In 1945 Bob Simkins returned to Bozeman from the war in Europe and decided it was time to get going on a family and a career. His first move was to marry his college sweetheart Jean. Next, he sat down with his father Glen Simkins and together the two came up with a plan for a business. They would use the knowledge and connections his father had gained by running several of the Monarch lumber yards throughout the region. Combine that experience with some savings Bob had managed to put aside while serving in the military and start a lumber yard in West Yellowstone, Montana.

The Simkins Family partnered with an area builder named Pete Hallin and built a small building just off main street in West Yellowstone. “The early years were pretty tough” recalls Jean Simkins. “The war had created shortages and it was hard to get things to sell. We’d sell just about anything we could - hardware, appliances, cement, anything we could find. A truck full of cement would come in and without hired hands we’d have to unload the whole things ourselves.”

Jean also remembers the tough winters that West Yellowstone is famous for. “We lived upstairs in a small apartment above the yard and worked seven days a week. In the winter the snow would come right in and when we went upstairs after closing up the store we have to brush the snow off our bed.”

The Simkins’ and partner Pete Hallin ran the yard in West Yellowstone for five years before expanding to Bozeman in the summer of 1950. Glen Simkins ran the new office for a few months and by November of that year Bob and Jean had moved back to Bozeman. Simkins Hallin Lumber set up shop on North Wallace Street in the old Grain Terminal Association building. Sometime along the way Bob bought his partner Pete Hallin out of the business. His name stays on the business to this day, a testament to the heritage of the company.

By this time the Simkins had started their own family with one son already and several more kids on the way. Bozeman was a growing agricultural town and the need for dependable timely deliveries and quality products was growing. Business thrived, a result of hard work and dedication. The little location just off Main Street was home to Simkins Hallin Lumber for 43 years, until there was just no more room to grow.

The area surrounding the lumber yard and continuing north to the railroad tracks had always been zoned for industry and manufacturing. While homes remain in the area it still has an industrial nature.  In 1993 Simkins Hallin Lumber moved its main operations just four blocks away to 326 North Broadway where it remains today.

Sixty-three years after opening their doors in West Yellowstone, the Simkins family is still very much a part of the local building material industry. While Bob Simkins passed way in 1993, three of the four children remain an active part of the business today. “Bob had those kids working in the yard when they turned 15” recalls Jean. “If they had baseball, they’d go play baseball and then come right to work.” The work ethic stuck and today you can still find Tom, Mitch and Bill at the yard every day. “They all left for a while, went to college, and lived in other places” says Jean, but they all came back to work the business their father had started decades earlier.

Tom Simkins came back from graduate school with an MBA and started to work at the yard in 1972. One of his first big projects in the 80s was to bring the new world of computers to the business. “We were just growing too big to keep doing things with hand written invoices and receipts” Tom recalls, “Computers were pretty new back then but it was clear that that was the way to go.” By the time they moved to the Broadway location, the company had grown substantially. At this time Mitch Simkins, a CPA who was then living in Seattle, returned home to contribute to the family business.

The fourth generation of Simkins family members are just starting to become involved. Several of the kids in the latest generation have held summer jobs at the yard. It’s too early to tell which ones will want to work here but it’s their family heritage and it’s a solid business.

Simkins-Hallin Lumber has grown from a relatively humble start into one of the largest single location yards in the region. The yard now employs as many as 170 people in departments as diverse as lumber and building material sales, cabinet sales and design, a state of the art countertop production facility, and a roof and floor truss manufacturing plant. While Jean Simkins made some of the earliest deliveries herself, the company now operates a fleet of fifty trucks, semi’s, and boom trucks for delivery almost anywhere within 100 miles.

One of the keys to success was the emphasis on finding and keeping good people. Over the last 60 years literally thousands of people have worked at the lumber yard. It’s often a summer job for high school and college students, or a transitional job for people moving up or moving out of the area. But for some, it’s a rewarding career. Rusty VanderVos for instance recently celebrated his 52nd year working at Simkins Hallin Lumber. Wes Swingle is only a year or so behind that. It’s not uncommon to run into employees that have been at Simkins 10, 20, or even 30 years. There’s a fierce sense of loyalty to the business, and to the industry. “The people who stick with us and really care about the job, they make this a special place” says Tom Simkins, clearly proud of his longstanding employees. “These are smart, creative, and dynamic people that care about the business and their customers. It’s a family run business and many of these people are a part of our family.”

Along the way, during the last six decades, there have been a couple other directions that Bob Simkins pursued. Shortly after Chet Huntly announced that Big Sky was an ideal spot for a destination ski resort, Bob worked diligently to orchestrate a land exchange in the Big Sky area. He was able to secure land previously used as summer grazing for cattle. “Bob absolutely loved that land in Big Sky” recalls Jean today. “All summer long he’d be taking the family for weekend drives just to look at and walk the property. As soon as the hill opened Bob and the kids and I started skiing in Big Sky.” While Jean no longer skis, all four kids can be found on the slopes of Big Sky nearly every winter weekend.

Nobody could have guessed the degree that Big Sky would take off and become a world class ski resort. Through a couple more exchanges and trades over the years the Simkins family today places their main focus on a section in the meadow area called the Big Sky Town Center.

While most Western ski resorts had some sort of old mining town as their nucleus, Big Sky was a brand new resort in the middle of nowhere. There are restaurants and shopping areas scattered around the mountain but there is still no central core or “heart” of Big Sky. Simkins Holdings is currently several years into a project that will ultimately result in a downtown corridor in the meadow area of Big Sky. Half a dozen large commercial buildings and several condominium projects are just the tip of the iceberg and it’s easy to see that the Town Center will remain a beehive of activity for years to come. Big Sky Town Center will be “Main Street” that Big Sky never had.

Bill Simkins, a tax attorney, focuses most of his attention on the Town Center operation. Working with the community, the county and the state is a big job. There are architectural committees, owners associations, engineers, developers, and contractors that all need coordination. Janet Simkins, Bob and Jean’s daughter, also stays involved with the Town Center project, contributing ideas and designs as necessary.

What does the future hold for Simkins Hallin Lumber? With rapid growth, and a rapidly changing economy it’s difficult to tell. “Like a lot of businesses today independent lumber yards have to modernize themselves” says Tom Simkins. “We have to be highly organized and technically proficient in order to maintain our presence in the supply chain. New products are released onto the market daily and we need to be well versed in them and efficient at delivering them to the end users. While computers, CNC routers, fleets of trucks and even lasers are all necessary tools in a lumber yard today, it really comes back to good people.”

In March 2008, Simkins Hallin Lumber marked its 62nd anniversary of doing business in Gallatin County. They’d like to extend their sincere thanks to all the homeowners, contractors, and architects who have made their business possible over the years.