PARK FALLS, Wis. -- Tom Ratzlaff is mayor of a small town reeling from the closure of its more than 100-year-old paper mill. And he's among the 300 workers who lost a good-paying job -- his livelihood for nearly three decades.

"Some days, I just wake up and I don't know what I am going to do, but you've just got to keep going," said Ratzlaff, 45. "You can only cry in your beer for so long."

What Park Falls faces is not new among cities with strong links to an industry that has made Wisconsin the No. 1 paper producer in the United States for decades. The part-time mayor has plenty of company at the unemployment line.
New competition from foreign paper makers, a recession at the turn of the century and new technology -- such as e-mail and online advertising that have dampened demand for traditional papers -- have hurt an overbuilt industry all over the United States, said John Mechem, a spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Association in Washington, D.C.

Nationally, 95 paper mills have closed at a cost of 123,000 jobs since 2000, he said.

Since the late 1990s, Wisconsin has lost more than 17,000 jobs, or 30 percent of the work force, at paper mills, pulp mills and related operations, and five mills have either closed or are closing, according to the Wisconsin Paper Council, an industry group representing 25 paper companies.

Patrick Schillinger, president of the council, said more job cutting is likely, and the jobs -- some of the highest-paying manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin -- are gone forever.

Recent developments highlight a trend that Schillinger said started at least seven years ago:

SMART Papers of Hamilton, Ohio, closed the Park Falls mill barely a year after buying it from Toronto-based Fraser Papers.

Glatfelter Co. has announced plans to close a Neenah plant that makes specialty papers by June 30, eliminating 200 jobs.

Riverside Paper Corp. has said it will close its mill in Appleton, founded in 1893, eliminating about 100 jobs making specialty papers.

According to Schillinger, paper- and cardboard-making jobs in Wisconsin peaked at 54,300 in July 1999 before plunging to 36,800 in January.

The job losses, in part, occurred as a once mostly regional industry faced new competition and lower prices from paper makers in China and South America, industry experts say.

For Park Falls -- a city of 2,800 carved out of a forest in northern Wisconsin and nicknamed the ruffed grouse capital of the world -- the mill's sale to SMART Paper a year ago rekindled hopes about the factory's future.

The sprawling mill sits just a block off the city's main street, dominating the downtown landscape along the Flambeau River. A yard is piled with 120,000 cords of logs -- a mountain of wood waiting to be made into paper.

SMART Paper filed for bankruptcy in shutting down the mill, citing high fuel costs and "rapid deterioration" of market conditions.