Owner of One of the Last Victorian Mills in America Is Preserving a Disappearing Craft—and Helping Veterans and Youth

Eric Hollenbeck inspects a piece of wood in the Blue Ox Millworks office in Eureka, Calif. Maria Coulson

On a chilly morning on the edge of the redwoods at the back of Humboldt Bay, Eric Hollenbeck sat on a worn wooden bench with a cup of coffee in his hands and an adopted calico cat curled up at his feet. A scavenged potbelly stove radiated warmth into the rustic reception room. In his lumberjack red plaid flannel shirt, the woodworking wizard drew solace from puffing his billiard pipe, billowing tobacco smoke.

In sizing up Mr. Hollenbeck, the descriptors that stick like wood glue are grit and mettle. In 1973, he started a salvage logging company in the northern California coastal town of Eureka with a $300 bank loan and a leap of faith. A half-century later, the eighth-grade dropout is the successful proprietor of Blue Ox Millworks, one of the last Victorian mills in America employing traditional tools and techniques.

In 2022, 2,000 visitors came to the mill for guided tours and hands-on workshops. Mr. Hollenbeck oversees their tutelage on the intricately designed and highly decorative woodwork of Victorian architecture, from spandrels to sunbursts to doll balusters.

He’s also become a television celebrity, showcasing his restoration projects that range from a lumber baron mansion to his childhood movie theater on the Magnolia Network series “The Craftsman.” His authentic reproductions are found as far afield as the White House and the Mascot Saloon in Skagway, Alaska, but the primary focus of the show is on historic homes and forgotten treasures in Eureka. “I grew up just 10 blocks from the mill,” Mr. Hollenbeck said. “I work on buildings I took shade under on my way to school. There is a personal history in that, which is really important for me.” As is bringing recognition to his hometown: “It excites me to share with the outside world what an amazing place we live.”

Eric Hollenbeck, in his signature lumberjack shirt, stands in front of the Blue Ox Millworks office in Eureka, Calif. Maria Coulson

A Passionate Perfectionist

The 76-year-old artisan shared his insight and passion for his pursuit. “If you work with these,” he said, holding up his hands, “you’re a tradesman. If you work with your hands and your head, you’re a craftsman. If you work with your hands, your head, and your heart, you’re a master craftsman. When you put all of them together, you’re putting your soul into what you’re doing.”

Mr. Hollenbeck’s mastery is a testament to his spiritual communion with the forest in his backyard. “The tree is perfection in the woods,” he said, exhaling a plume of sweet tobacco smoke. “And the challenge for a woodworker is to make a product as close to that perfection as possible, thereby treating the wood with the reverence it deserves.”

Gently caressing a spiral specimen, he continued, “I enjoy the feel of finely crafted wood, the redwood smell of the workshop, the pleasure of cutting, shaping, and joining wood with hand tools and human-powered equipment.” In a matter of minutes, shavings from a new project masked his workbench and the floor.

Mr. Hollenbeck accomplishes his 19th-century restoration methods with tools dating from 1866 to 1948. He pulled most of the antiquated machinery out of blackberry bushes and abandoned sawmills. He built a foundry and blacksmith shop to fix and maintain them and to produce ornamental ironwork. Such self-sufficiency was born out of necessity. “Nothing was too good for us,” he said with a husky laugh about him and his wife of 46 years, Viviana, “and that is exactly what we had to work with—nothing.”

It was in 1976 that Hollenbeck turned his salvage logging company into a custom millworks. “I was always good with my hands,” he said, “so manufacturing wood products was a natural evolution. I was still working with saws and tape measures, just on a smaller scale.”

The tools in Mr. Hollenbeck’s millworks date from 1866 to 1948. Maria Coulson

Healing Through Craft

Mr. Hollenbeck is philosophical, humorous, and a natural storyteller. There’s more to the makeup of the man than woodworking—he’s also dedicated to helping combat veterans and troubled youth.

In 1969, returning to civilian life after fierce firefights in the jungles of Vietnam, the anguished former Army Airborne corporal had a meltdown. “We didn’t know anything about shell shock back then,” Mr. Hollenbeck said. “I always thought it was just me.”

He believes Native Americans understood post-traumatic stress disorder. “They knew it took a year to train a villager to become a warrior,” he explained. “They also knew it took a year to train a warrior to become a villager again.” Focusing on woodworking, the 23-year-old gave himself the space to begin healing. During the process, he said that he gained a deep respect for his ingenious Victorian predecessors and their innovative tools. 

Mr. Hollenbeck started a program at Blue Ox a decade ago to help fellow veterans redefine themselves in the wake of coming home from war. He maintains they have one job: to find a new identity. He encourages them to make something they can hold up and say, “That’s me. I did that.”

He proudly pointed to one project in particular: Relying on the single known photograph, 23 combat veterans created a genuine replica of Abraham Lincoln’s horse-drawn hearse, which had been destroyed in a fire. The replica was the centerpiece of the 150th anniversary commemoration of Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield, Illinois, in 2015.

Mr. Hollenbeck is planning the development of a 5-acre historic craftsman’s village; its construction and operation will be a therapeutic training ground for returning veterans. 

An exhibit at the millworks displays elements of the reproduction of Abraham Lincoln’s hearse, a project completed by a team of 23 combat veterans. Maria Coulson

The Next Generation

One reason Mr. Hollenbeck does the television show is to raise young people’s consciousness about craftsmanship: “To tell them being a craftsman is an honorable and profitable way to make a living,” he said. He insists that the schools and media are not telling them that. “The trades are screaming at the top of their lungs: ‘We need people. We’re paying big money.’ And nobody’s hearing it.”

He has established a vocational charter school at Blue Ox for at-risk teens. As part of their high school curriculum, they take five-week courses to develop marketable skills and a sense of accomplishment. “I’ve got empathy for these students,” the headmaster said. “I couldn’t read. That’s why I left school.”

He revealed that he read his first book at age 50. He chose a 250-page chemistry text to learn how to make varnish. “It took me six months to read it with a dictionary by my side,” he admitted. “The school system told me I was stupid. I am ignorant, but not stupid. I do amazing things.”

If You Go

Blue Ox Millworks and Historic Park 1 X Street Eureka, CA 707-444-3437; BlueOxMill.com

Earlier this year, Mr. Hollenbeck oversaw the preservation of a World War II Higgins landing craft designed to shuttle a platoon of soldiers from ship to shore. It was so integral to the invasion of Normandy that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower claimed the conflict was won because of the boat. Retrieved from the bottom of Shasta Lake in north-central California, the Blue Ox craft was trucked to its new home at the Nebraska National Guard Museum in time for Fourth of July ceremonies. Maria Coulson

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.