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,…

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…

Located at 515 Rusk Street in downtown Houston, the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse was named after U.S. Representative Robert R. Casey. The United States District Court for Southern Texas resides in the Casey building, and it serves a broad region of…

The United States Post Office in Rusk, Texas, features a Bernard Baruch Zakheim mural titled "Agriculture and Industry at Rusk." Completed in 1939, Zakheim's powerful mural illustrates Rusk's rough agrarian and industrial history from multiple…

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…

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…

Sitting on the south side of the Angelina National Forest, the Aldridge Sawmill stands as a reminder of a once prosperous period in the history of East Texas. In operation from 1905 to 1923, the Aldridge mill at one time churned out 125,000 board…

In 1863, Dr. W.W. Manning, a native of Monroe, Louisiana, constructed a small sawmill in Angelina County close to the Neches River. The enterprise proved at least moderately successful, and Manning expanded his business in 1885, adding one of the…

Between 1880 and 1930 the East Texas lumber industry was at its peak, transforming the piney woods landscape of East Texas. One of the few surviving short-line railroads from this period is the Texas South-Eastern Railroad (TSER), which served…