Bon Wier
Bon Wier, Newton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
W. H. Stark settled here in 1836 and established a ferry and warehouse business on the Sabine River known as Stark's Landing. It served as a wharf for steamboats and a point from which large quantities of timber were rafted to sawmills downriver. Development in this area began after T. J. Trotti established a company logging town nearby in 1898. The Trotti Sawmill gained access to the railroad when the Jasper and Eastern Railroad extended track through here in 1905. The Santa Fe Townsite Company platted a town here in 1906 named Bon Wier for Kirby Lumber Company officials B. F. Bonner and R. W. Wier. T. A. Campbell's General Store, established in 1905, served as an unofficial town center for decades. Bon Wier was granted a post office in 1907. About 1912 T. M. Hughes built a sizeable sawmill which began a Hughes family lumber business which continues today. Bon Wier's Sabine River Bridge was completed in 1931. A number of mills, established along the Sabine River in or near Bon Wier, helped to sustain the town's economy. Bon Wier boasted several stores and its own school system until 1956. Although lumber activity continues in the area, Bon Wier is supported by a thriving farm, market, and commercial river economy.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bon Wier grew up where the Sabine River met the railroad. From an 1836 ferry and steamboat landing that rafted timber to downriver sawmills, the settlement boomed after a company logging town took root in 1898 and the Jasper and Eastern Railroad arrived in 1905. Platted in 1906 and named for Kirby Lumber Company officials, it thrived on a cluster of sawmills, a general store, and a school system until the mills faded in the 1950s.
Why it matters
Bon Wier tells the classic story of the East Texas 'piney woods' lumber boom, when railroads and sawmills built—and then outgrew—dozens of company towns.
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Related people
- · W. H. Stark
- · T. J. Trotti
- · T. M. Hughes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Kirbyville was born on May 1, 1895, when a town-lot auction marked the point where the Gulf, Beaumont & Kansas City Railroad—built by attorney and timber magnate John Henry Kirby with partner R. P. Allen—reached this spot. Kirby's lumber empire ran through the town, whose big Kirby Lumber Co. sawmill operated from 1903 until it burned in 1917. The community became a hub of the East Texas timber trade and, from 1926, a center of early forest-conservation work, with State Forest No. 1 nearby.
Wiergate
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A 1917 deal between Houston lumberman Robert W. Wier and the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company set off the construction of one of East Texas' largest sawmill complexes, cutting into vast stands of virgin longleaf pine. By 1922 a full company town of some 550 homes, churches, schools, a hotel, and shops had risen around the mill, its neighborhoods segregated by race and ethnicity in the manner of the era. The mill ran continuously for a quarter-century until 1942, but unlike most East Texas lumber towns, Wiergate survived its mill's closing.
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