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Donalsonville News
Thursday, September 24, 2015
www.donalsonvillenews.com
Steve and Stephanie Cross
stand on the deck of the
San Salvador replica
Cross family makes a cross-country
trip to help launch a historical treasure
Iron City’s Steve Cross
is an artist, a craftsman
and a man dedicated
to creating a lasting
impression with every
project he undertakes.
He is always working on something big
and has yet again put
his stamp and special
talents to work on one
of the biggest projects,
literally, of his life.
The Maritime Museum
of San Diego constructed a
full-sized, fully functional,
and historically accurate
replica of Juan Rodriguez
Cabrillo’s flagship, San Salvador. Cross, owner and
operator of Cross Sawmill,
a few miles out of Iron City,
supplied specialty Southern
live oak lumber for the big
project.
Earlier
this
month
an official ceremony to
launch the historic rep-
lica was held at the San
Diego Harbor. Cross, his
wife Stephanie and their
three children, Stephen
(12), Julia (10) and Oliver
(8) drove cross country to
attend.
The San Salvador, a historic reproduction of the
Spanish ship that first came
to the Americas in 1542 at
what is now San Diego, will
also go to sea, giving patrons
and tourists of the maritime
museum a chance to experience sailing on a Spanish
galleon. The original San
Salvador was the first European vessel to reach the
west coast of what is now
the United States.
The San Salvador will
remain on exhibit as part of
the Museum’s fleet of historic and replica ships and will
travel along the California
coast as an ambassador for
San Diego.
Ray Ashley, President/
CEO of the San Diego Maritime Museum said, “All
American maritime historians know that for much
of our history our forests
were not only an economic
resource but also a critical
strategic resource, equal to
reserves of oil and natural
gas in today’s world. One
species in particular, Southern live oak, was a key factor
in our national story because
it was from the great stands
of live oak that the timbers of American warships
were fashioned, including
those first six frigates that
formed the backbone of the
early US Navy. Until we ran
across Steve in our search
for suitable material to
build the frames of the galleon San Salvador, most of
us involved in traditional/
historic ship construction
and repair had assumed all
or nearly all of our live oak
was consumed more than a
century ago. When we met
Steve, not only did we enlist
an enthusiastic and dependable partner in our project,
and a provider of beautiful material from which to
build our ship, but through
his research and efforts,
learned that this species of
hardwood which had such
an influence on our history
is still today a vast national
resource. The material Steve
provides and promotes not
only made history in centuries past, its quality and
abundance is now a factor in
helping us to preserve that
history. Steve may be the last
“live oaker” in a long line
which extends back to the
beginnings of America, but
he is the most able spokesman for them all. “
Cross supplied the majority of the wood for the
frames and “futtocks,” the
curved ribs in the frame,
and shipped semi-truck
loads of debarked slabs of
the straight grain lumber
to San Diego, where it was
cut to shape and assembled
with trunnels (wooden nails
or dowels). Each semi-trailer load weighed approximately 50,000 pounds. At
his sawmill in Iron City, in a
massive endeavor, he milled
over 150 tons of live oak for
the construction of the ship.
In addition to the live
oak supplied by Cross,
wood from around the
world was used to plank
the hull and build the interior. Cross has also supplied thousands of boardfeet of lumber for building
and restoration projects on
Martha’s Vineyard, headed
up by the South Mountain
Corporation, as well as the
Prince Murat house reconstruction in Tallahassee, the
Jimmy Carter headquarters
in Plains, and other historic
renovation projects in the
southeastern United States.
The Martha’s Vineyard
projects required the use
of Southeastern cypress recovered from river beds, in
keeping with the company’s
policy of reusing salvaged
woods for building purposes.
For those who wonder
how a small sawmill in a
small town in southwest
Georgia was ever discovered by two major entities
on opposite coasts of the
United States, Cross gives
credit to his Internet website and his affiliation with
Advantage Trim and Lumber Company, while Dysart
said his third party contacts
were responsible for helping
Cross and South Mountain
Corporation find each other. Five generations of the
Cross family have been in
the powered sawmill business for over 100 years, with
Steve running his own mill
since the 1970s.
He jokes that if you ask
some of the people in Iron
City and around Seminole
County about the Cross
Sawmill they might not
know anything about it,
yet in his specialized niche
market, Steve Cross is a
well-known, talented artistan, making a really big impact on rebuilding history.