Started in 1907 by Elers Koch, then supervisor of the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests, Savenac Nursery was named for the one time owner of the land, a German settler named Savennach. Savennach abandoned the homestead, for reasons unknown, and Koch saw it as an excellent location for a tree nursery, on a major road with railroads nearby, with ample flat land and access to water for irrigation.
In 1910 the nursery, was destroyed by the
The Great Fire of 1910, which burned not only the nursery, but many other towns in Idaho and Montana, also claiming a total of 85 lives, 78 of them firefighters unable to escape the fast moving fire. Rebuilding began that winter, with the nursery being completely rebuilt and repopulated with the structures and buildings necessary for its operation. In 1932 a complete renovation of the nursery began, seeing the replacement of all existing buildings and a great many other structures. All of this construction took place using CCC labor, taking place between 1932 and 1948.
As best we can tell, the preserved machinery on display at the front of the nursery could easily all be from the very beginning of the nursery in 1907-08. This, the ground ripper, is very heavily built and would have required a sizeable tractor to pull it. As can be seen from the rear, one to five ripper teeth could be mounted on the machine. The machine was raised and lowered by means of a crank which was also part of the axle. Clutches or a ratchet mechanism would connect the crank to the axle, using ground power to raise the ripper out of the ground. The throw of the crank suggests that ripping as deep as about two feet was possible.
A single ripper is mounted on the machine at present in the centre position. This could well be how the machine was generally used, ripping the ground to a depth of two feet or more in preparation for planting seedlings. These seedlings would be planted on a grid of as much as 10 X 10 feet and allowed to grow to maturity as part of the nursery's research. Large planting beds where this ripper may have been used are to be found well north of the main nursery site, by the road leading to the dam. A sample ripper tooth stands beside the ripper.
Other seedlings, intended to be used for reforestation, wouldn't need to be replanted here, but would be shipped to the site of the reforestation project and replanted there.