Lumber Yard
“Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials.”
A lumber yard is a sacred place. It is a place where wood is valued in both how it is sourced and stored. The quality and care, for both the wood and the customers is greater at a local lumber yard. A lumber yard is a business built on trust with wood mills, building contractors, and homeowners.
Strait Lumber Co. has been family owned & operated since 1936. It holds the title of Aurora's oldest continually operating family business. Seth Strait moved his family from South Dakota to Colorado in the late 1929. He had family operating a small mill in Colorado and reliable work was hard to find during the Great Depression. By 1932, he owned and operated a sawmill in Deckers, milling timbers for the railroad and mining industry. He stored additional lumber on a small parcel of land near Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Aurora. Strait traded two loads of lumber and $500 for a square block of land to set up a lumber yard and small hardware store in 1936. The business quickly grew. He moved his family from Deckers to Aurora in 1938 to manage the store.
Strait had three sons, two of which would go away to serve in World War II. When they returned to Aurora the sons would expand the family business. In 1947, Strait Lumber moved to its current location on East Colfax. By the 1960’s it had grown to be one of the city’s largest lumber and hardware suppliers. The growth of the city brought new challenges to Strait Lumber. Local lumber yards and family-owned hardware stores had to evolve to compete with large, national hardware store chains. In 1987 Mark Strait, the grandson of founder Seth Strait, became the third generation to own the family business.
Strait Lumber continues today as a family-owned and operated business that believes in the importance of relationships with their customers and their community. The stability and longevity of Strait Lumber can be attributed to the generational dedication to customer service and quality products. A local lumber yard is not only place where wood is stored, but a place where those who work know what tools and materials are required to build a dream. A lumber yard is a sacred place.
