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SANDPOINT, Idaho - It all started in 1982 when Don and Kim Cox were sitting around, bored, oil a frigid winter day.
In a moment of insanity ... er, inspiration ... the Sandpoint couple, both scubadiving enthusiasts, decided to don their cold-weather gear and plunge into Lake Pend Oreille to find an outboard motor lost from a friend's boat.
Not only did they find the motor-which started in three tries, Don Cox says, laughingbut they also discovered the genesis of their current business, Pend Oreille Pines.
What the Coxes found were logs-lots and lots of old-growth northern pine and western larch, lying on the silty floor of Lake Pend Oreille where they'd come to rest more than a century before as they waited to be processed at shoreline sawmills.
It wasn't until the mid-90s, when the Coxes heard about the success a Wisconsin company was having recovering such logs and milling them into lumber, that the Sandpoint couple decided to try doing the same thing with the logs they'd discovered.
Initially, Pend Oreille Pines simply brought the logs to the surface and sold them whole to the Wisconsin company, Superior Water-Logged Lumber Co. Now, the logs stay in Sandpoint and are milled by Pend Oreille Pines into lumber for flooring, wall planking, and beams, as well as stock that's used by carpenters to make furniture and cabinetry, Kim Cox says.
The demand for the products is great enough that in August the company broke ground on an 8,000-square-foot plant that will serve as its new sawmill, warehouse, showroom, and office, allowing it to move from smaller leased space in Sandpoint. The new facility, which they're building for an undisclosed price, should be ready for full production next...