Emporia
Diboll, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Emporia Lumber Company co-owners S. F. Carter and M. T. Jones purchased over 5,000 acres of land in south Angelina County and established a company town named Emporia in 1893. The town included sawmill facilities, a railroad spur to ship lumber, logging camps, company houses, schools, churches, stores and a cemetery. In 1906 the sawmill burned and was not rebuilt. Although the company ceased operations, people continued to live in Emporia. Eventually the town was absorbed within the city of Diboll. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1893 the Emporia Lumber Company's owners S.F. Carter and M.T. Jones bought more than 5,000 acres in south Angelina County and built a company town around a sawmill, complete with a railroad spur, logging camps, company houses, schools, churches, stores, and a cemetery. When the mill burned in 1906 it was never rebuilt, yet residents lingered even as the company folded. In time the town was swallowed by the growing city of Diboll.
Why it matters
Emporia's brief life and slow disappearance capture the boom-and-bust world of the East Texas lumber company town, an era that built and then abandoned whole communities.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · S.F. Carter
- · M.T. Jones
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lindsey Springs Logging Camp
Lufkin vicinity, TX
In 1899 the Southern Pine Lumber Company opened its first logging camp beside Lindsey Springs, whose reliable water made the site viable. Within a year the camp housed about 110 people and had its own store, school, and church, with a narrow-gauge railroad hauling logs to the mill at Diboll. By 1906 the marketable timber was cut out and the camp moved on — the boom-and-bust rhythm of the East Texas lumber industry in miniature.
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.
City of Lufkin
Lufkin, TX
Founded in 1882 and named for E. P. Lufkin, the railroad surveyor whose crew charted the line through town, this East Texas settlement quickly became a booming sawmill community amid the Piney Woods. It won the county seat of Angelina County in 1892 and grew into a regional hub of manufacturing and commerce. Its mills and foundries turned out paper, wood products, oilfield pumps, trailers, and castings.
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.