ELSIE – The fire-ravaged landmark Oney’s Restaurant and Lounge has been rebuilt.

The restaurant reopened for business July 1 and is holding a grand opening to celebrate what would have been Lenore “Oney” Camberg’s 101st birthday July 24-26 with live music and an outdoor barbecue.

Owner Steve Pitkin said he has been working from dawn to dusk for the past month to pull the place together, and the work has paid off.

“It’s been absolutely great,” he said. “A lot of people are coming by to say hi.”

If you’ve driven by the place on Highway 26 and wondered what happened to the head and shoulders of Paul Bunyan on the sign outside, don’t worry. Pitkin said he’s just getting some touch-up work.

Last May someone apparently set fire to the iconic eatery, which Camberg started in 1938 to serve local loggers. The entire building except the chimney burned to the ground, leaving a lonely Paul Bunyan sign standing beside the highway. Investigators determined the fire was arson, but they never found the culprit.

Pitkin said some artifacts that wouldn’t have burned in the fire were suspiciously missing from the rubble.

“We never found one single ax, and we had 25 of them hanging on the walls,” he said. They didn’t burn up in the fire; we knew that for sure. Our thought was that somebody broke in and stole artifacts and covered it up. But they haven’t found anybody to point a finger at.”

Pitkin knew without a doubt he would rebuild after the fire.

“This is a historic landmark for the Clatsop County area,” he said. “It’s the hub of our community out here. It’s been a stop for Oregon loggers for the last 70 years, and we want to continue that tradition.”

Insurance covered most of the cost of rebuilding – about $700,000 of an estimated $850,000 or $900,000 in total cost, Pitkin estimates.

But some things are harder to replace than others. An engraved bronze plaque was missing from Oney’s memorial rock at the site.

“That’s one thing we’d really love to have back,” he said.

The new restaurant was built next to where the old one once stood. One relic of the former restaurant that survived is the handle on the front door: a metal ax planted halfway into the wood plank.

Pitkin envisions a memorial at the gravesite of the old restaurant, beside the old chimney.

Camberg is said to have started making lunches for loggers in the 1920s, years before she officially opened the Elsie restaurant. Over time, loggers started coming back to her for dinner, and soon she was serving three meals a day plus beer and whiskey.

Now, Pitkin said Oney’s Restaurant serves “the dichotomy of America: people who work out in the dirt, in the timber and the forest and executives from big companies going to the coast for the weekend.”

Camberg died at the age of 94 in 2003. Her birthday is July 23.