going to be a very positive thing for the mill to have somebody with a background in store management like Marcie has.”

While it already looks much like its pre-fire days, the mill, Russell said, is in a good place to grow and evolve to serve the community for decades to come.

“We have a really, really cohesive board right now that is very focused on giving back to our community and giving back to the Rogue Valley. We’re doing a lot of tours of the mill, and we have lots of interest. We just want to make it available to everybody,” he said.

Recently at the mill, while packaging pancake mix for an upcoming pancake feed, Russell said it’s sometimes hard to believe all that has transpired in the past eight years.

“I look around and I think that the average person — not only in Eagle Point but in the Rogue Valley — probably didn’t believe we could do it. I’d be surprised if anybody thought we had a 5% chance of pulling it all off, really,” Russell said.

“The amazing thing is that it has really taken the whole valley to get this thing rolling. We’ve been very lucky along the way, but the bottom line is, there has just been some amazing people who believed in what we were doing and who helped us … and they helped us, a lot.”

Van Ness said she feels her new role will be equal parts retailer and cheerleader.

“When I had heard they were looking for someone that had retail experience, I immediately applied. I already loved this place, and I loved the product,” said Van Ness, noting that she hopes to learn everything from product packaging to milling.

“When it was closed down, just like everybody else, I missed the spices, I missed the products. … It wasn’t that you couldn’t make things or get some of it anywhere else, but it just wasn’t the same.”

Van Ness said it’s hard to deny there’s something special about her new post.

“I love how everyone comes in to share their stories. The community members really feel like it belongs to them,” she said.

“And I’m feeling more and more like that, too.”

Operating hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, with expanded hours and days planned for late spring and summer.

A pancake breakfast and open house are scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 10. Community members can observe the millstones grinding wheat for flour and take a tour of the mill.

The open house is free and runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The pancake breakfast is $7 and runs 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. The meal includes the mill’s “world-famous pancakes,” sausage and coffee.

For more info, visit buttecreekmill.com.