Sedro-Woolley, Washington, home to Janicki’s headquarters, hosts the annual Loggerodeo carving competition each Fourth of July weekend, where skilled carvers turn local timber into finished pieces. At Janicki’s groundbreaking in Great Falls, the company presented the city with a hand-carved wood bison, cut from a single western red cedar log at this year’s Loggerodeo by longtime carver Mark Colp.
Great Falls Mayor Cory Reeves accepted the bison on behalf of the city. It will be displayed in the hallway of the Great Falls Civic Center downtown.
The gift reflected Janicki’s hometown tradition and marked the start of a new relationship with Great Falls, carrying a simple message from one community to another: a piece of where Janicki started, now part of where it’s growing.
The Montana expansion
Great Falls Mayor Cory Reeves accepted the bison on behalf of the city. It will be displayed in the hallway of the Great Falls Civic Center downtown. The gift reflected Janicki’s hometown tradition and marked the start of a new relationship with Great Falls, carrying a simple message from one community to another: a piece of where Janicki started, now part of where it’s growing.
On July 10, Janicki broke ground on an $800 million manufacturing campus in Great Falls, the company’s largest expansion to date and its first outside Washington and Utah.
The campus will cover 1.6 million square feet on 180 acres within the Great Falls AgriTech Park, built in phases over the next decade. Janicki expects to create 1,000 jobs within the first five years and more than 2,000 once the campus is complete, with most of those positions filled by Montanans and supported by the company’s training programs. The first phase is expected to open by the end of 2027. The site will expand Janicki’s work in advanced composites, precision machining, and metal fabrication for its aerospace, defense, and space customers.
The ceremony brought together Janicki leadership, state and local officials, and the Great Falls community. Speakers included Janicki President John Janicki, CEO Peter Janicki, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Great Falls Mayor Cory Reeves, and Great Falls Development Alliance President and CEO Brett Doney. Rather than a traditional shovel ceremony, brothers John and Peter Janicki climbed into the cabs of two Caterpillar excavators and moved the first earth themselves.
Great Falls joins Janicki’s existing operations in Sedro-Woolley, Mount Vernon, Bellingham and Hamilton, Washington, and Layton, Utah. The company remains committed to growing those Washington and Utah sites even as it builds in Montana.
The carving, and the man who made it
Mark Colp has been carving for 45 years and has never held another job. His father was one of the first chainsaw carvers in the country, and Mark followed him into the trade straight out of high school and has never worked a different job. Born in Canada, he immigrated to northern California after graduating from Lower Lake High School and became a U.S. citizen in 2019.
Mark is a chainsaw purist. Close to 98 percent of every piece he makes comes off the saw. He works in natural wood tones, adds a little burn for color now and then, and does not airbrush. He keeps sanding to a minimum, so the texture you see is cut, not smoothed. He carves North American wildlife, with whales and sea lions among his favorites, and turns out roughly 300 pieces a year. At least half are bears.
Janicki wanted to give the town a meaningful gift to mark the partnership between the city and the company. Leadership requested a bison, and left the design to Mark. He worked in western red cedar left over from the previous year, a log with deep bark that he built into the base rather than cutting away, which gave the piece its own character. He chose cedar over redwood on purpose, because cedar is native to Washington and he wanted the material to belong to the place the carving came from.
The finished bison stands about 74 inches tall, 57 inches wide and 78 inches long. Mark started on a Thursday, put in six to seven hours a day, and finished in about 20 hours over three and a half days. He considered a head-and-shoulders treatment that would have added height, but Janicki wanted a piece that reads from every side, so he carved the full animal. A single bison, he decided, makes the strongest statement on its own.
Mark carved the bison at Sedro-Woolley’s Loggerodeo, the town’s Fourth of July celebration and the event where he has competed for more than 20 years. His first was in 2001. He has won the carving competition two or three times and placed on several other occasions, most recently taking second last year. He is quick to say the event keeps getting stronger. More talent shows up every year, the detail keeps climbing, and a wave of younger carvers is raising the bar.
Nearly all of the carving was done by chainsaw. Mark estimates 97 percent of the work was saw work, with the base getting most of what little sanding there was, and he cut the texture directly with the blade. In the final phase he cleaned things up with a rotary tool, angle grinders, and sanders, then added a light burn for color. Cedar cuts cleanly, especially with the log laid horizontal, and he remembers the shavings flying. The detail he is proudest of is the stance. He turned the head slightly and staggered the legs, which gives a two-ton animal a sense of movement.
The Loggerodeo
The Loggerodeo bills itself as the longest-running Fourth of July celebration in Washington, and Sedro-Woolley calls itself the chainsaw carving capital of Washington and the Pacific Northwest. The festival runs a logging exposition, a chainsaw carving competition, a rodeo, a grand parade, a carnival, a street dance, and a fireworks show across the days around the Fourth of July. Its carving competition is international and invitation-only, with each carver working a cedar or redwood log into a masterpiece over the course of the event and the entries judged on the final day.
Janicki was a sponsor of this year’s event, which made the bison a natural fit. The carving drew a crowd. Several people asked about buying it, one visitor already wants one carved for next year, and it stood out as one of the first full buffalo ever carved in the competition. Most years the yard fills with bears, so a complete bison was something people do not see every day, and in a town this proud of its history the piece struck a chord.
Mark was glad to take it on. A set commission let him plan the carving in advance rather than improvise, and he called the job both challenging and fun. For someone who has spent 45 years at it, the enthusiasm has not worn off. The bison carving, grown and carved a thousand miles from where it now stands, now ties the two communities together.
To learn more about our Montana expansion, visit our FAQ page.
The 1.6 million-square-foot campus, to be built in phases over the next decade, is expected to create 1,000 new jobs within five years and more than 2,000 jobs by the time it is complete.
At Janicki, Hunter’s favorite part is the people and the company’s broad capabilities. He appreciates that Janicki has a hand in so many different markets, making it a dream place to intern for undergraduate students who are figuring out what they like and want to go into in the future. He spoke highly of his team’s support, noting how helpful and open they are when he has questions and when correcting his mistakes.
One thing that surprised him about engineering was the practical role of an engineer. The jump from the classroom to on-the-job engineering was different than he was expecting. Hunter said that it’s more about keeping processes going, making little tweaks, and solving problems rather than theoretical classroom material. He talked about how he’s developing what he calls his engineering “knack.”