Skip Stahmer arrived in Nevada County almost by accident 35 years ago.

“My car broke down while I was driving through the Sierra looking for a place to live,” said the Santa Cruz transplant. “I met a guy named Ted Beck at the old Humpty Dumpty restaurant when I was having breakfast. Ted was a Realtor, and the next thing I knew I had a new address.”

Today, the owner of Sierra Timberline in Grass Valley has three addresses and spends almost half the year at his home in Hawaii (he also has a home in Lake Tahoe). But he's never far from the business he started more than three decades ago.

“When I moved here I was doing auto tune-ups and service and did a tune-up on a guy's backhoe and thought it would be a better way to make a living,” Stahmer recalled. “So I bought a backhoe and went into the construction business.”

In 1978, when the cost of home heating was rising through the roof, Stahmer saw another opportunity. “The market was great for wood stoves and fireplace inserts,” he said. “They answered a lot of problems for homeowners.”

Stahmer first opened Sierra Timberline at 121 E. Main St., “across from Frank's Pizza,” he recalled. “It was an old Quonset hut with about 400 square feet of space.”

It didn't take long to outgrow the space, so Stahmer moved his business down the street, across from what was then Hockett Auto. By then, he realized the difficulty of sustaining stove sales year-around and expanded his business to include spas, outdoor furniture, barbecues and home accessories.

“It was a motorcycle building and dress shop,” he said. “It was located where Walker's is today. We took over 800 square feet and added more space behind us. We had two showrooms — the spas and patio stuff on one side and stoves on the other.”

Ten years later Stahmer joined forces with Randy Young (from Young's Carpet One) and developer Don Fultz to build the Home Center on Idaho-Maryland Road. Sierra Timberline has been there ever since.

“We had a grand opening in August 1989,” he recalled.

He met his now-wife Lin not long after he opened.

“She was selling ads for The Union and we just hit it off,” said Stahmer. “She is my partner.”

Emily Potter joined the company in 1990, and her management abilities have allowed Skip and Lin Stahmer to have a little fun.

“My parents died when they were young, and I decided I wanted to enjoy life a little more,” he said.

“I'm enjoying it a lot, but I'm having even more fun watching Emily do her thing at the store.”

As with any longtime business, there have been several ups and downs in the history of Sierra Timberline.

“We really went through a bust in 1990-91,” said Stahmer. “The economy was kind of like it is today. We had a new mortgage and a new store, and our sales were declining. But we had enough strength to make it through.”

Stahmer did that by focusing on his business and not his competitors. “I just knew where I wanted to take my company,” he said.

Once past the 1990-91 recession, Sierra Timberline cruised along until what Stahmer called the “tech wreck of 2000.”

“Things slowed again and we adjusted our business again,” he said. “You do what you have to do to survive.”

Today, Sierra Timberline continues to focus on energy efficient products. On June 1 the Internal Revenue Service started offering a $1,500 tax credit to homeowners to purchase and install a 75 percent efficient biomass-burning stove. To qualify, the stove must be used to heat the home or water heater.

“Offering in-house service and installation has been the cornerstone of the Sierra Timberline philosophy,” said Stahmer, whose only child, Rachael, lives in Southern California. “Customer confidence is key when providing products that can require installation and periodic maintenance.”

To contact Editor/Publisher Jeff Ackerman, call 477-4299 or e-mail jackerman@theunion.com.