Aldridge Sawmill

Settlers coming into East Texas in the early 1800s encountered vast forests—pines and hardwoods extending for miles in a verdant swath broken only by murky, meandering rivers. Caddo Indians had lived in these woodlands for thousands of years, felling trees for their tall, beehive-shaped houses and temples and constructing villages along the Red River, Neches and Sabine. But their impact, and that of the Anglo farmers who followed them, was light, and the forests maintained their dominance on the land.

Commercial logging was to alter that balance, and in the process bring tremendous changes in the economic, social, political, and environmental composition of the region. Evolving from small water-powered mills to massive sawmill complexes and factory towns, the logging business became the primary focus of activity in the region and lumber the lifeblood for various support industries, from ports, railroads, equipment suppliers, and mercantile companies to family farms that supplied produce to the growing sawmill communities.

Lumber Shortage Amid Forests of Plenty

On March 1, 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico and, through armed revolution, won its independence on May 12, 1836. As a fledgling nation, Texas was without any financial structure. In order to develop a treasury, Texas sold its only commodity—land. This process stimulated land entrepreneurs, or speculators, to treat land as cash. Frequently a land grant was sold several times prior to actual survey. Some people began to acquire enormous landholdings, a factor that attracted corporate investment in large sawmill operations several decades later.

The first sawmill identified with a specific individual is an 1829 mill on Carrizo Creek in Nacogdoches County, built by entrepreneur and land speculator Peter Ellis Bean. Bean exemplifies the nature of the American frontiersmen who settled Texas. He first entered Texas in 1801, hunting horses and trading with Indians along the Brazos River, at a time when it was still under Spanish rule. He built a water-powered, sawmill (sash saw) and gristmill and also ran a lumberyard in Nacogdoches. Attracted by that success, other logging entrepreneurs began operations in Texas.

In the decades before the Civil War, however, transportation was a continual problem. Due to the natural obstacles of rivers and muddy soils, few overland roads were suitable for travel at all times, particularly in East Texas. Rivers, which formed the backbone of commerce in the United States, were erratic in water flow and became clogged with logs, snags, and silt. Sawmill owners in the East Texas interior were forced to settle for local trade combining a grist mill and/or general merchandise store, while coastal lumbermen had developed a considerable export trade worldwide.

The centers of commerce developed along the Gulf Coast, where marine shipping could interface with riverine steamboats and overland wagon haulers. Logging rafts, keelboats, and later steamboats operated only during optimal river flow conditions. Due to this lack of transportation, the vast pine forests of East Texas could not be fully exploited in a profitable manner. Consequently, despite the abundance of standing timber, there was a chronic shortage of lumber within Texas.

The Bonanza Period: 1876-1917

The Civil War halted settlement and economic growth in East Texas. Investment in transportation began again after the war, particularly due to the liberal policies of the State, which granted land to rail companies for each mile of track they lay. By 1880, railroad development had reached a point where main lines connected most of East Texas.

At this time a new innovation, the band saw, also arrived, enabling safer and more efficient milling operations. Concurrently, the forests of the Great Lakes were being cut out, and investment capitalists were turning their attention to the forests of the south, and Texas in particular. This marked the beginnings of an enormous period of growth for Texas logging and the rise of the big mills. Again, land speculators combed through the courthouses and land districts of East Texas, acquiring lands that were unclaimed or available for back taxes and putting together some of the largest tracts to date in Texas.

In "Sawdust Empire," Robert S. Maxwell and Robert D. Baker describe this period, ranging roughly from 1876-1917, as the "Bonanza Period" of the logging industry in East Texas. It was during this period that fortunes (both personal and corporate) were made. The larger mills that had been established earlier in the period grew larger and more powerful, while many of the smaller mills as well as some of the large mills that had come too late into the region, suffered from a lack of access to timber and were forced out.

The Bonanza Period of industrial logging would never have occurred were it not for the introduction of the railroad to the forests of East Texas in the 1880's. Prior to that time, transporting cut timber to the mills was a slow, tedious endeavor dependent upon draft animals, good weather, and good fortune. Initially logging was performed close to rivers, where water was used to ship the cut and seasoned logs to the mill. Staging areas were located at central areas. The logger cut the trees with an ax, using a saw to cut the tree to lengths. The trees were dragged by oxen or mule to the river bank where they were stacked awaiting high water. Once in the water the logs were joined into rafts, and floated to coastal mills.

The advent of steam-powered, small-gauge trains and loaders made it possible to transport ever larger loads of logs to the mills. Once the railroad was extended into the interior, mills were constructed closer to the remaining virgin stands. Corporations built much larger mills along rail spurs in the remaining uncut areas of East Texas.

In the Woods

Trees were selected, felled, scaled, and cut to transportable size by timber crews , usually 40 to 60 men supervised by a woods boss, known also as the "bull of the woods." Conditions were often grueling, with workers putting in 10-hour days on back-breaking tasks in the forests, often many miles from the mill. Many experienced loggers were expert at their trade, able to notch, saw, and fell a tree with precision. In addition to cutting tasks, forest workers transported logs, worked on roads, and set miles of ties for rail tracks.

By 1910 there were more than 600 sawmills in Texas, although probably no more than 100 could be considered large mills—those with a capacity of 80,000-100,000 board feet. In many areas, the sawmill represented the only source of cash, and two or three generations often worked in turn at the mill. The mill created work where none had been available, and the owners had to provide housing, usually deducted from pay.

