In 1892 near Cedar Ridge, Idaho, 21-year-old cowgirl Nellie Ward discovers that the sawmill is throwing away mountains of sawdust and wood shavings just as winter firewood becomes scarce. By compressing the waste into dense fuel bricks, she creates a cleaner, easier-to-store source of heat that quickly becomes popular with ranches, hotels, workshops, and railroad depots. What everyone else saw as useless scraps becomes Cedar Ridge Fuel Works, one of the busiest winter businesses in the region.