How Timothy Blixseth Continues to Make Millions as a Retiree

Tim Blixseth was born to a very poor family. His father got very ill even before he was born so the family lived on welfare. The youngest of five siblings, Blixseth grew around his four older sisters.

Blixseth loved music. Early on he wanted to be a musician and songwriter. But a calling for business made him change his course. The teen-aged Blixseth worked on late shifts at grocery stores and lumber mills to make money. He enrolled in Saturday classes just to finish high school. At fifteen, he made his first successful business transaction. From an ad he saw, he bought some donkeys for $25 each and sold them for $75 each. He realized that there is much profit in selling; he started to look for other deals.

When Blixseth finished high school, he attended Umpqua Community College for only one hour. He was determined to find his career by making money and not learning about academics.

He went to Hollywood hoping to make a living out of music but ended up doing railroad and timber mill work instead. It was during this stint that he made his first large business transaction.

He got interested in a timber land which was selling for $90,000. He arranged to pay the owner a downpayment of $1,000 and pay the remainder in one month. Blixseth sold the timberland to Rosenburg Lumber Company, the company owning the surrounding timberland, for a $50,000 profit.

He continued gambling on buying and selling lands. His fortunes grew large and he became a millionaire in his twenties. At 31, lumber companies started to rig Blixseth’s sales to make him poor. Timber prices dropped by 90% while interest rates grew to as much as 22%. By the end of the year, Blixseth was almost broke.

He rebuilt himself in 1988 when he helped establish Crown Pacific. With his partner Peter Stott, Blixseth purchased hundreds of thousand of acres of land in Oregon and Idaho and in 1989, more land from Scott Paper Company. By 1990, the company’s debt was $400 million. Stott purchased Blixseth out and they distributed the profits. When Blixseth retired, he was a wealthy man.

Through his retirement, Blixseth continued to work. With the McDoughal brothers, he bought 164,000 acres of land in Montana. The McDoughals took the timberland and sold others to the government. Blixseth saw the potential of the land so he held on to a few thousand acres and turned them into a development land.

Blixseth developed the area into a private ski and golf community, the first in the world. The Yellowstone Club boasts of a championship golf course and miles of ski trails. The Yellowstone Club provides exclusive access for its members to jets, yachts and some castles in Europe.