Rags to riches story for former Tahoe logger
By Carly Flandro, Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Tim Blixseth, former billionaire and founder of the Yellowstone Club, has written 250 pages of his autobiography, which is to be titled: “You couldn’t make this up.”
But he’s waiting to finish it until next year.
“It’ll be a journey about my life and some of the interesting things, the hardships, the joys, just life,” he said. “Neither you nor I know the ending yet.”
Blixseth is known for envisioning and creating the Yellowstone Club, a private club in Big Sky for the ultra-rich that features a golf course and ski area, where members have access to “private powder.”
He’s also known for his messy divorce from Edra Blixseth and the series of lawsuits he’s been involved with since.
But before coming to Montana and making millions, Blixseth grew up in a poor family in Oregon. His father was a Norwegian immigrant who Blixseth said came here for the “American dream.”
“My father’s American dream never came to fruition, I don’t think, but mine sure has,” Blixseth said in an interview with the Chronicle. “I’m thankful I was born in America.”
After learning young that he had a knack for making deals, Blixseth would eventually make millions from the timber industry.
He told CNN Money in 2008 that when he was about 13, he bought three donkeys for $25 each after seeing a classified ad for them. Then, he turned around and sold them for $75 after rebranding them as pack mules.
“So he gives me the $225, and a light bulb went on and I went, ‘Huh, okay,” he said in the CNN Money article, “Paradise Lost” by William D. Cohan.
Blixseth went on to make a series of timber deals that made him millions, and he retired in North Tahoe Lake, Nev., at the age of 40, according to the article. But he got bored and decided to tour 164,000 acres of Plum Creek Timber Co. land that was for sale in southwest Montana.