Ewing
Lufkin vicinity, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The boom town of Ewing stood for two decades on the west bank of the Angelina River. Named for plantation owner James A. Ewing, the town was located near a rail line and virgin hardwood forests. In 1919 H. G. Bohlssen purchased a 100-acre tract of land and built a sawmill. A company town, Ewing grew rapidly and at its peak contained a post office, commissary, church/school, boarding house, and a population of 850. After many men left to serve in world War II or in war-related industries, the mill closed in December 1944. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For two decades a company sawmill town thrived on the west bank of the Angelina River, springing up after H. G. Bohlssen built a mill in 1919 to cut the surrounding virgin hardwood forests. At its height Ewing held 850 people, a commissary, post office, and a combined church and school — a self-contained East Texas timber town. When men left for World War II service and war industries, the mill shut down in 1944 and the town faded.
Why it matters
Ewing is a classic Southern timber boomtown, illustrating how the lumber industry raised and abandoned entire communities as the forests were cut and the workforce moved on.
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Related people
- · James A. Ewing
- · H. G. Bohlssen
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Huntington
Huntington, TX
Settlers eyed this spot in the 1880s, but Huntington only boomed when the railroad arrived in 1900, carving a town from the virgin pine forests at the height of the southern timber industry. Named for Southern Pacific chairman Collis P. Huntington, it filled quickly with sawmills, churches, stores, saloons, and a rail station, thriving on lumber and cotton. Its library, dedicated in 1953, memorializes nineteen local men lost in World War II.
Machinery from Early East Texas Logging Railroads
Lufkin, TX
These machines powered the vast lumber operations that reshaped the East Texas Piney Woods in the early twentieth century. Steam locomotive No. 3 and a 1906 wood-burning steam loader were bought by the Carter-Kelley Lumber Company to build and supply its sawmill at Manning, hauling logs, freight, and passengers over shifting 'portable' logging railroads whose cables could drag timber hundreds of feet to the tracks. The equipment served until the 1950s, after the company had merged with W.T. Carter & Brother.
Equipment Typical of Early Texas Logging
Lufkin, TX
This slip-tongue, high-wheel cart, built in 1950 for the lumber firm W.T. Carter & Brother, was among the last of its kind, drawn by oxen or mules to skid logs from the forest to the railroad. Replaced by tractor-powered equipment just a year later, it stands as a relic of the labor-intensive methods that defined early East Texas logging. Preserved and marked in 1972, it recalls the industry that shaped the Piney Woods economy.
Angelina & Neches River Railroad
Lufkin, TX
Chartered in 1900 and based in the sawmill town of Keltys, the Angelina and Neches River Railroad began as a humble short line hauling logs from the East Texas woods to the mills of the Angelina County Lumber Company. Its lumber-baron founders were part of a wider trend of timbermen turning to railroading, and the line grew from ten miles of narrow-gauge track and two wood-burning engines into a standard-gauge carrier reaching neighboring counties. With Southland Paper Mills' founding in 1938, it hauled pulpwood and shipped out newsprint.