Druso
Ratcliff, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When the Four-C Company built a large sawmill in nearby Ratcliff in 1900, the Eastern Texas Rail Line was built through the area for shipping. Druso was the only stop on the rail line between the Four-C mill and Lufkin, and changed from a farming to a logging boom town. Druso included a post office, cotton gin, general store, blacksmith and saloon. Children attended nearby Mt. Pisgah School. In 1920 the mill closed, the rail line was abandoned, and the town declined. Much of the land became part of the Davy Crockett National Forest in 1935. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Druso owed its brief life to timber. When the Four-C Company opened a large sawmill at nearby Ratcliff in 1900, a rail line was cut through this Houston County land, and Druso became its only stop between the mill and Lufkin. Almost overnight a farming settlement became a logging boom town with a post office, cotton gin, store, blacksmith, and saloon. When the mill closed in 1920 the rail line was abandoned and the town declined; much of the cutover land joined the Davy Crockett National Forest in 1935.
Why it matters
Druso captures the whole arc of the East Texas timber era — boom, bust, and the reforestation of exhausted land into national forest — in a single vanished town.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Four C Mill
Houston County, TX
In 1899 R.M. Keith, agent for the Central Coal & Coke Company, began buying up the region's virgin pine, and by 1902 the great "Four C" mill was sawing 300,000 board feet a day. A railroad from Lufkin and a web of tram lines fed fresh-cut timber to the mill, and the company built houses, a store, and logging camps for its workers. Rivalry with the nearby town of Ratcliff turned bitter—a 16-foot fence between them was dynamited more than once—before the company exhausted its 120,000 acres and dismantled the mill in 1920.
Kennard
Kennard, TX
Kennard was founded in 1903 by the Louisiana and Texas Lumber Company on 160 platted acres, with land agent Alexander McTavish doubling as its first postmaster. As the terminus of the Eastern Texas Railroad hauling timber toward Angelina County, the town quickly drew businesses and residents from older settlements nearby, gaining banks, stores, and lodges. Timber and farming carried it through the 1920s and 1930s, and after State Highway 7 shifted its center to Main Street, Kennard incorporated in 1969 and endures in the heart of the Davy Crockett National Forest.
Calder (Cotton) Square
Lufkin, TX
From 1882 into the early 1900s, this square was the beating heart of Lufkin — crowded with cotton buyers, horse traders, band concerts, political rallies, and switching railroad trains. It held the fire station, the town standpipe, and a 1933 memorial library named for lumberman J. H. Kurth. In 1961 the square was renamed for Louis Calder, a New York friend of the Kurth family.
Hoshall
Lufkin vicinity, TX
When the Houston East and West Texas Railroad reached Angelina County in 1882, a settlement called Bitterweed Flat grew up along the line. W. E. Hoshall bought land and timber rights in 1913 and began shipping logs from a switch there, and in 1917 Luke E. Wright built a sawmill and a company town — named Hoshall — complete with churches, schools, and a commissary, home to both Anglo and African American workers. When the mills closed, the town emptied, until by 1940 only a cemetery and a mill pond remained.