Our Story
Sam and I have so many fond memories of the early years of Satterwhite Log Homes. We were two young kids building a business and a future together.Travonda Satterwhite
Our History
Sam Satterwhite left college in 1973, lacking a semester of graduating, to start his own business. With plans to use his real estate broker’s license to sell farm and ranch properties, he decided to first build his own home which was a brick A-frame, quite different for conservative East Texas. A friend of his in the timber business stopped by one day and asked him, “If you’d build something as different as an A-frame, how about building me a log home?”
Sam began building that first log home near Henderson, Texas in late 1974. From the very beginning, Travonda Nicholas was at Sam’s side, first running the office of his fledgling company, but very quickly becoming his partner in all things, Travonda Satterwhite.
House logs for that first “Log Cabin” were milled from dead-standing Engelmann Spruce from Colorado. Using dry wood made sense then and it still does!
Sam and Travonda married in the fall of 1976 and a lifelong partnership began. Satterwhite Log Homes moved from the A-frame into a small 14 x20 log cabin. Using an old teacher’s desk, a typewriter from Travonda’s parent’s home, and an old Monroe adding machine purchased from a used office equipment store, an office was established. Travonda manned the office during the day while Sam worked building log homes. Appointments with customers were held during the evening hours. With no formal training, Travonda drew the early floor plans. Sam would do the estimating at night.
Business flourished, and within 6 months Sam was that mill’s best customer. Soon their capacity was not enough, so Satterwhite started purchasing from other mills. By 1978, Satterwhite was buying timbers, or “cants,” all over the West and having them custom planed.
Beginning in 1983 Satterwhite began buying dead-standing timber from the Forest Service and sawing and planing it themselves. That first sawmill operation was in Gypsum, Colorado. In 1997 that sawmill was moved to its present location in Gunnison, Utah.
As business grew, Longview became headquarters, and offices moved into a new building, always expanding. The Satterwhites’ homes over the years were used as models for the company until the kids Christi, Nick, and Lindsey realized that normal people didn’t have strangers wandering through their homes six days a week.
Today
Today Satterwhite has two models near the headquarters, plus showrooms there. At Longview, there is a log home lumberyard; specialty shop for mantels, tables, and custom cutting; warehouses, mill, and distribution. The Longview headquarters building is like Johnny Cash’s Cadillac, a sprawling 16,000 square feet. Built in 1982, ’85, ’87, and 2000!
Our Utah facility is a 100+ acre log yard mill. warehouses, and office facility, built from 1997 to 2010. The office provides full service for the Western US, and features multiple log designs. Any of our products can be purchased there.
In 2006, we set up an office in the Blue Ridge Mountains at Ellijay, Georgia. The combination office and model home has been complimented many times as being the “most beautiful log model home in the Eastern United States” and it serves that part of the country. We also have a warehouse there, with delivery capabilities.
A Family Company
Built in 2016, Satterwhite has a sawmill facility in Chama, New Mexico. It was built to saw rough lumber and timbers from dead-standing Spruce we harvest in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Plans are to build a log office there.
For all these years, we have unwaveringly believed that dead-standing timber is the best building material for log homes, and we’ve had wonderful people to do the work that allowed us to grow, prosper, and build our reputation.
Our folks come to work for a livelihood, not just a job. Many have retired after decades, and many current employees have been a critical part of the company 20, 30, even 40 years.
Travonda continues to lead Satterwhite, and the entire family is involved. We are a family business, but to us, family is not just the Satterwhites, but everybody in our company family!
