Established in 1922, the Fastrill logging camp eventually became the largest and longest-lasting of all the Southern Pine Lumber Company (SPLC) camps in East Texas. Located roughly eleven miles from Rusk, along the Neches River in Cherokee County, Fastrill was named for three SPLC managers: Frank Farrington, P.H. Strauss, and William Hill. The camp operated for almost 20 years, and served as the home for 600 residents.
As was the case with the vast majority of lumber camps in East Texas, Fastrill was a company town, owned and operated by SPLC. But, it was also a permanent site that differed from the mobile logging camps that sprang up across the region. A post office opened shortly after the town was founded in 1922, and soon thereafter Southern Pine opened a general store, barber shop, cleaning and pressing shop, gas station, cannery, and church. The town also had a school, which operated with funding provided by Southern Pine for a nine-month school year.
Fastrill was divided into several different residential districts for whites, African Americans, and Mexican Americans. SPLC also provided farming equipment as well as electrical power at certain times of the day. The camp employees worked six days a week, getting Sundays off to go to church and spend time with their families. A favorite recreational activity for the people of Fastrill was swimming in the nearby Neches River on Sunday afternoons.
The town had over two-hundred loggers cutting timber in the surrounding forests. These men earned a combined thirty thousand dollars a month and cut and shipped fifty million feet of logs a year. The Fastrill camp operated through the Great Depression, lasting until 1941, when it finally exhausted the available timber in the surrounding forest. That September, the local post office closed, and the town quickly shut down as well. The residents of Fastrill were sent to Diboll, where the men were given new jobs with Southern Pine. The only reminder of Fastrill that remains today are two grave markers located near the site of the town.
]]>According to local tradition, the largest sawmill west of the Mississippi River operated just 28 miles west of Lufkin during the early twentieth century.
From 1902 until 1918, the Louisiana and Texas Lumber Company ran the massive operation known as the 4-C Mill, so named for the Central Coal and Coke Company of Kansas City, which owned the lumber company. While it was never officially recognized as the largest mill west of the Mississippi, the 4-C Mill was indeed the largest sawmill in Texas. Located between Kennard and Ratcliff, the mill itself was 486 feet long with a planing mill that stretched 450 feet. The mill was so large that it required electricity to provide adequate lighting, even in the daytime. The heat of the East Texas summer presented another problem for the huge mill, one alleviated by the installation of a "cool air system" in 1909 in an attempt to keep the men and equipment cool.
The mill pond, now part of the Ratcliff Lake Recreation Area, covered more than 160 acres and could float six million feet of logs at a time. The mill itself was prolific in turning out cut pine. In 1904, it cut nearly 75 million board feet of lumber with a cutting capacity of 300,000 feet per 11-hour workday.
By 1905, the 4-C Mill had more than 1,000 employees and a company town with 500 homes, a company store, church, school and even an ice cream parlor. Soon the area grew to about 3,000 people and the nearby town of Ratcliff competed for the workers' business. Ratcliff had dry goods merchants, physicians, liveries, barbers and tailors. According to the 1910 census, two "showmen" as well as several actors and musicians provided entertainment at the local opera house.
It took the 4-C Mill just 16 years to cut and process more than 120,000 acres of forest before it was forced to close in 1918 due to lack of trees. The large mill was dismantled and likely replaced with a smaller mill to process second-growth timber. In the 1930s, the U.S. Forest Service acquired the cutover land and the Civilian Conservation Corps later developed the former mill pond into a camping and recreation area.
]]>Established around 1899, Lindsey Springs was one of the many lumber camps built in East Texas. Southern Pine Lumber Company operated Lindsey Springs to provide wood for the company's nearby mill in Diboll. The camp was constructed close to the naturally occurring Lindsey Springs to take advantage of its abundant water supply.
The camp had three residential sections and in 1900 it served as home to 110 people and 25 households. The company built small wood-framed homes for workers and their families, and a boarding house provided quarters for 11 men. A store, school, church, post office, recreational facilities and, at times, a doctor served the needs of the workers and their families.
The men of the camp had jobs more varied than simply felling timber. According to the federal census, the camp included day laborers, teamsters, log contractors, foremen, commissary clerks, carpenters, a saw filer, a tie maker, and a potter. Other residents held jobs in supporting the camp's operations, including personnel who ran the post office, cooked meals, and provided medical services.
One important aspect of the Lindsey Springs operation was the addition of a narrow gauge railroad, built in 1900 to transport logs from the camp back to the mill in Diboll. The fact that Lindsey Springs had a railroad made it something of a rarity in the piney woods of East Texas. Most other camps relied on horses and wagons to drag the lumber out of the forest and to bring in supplies. The Lindsey Springs railroad line to Diboll both served as transportation for the timber as well as a key link to the outside world.
By 1906, the forest around the camp had been cleared of all marketable timber, and the operation, including men and buildings, moved west to Trinity County to start all over again.
]]>Making use of a nearby railroad track, Thomas Temple founded the Southern Pine Lumber Company (SPLC), and with it Diboll, in 1894. Named after J.C. Diboll, who sold seven thousand acres of east Texas forest to Temple one year earlier, the town quickly grew to serve the SPLC mill.
By June of 1894, the mill was fully operational and churning out both pine and hardwood lumber on a daily basis. Soon enough, the Southern Pine mill was turning out 60,000 board feet of lumber per day and employed 600 men. Within ten years, a second mill opened as the Southern Pine operation continued to grow.
This growth spread to the town as well. Men and their families moved to Diboll to work at the mill. Southern Pines opened a large store to provide for the families and other businesses sprang up as well. These included a drug store, a post office, a grocery, a feed store and doctors' offices. In addition, Southern Pines Lumber Company built its headquarters in Diboll where the railroad station served passengers and also allowed cargo of milled wood produced in lumberyards to be quickly transported.
The Texas South-Eastern Railroad, started by Temple in 1900, served the Diboll station. The line eventually traveled 15 miles east from Diboll to connect with the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company which continued on to Houston where the lumber could then be shipped anywhere in country or the world.
Unlike many other lumber mills in Angelina County that sprang up the Texas logging bonanza and then disappeared, the Southern Pine Lumber Company and the town of Diboll prospered and are still around today. Through a program of replanting, Southern Pine was able to continue cutting on the same land, in addition to acquiring more forest space. By 1964 it had 450,000 acres on which to cut. That was the same year Southern Pine changed its name to Temple Industries. In the 1970s, Time, Inc., purchased the company and changed its name to Temple-Inland. The town of Diboll has continued to prosper around the lumber mill and today is home to more than 5,000 people.
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