The Western Heritage Story

Western Heritage furniture has been practicing “green” ideals since long before making reclaimed wood furniture became popular. In the beginning it just made sense. When CEO Tim McClellan bet his girlfriend at the time that he could make the $1200 lodge pole bed she saw in a catalog for much less he decided to reclaim timber from old slash and burn piles around the northwest where he lived at the time. The deal was that if the lodge pole bed did not look like the one in the catalog, he would have to purchase the “real” bed at full price. She loved it. Her friends loved it. Tim reclaimed more timber and sold more beds. Soon there were commissions to furnish entire homes, all with reclaimed lumber from slash and burn piles.

In 1993 Tim McClellan visited his sister Terri who operated a sandwich shop here in Jerome, Arizona. Jerome is an old ghost town once known as the wickedest town in the west. Once a booming mining town of over 10,000 people, Jerome’s population dropped to under 100 when the copper mines closed after World War II. Described as “a cross between Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure and The X-Files”, Jerome was literally revived by an eclectic mix of hippies, bikers, artists and runaways. Jerome is now a thriving artist community, beautiful, sunny and mostly warm. Tim McClellan never left and Western Heritage Furniture was founded in 1994, located in a 14,000 sf. building which used to be the Mingus Union High School Gym. The Mingus Marauder’s giant pirate mascot looks over the wood shop with menacing eyes and sword in hand.

In 1999 Tim McClellan Partnered with marketing guru Tim McCune, a former boat captain on his way to Costa Rica. It was serendipity that brought the Tims together as business partners - neither came to Jerome with the intention of staying. T1 and T2, as locals call them, live next door to each other, ride their Harleys to work and are often seen at trade shows putting on the “Tim and Tim show”.

There are not many slash and burn piles in Arizona so in order to maintain Western Heritage’s sustainable furniture building practices we started reclaiming old barns and buildings – after all this is a ghost town – and that’s how our Ghostwood Collection™ was born. But we like to look at it as more than just reclaiming an old barn. We like to think we are preserving a piece of American history. Many old barns are simply bulldozed into a hole and all the hard work, history and old-growth lumber that went into that barn is buried. Literally. Many of these structures stood for more than a century during an eventful time in American history. From train robberies to movies stars – we are always amazed at the stories the barn owners tell us when we procure these old structures. We just turn over a bucket, sit down and get an earful real American history.

Continuing our commitment to sustainable practices, Western Heritage Furniture has adopted lean manufacturing techniques, green energy practices and will continue to develop new ways to make green furniture even greener. Every piece of furniture we deliver is done so using biodiesel in our delivery trucks, converted from waste vegetable oil collected from local restaurants. This has been such a positive experience that Tim McClellan has even founded Verde Biofuel, which manufactures mobile biodiesel processors which enable other businesses to process their own biodiesel.

You think we could stop there. There is already so much that goes into reclaimed barn wood furniture before it’s even made that our furniture is exciting to look at before it even hits the table saw. It’s like there is energy inside Ghostwood™ you just don’t find in today’s milled lumber. That energy transcends every piece of furniture that leaves Western Heritage Furniture and will continue to do so long after you are gone.