In terms of operations, one of the most important features of the mill was the mill pond. It covered several acres and could hold up to four million board feet of logs. The water provided ease of loading and unloading, preserved the logs from bark beetle attacks, and washed dirt and soil off the logs, thus reducing wear on the saws. From the pond, the logs were moved onto a conveyor chain, and were hauled to the log deck. If no pond was available, rail tracks were placed as a siding as close to the saws as possible.

A typical large sawmill was a complex of two or three story buildings divided according to each step of the lumber-making operation. The saw machinery usually was located on the second floor, the saw filer, who kept the saws sharpened, on the third floor. On the second floor, the scaler measured and sized the log, using the cutoff saw to section the long timber into efficient cutting lengths. Moved via a log kicker, logs were then sent to bandsaws, where the sawyer cut the log into boards. Once trimmed, the lumber was transported into the yard to dry and cure before it was finally sent to the planer for final processing.

With the growth and expansion of mills came company towns, the small communities which were to dominate the landscape and economy of East Texas. The company town typically was isolated, placed near the critical resources—large tracts of timber. As trees were cut down and forests used up, logging operations moved into more-remote areas, and more towns built. It was not uncommon for towns of a thousand people or more to spring up in a year's time.

Mill towns were composed of segregated groups of houses for black and white workers and their families, a general store or commissary, a hotel/boarding house, company offices, churches, schools, and stores. In most towns, water was pumped from a well for two or more houses; indoor plumbing and electricity became available in some areas in the late 1920s. Most homes had gardens and a few chickens kept in pens or ranging free in the yards. Wood cook stoves and potbellied stoves provided heating and served for food preparation.

Mill towns varied as to amenities and comforts. While Fostoria, a milltown owned by the Foster Lumber Company of Kansas was described as clean, well-kept, and self-sustaining, Kirbyville, owned by the Kirby Lumber Company, was characterized by a visiting Harper's Weekly journalist as "gray dingy boxes arranged row by row in the horror of dull uniformity that is the curse of most industrial communities." Generally, the larger and more influential mill owners, such as Lutcher and Moore, T.L.L. Temple, the Thompson Brothers, and Carter-Kelly companies, were responsible for the more well developed and advanced mill towns, with electrical power and running water available to most, if not all, mill town residents.

In 1917, Robert W. Wier and the Lutcher and Moore heirs combined resources to construct the last large mill at the town of Wiergate, with timberlands covering about 86,000 acres in Newton, Jasper, and Sabine counties. The Wiergate Lumber Company logged what was perhaps the last great Texas stand of longleaf pine.

By 1920, many of the lands acquired by the big mills had been cut out, leaving tangled thickets of second growth hardwoods, mixed with a few pine seedlings. Foresters and conservationists complained that the practice of free-range husbandry eliminated pine regeneration and promoted the growth of hardwood, thereby eliminating the potential for sustained yield logging. Some companies moved to the West Coast, where large tracts of lands and forest were available to sustain the cut-and-run method of logging. Others went bankrupt, letting their lands fall into receivership.

Because Texas had retained its public lands when it became a state in 1845, the federal government lacked national parks and forests in the state. In May 1933, the Texas legislature passed a bill, supported by both lumbermen and conservation groups that authorized the U.S. Forest Service to appraise and purchase lands. The federal government purchased more than 90% of the lands that were to comprise the National Forests in Texas from 11 lumber companies.

Beginning in 1898, the Forestry Bureau of the U.S. Department of Agriculture began an agreement program with Texas lumber companies and private individuals to develop working plans to restore the forests and develop a sustained yield strategy. From the 1930's to the present, the U.S. Forest Service has replenished the East Texas forest reserves and developed effective sustained yield practices, while conserving soil, water, and other natural resources.

The cultural, social and economic structures for modern East Texas were shaped and molded by the early 20th century logging industry. Mill towns have become cities; logging railroads have become multi-lane highways; and family-owned mills have become multi-national corporations, all in the last 100 years. There are few, if any, facets of modern East Texas that have not been directly affected, or influenced, by the boom-bust cycles of the early 20th century logging industry.

Tracking Historic Sites in the Texas National Forests

The remains of the early 20th-century logging industry which can be found in the four National Forests in Texas represent the full range of logging industry-related sites and features. Major mills and mill towns, such as Aldridge and 4-C, represent the highest level of development, with multiple saws, large residential areas, commissaries, hotels, schools, churches, and other conveniences one would expect in a small community. Smaller front camps, such as Bannister, Brittain, Wilburn and Ragtown, while smaller and only temporarily occupied, contain equally complex features as the larger mill towns. These essentially mobile encampments were laid out in a precise pattern with primary and intersecting secondary thoroughfares lined by tents or other types of temporary housing.

In 1993, the Texas Forestry Museum began development of a database of historic sawmills in the twelve county area defined as the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. The Museum was joined in this development by the T.L.L. Temple Archives, the Sam Houston Regional Library, the USDA Forest Service and the School of Forestry at Stephen F. Austin State University. By the end of 1994, over 5,500 sawmills and logging industry related sites, located in forty counties from the Red River to the Gulf Coast in the eastern third of Texas, were listed on the database. By the end of 1995, a linked database of Steam Logging Rail Roads had been also been developed. In 1998, the sawmill database was made available to the general public through the Texas Historic Sites Atlas Project, Texas Historic Commission and Texas Archeological Research Laboratory.