EUREKA, Mont. (AP) - A 30-inch-thick ponderosa pine tree with the words "Last Log" painted on it was sawed into stud lumber Monday, marking the end of an era in the northwestern Montana logging industry.

It was the last log to be processed at the Owens & Hurst mill.

About a dozen people, most of them Owens & Hurst employees or friends and family, walked in a solemn procession through the mill, watching the log being precisely whittled into lumber for the construction trade.

"I guess it's closure for me as much as anything," said Jim Hurst, manager and co-owner of the mill for the past 25 years. "I walk around with a lump in my throat, but I'm a big boy. I'll get over it."

Hurst announced in January that the mill would be closing, putting 90 people out of work.

"In this business, as an independent operator, you always know that the end is out there," Hurst said. "I'm not saying it's fear, but you know that there may be an end to it. And our end has come. This is it."

About two dozen people will work in the mill's planer plant over the next couple of months. Just a skeleton crew of mill workers accompanied the last log from one work station to the next Monday.

After working at the mill for 20 years, Jeff Totten, 42, is leaving his job as the mill's production manager to work on a crew that will be logging on the mill's remaining active timber sales.

Those trees will be sold to Stoltze Lumber Co. of Columbia Falls over the next two years. Then, Trotten said, he would have to find other work.

Dan Radish, like Hurst and most other employees at the mill, blames the mill's closure on the lack of a reliable timber program on the surrounding Kootenai National Forest.

Lum Owens, Hurst's partner, said the mill has been competitive in recent years, even when it was relying mostly on burned timber trucked hundreds of miles from Alberta, Canada. But that source of timber has dried up, and the mill's only realistic alternative is federal timber.

Hurst said the mill is closing because there is little reason to believe there will ever be a turnaround in timber sales on the Kootenai National Forest.

An auction of the mill's equipment has been scheduled for Aug. 16-17.