Sawmill tepee burner installation (Sculpture in the Wild)

Lincoln, Montana, United States

Public art

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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The Delaney Sawmill TeePee Burner is a former sawmill waste burner that Irish sculptor Kevin O'Dwyer and volunteers moved and rebuilt in 2014 to 2015 as a walk-in artwork, with LED glow and logging photographs, in Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild at Lincoln, Montana.

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Sawmill tepee burner installation (Sculpture in the Wild)

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Approximate location · 46.957° N, 112.679° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A sawmill waste burner that once glowed day and night over the Blackfoot Valley now stands in a sculpture park in Lincoln, Montana, as an artwork, a tribute to the timber industry and a summer concert hall.

The Delaney & Sons sawmill at Landers Fork was the largest and most modern in the Upper Blackfoot Valley, according to artist Kevin O'Dwyer. It employed more than 100 men in the summer of 1965 and closed in 1971, leaving the teepee burner, where wood waste was burned, standing. Lewis and Clark County's blog describes a structure framed with iron and steel and skinned with sheet metal that weighs 20,000 pounds, stands 90 feet tall and is 45 feet across.

O'Dwyer, an Irish metalsmith and sculptor, proposed moving it into Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild, the sculpture park established in September 2014. The burner was dismantled and moved that month, and community members rebuilt its base. The two upper sections were hoisted the following April, and in June LED lighting was added to recreate the orange glow that residents remembered, for two to three hours each night. In September 2015 black-and-white photographs of the valley's logging industry, printed on steel, were hung around the interior, whose diameter is 45 feet.

Big Sky Journal described dozens of community members arriving with heavy equipment to help take it apart and reassemble it, and heard a musician playing inside, noting the acoustics were surprisingly good. The project, titled Montana Memory, received the Lewis and Clark County Heritage Tourism Council's Historic Preservation Award in 2019.

Visit Helena listed a free summer series inside the burner on Saturdays after the Fourth of July through Labor Day in 2026, and Montana Public Radio reported a series of Saturday concerts there in 2024. The park is at 1500 MT-200, on Montana Highway 200 in Lincoln. Visit Helena also mentions trails and artworks to walk, so allow time to explore the wider park.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

A walk-in sculpture with photographs on its interior walls. Visit Helena listed a free Saturday series inside it for summer 2026; check the park's calendar for future seasons. The park also has walking trails and other sculptures.

ACCESS

In Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild, 1500 MT-200, Lincoln, Montana, beside Montana Highway 200. Visit Helena describes walking the park's trails and art; check the park's calendar for concert dates.

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