Approximately 90,000 board feet of site-harvested lumber was milled and dried locally for window frames, doors, siding, flooring, paneling, and artisan-crafted furniture. Pine trees were debarked on-site, air-dried, and used to construct innovative round-wood rafters and trusses. Nearly all of the Legacy Center’s timber skeleton was built with Leopold pines. The Leopold Foundation secured Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) chain-of-custody certification for its own wood through the Smartwood certification body. Measured by value, 78% of all wood used in the project is FSC certified.
Materials with recycled content were used throughout the project. The roof includes high levels of recycled aluminum, for example, and the concrete has flyash in place of much of the portland cement. The rainwater aqueduct and fireplace were made of stone reclaimed from an airplane hanger built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The project team also preferred local and regional materials; interior walls were plastered with local sand, clay, and straw, and 60% of all materials, by cost, were manufactured within 500 miles of the project site.
The Aldo Leopold Foundation used waste pulp from the harvested Leopold pines to print a special edition of A Sand County Almanac on archival-quality paper made through an experimental pulping process that used no chlorine or sulfur.