The state historic marker at the location of an early Texas sawmill west of downtown San Augustine discusses the first million-dollar industry in Texas: the LUMBER industry.
The marker reads as follows:
"One-fourth mile north to site of
Early Texas Sawmill
Texas' first million-dollar industry - lumbering - was born to recorded history with the building of two sawmills in 1819. One, located on Ironosa Creek in present San Augustine County, was run by pioneer Wm. Ward; the other was in Nacogdoches. In 1825 yet another mill (one-fourth mi. N) was turning out about 500 board feet of lumber a day. Wm. Quirk was miller.
In these times, trees were felled using an ax and a wedge. Then one end of each huge log was slung under a heavy cart and dragged to a stream or road.
At the mill the logs were often stored in a mill pond, to keep them from rotting, and then they were sawed by various methods. Two primitive ones -- soon abandoned -- were pit sawing (a slow, exhausting two-man process) and the muley-mill, powered by animals. A later improvement was the sash saw, which was so nearly effortless that one old-timer claimed the attendant "could read the Bible or the ' Galveston News' while the saw was cutting".
In the mid-19th century, logging served as a pivot-point for dozens of subsidiary industries; railroad building and lumbering had a strong mutual influence and the gusto of loggers' lore is still alive in the rich heritage of the Piney Woods. (1969)
Incise on base:
Dedicated to sawmill industry by the Texas Forestry Association
On the 150th anniversary of sawmilling in Texas."
From the Texas A&M University Forest Service: (
visit link)
"Early forest industry in Texas
The first settlers of East Texas primarily used the forests for personal practices. They used the trees to build houses, cleared them for agriculture or sold and harvested them to pay personal debts.
At least one sawmill was in operation as early as 1819, but until about 1850, most construction lumber had to be imported into Texas by sea at very high rates. With the advent of steam-powered sawmills and circular or band saws capable of handling large-diameter logs, many more sawmills sprang up during the next seventy years. Until 1890, the mills were small and scattered throughout East Texas, primarily situated along major rivers and streams where a source of power was available. As early as 1869, Texas ranked twenty-fourth among lumber-producing states, with an annual output of 106,897,000 board feet of lumber, representing some 8 percent of the national total.
Lumber barons first applied their trade in the Northeast and the Lake States, establishing sawmills and railroads to take advantage of the nation’s seemingly limitless virgin forests. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as these northern forests were depleted, the timber industry moved to greener pastures rather than regenerate the trees within hauling distance of oxen or mule teams were harvested.
Logging crews, known as “flatheads,” made fast work of majestic pines with use of nothing more than a double-bit ax or an eight- to ten-foot crosscut saw, aptly called a “misery whip.”
Other “swamping” and “bucking” crews limbed and cut the downed tree into sixteen- or twenty foot logs while mule skinners or oxen punchers kept their teams of animals busy hauling the logs to nearby rail landings.
High-wheeled, slip-tongue carts typically were used to elevate the front end of large logs to ease skidding
Also, eight-wheeled Martin wagons—built in Lufkin, Texas—carried logs over the soft forest floors to nearby rail tracks. Logging crews routinely faced many East Texas hazards—ticks, chiggers, mosquitoes, scorpions, snakes, razorback hogs (called “pineywoods rooters”) and in loblolly and shortleaf pine forests, thick underbrush, poisonous plants, and thorny green briar or “gotcha” vines.
With the arrival of steam power and short track railways, larger mills and supporting towns were established where a source of water was available. The first railroad to penetrate the heart of the Pineywoods was the Houston, East and West Texas Railway, a narrow-gauge (three-foot-wide) line constructed in 1876 to connect Houston with Shreveport. The nickname coined by passengers for the HE&WT Railway was “Hell Either Way Taken.” Passage of the HE&WT rail line through four small towns in Shelby County generated a popular Tex Ritter folksong “Tenaha, Timpson, Bobo, and Blair.”
In 1894, T. L. L. Temple constructed a circular sawmill at Diboll, marking the beginning of the Southern Pine Lumber Company. This pioneering lumber company evolved over the years through many purchases and mergers to become Temple-Inland Inc., with over one million acres of forestland managed by a staff of some 50 professional foresters by the turn of the twenty-first century. Similarly, John Henry Kirby chartered the Kirby Lumber Company and began acquiring approximately one million acres of timberland in East Texas and Louisiana.
In the early 1900s, Kirby Lumber Company was operating 14 sawmills throughout Southeast Texas.
Timber production in East Texas reached a peak of 2.25 billion board feet of lumber in 1907, a level yet to be exceeded. In that year, East Texas supported 673 active sawmills and was the third largest lumber producer in the nation. Assuming 16,000 board feet go into framing an average-sized house, this is enough wood to build 140,000 houses.
Some photos courtesy of Texas Forestry Museum and Stephen F. Austin State University"