Huntington
Huntington, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settlers attempted to form a townsite in this area in the 1880s, but it was not until the arrival of the railroad lines that it attracted a thriving population. Carved from virgin forests in the heyday of the southern pine timber industry and established in 1900, Huntington was named for Collis P. Huntington, chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad. E. A. Blount and W. J. Townsend, Sr., established a townsite and sold lots at a public auction in June 1900. A post office opened in 1900 with R. D. Chapman as postmaster; the Huntington Common School District was created in 1901. Within a year, A. F. Smith built a sawmill outside town. Lumber and agriculture were the area's economic heart. A Baptist church and a Methodist Episcopal church were established in 1901 and 1902. After the Texas & New Orleans rail line from Beaumont to Dallas was built through Huntington in 1902, a permanent railroad station was erected in 1903. Huntington became a center for lumber shipping and the town soon prospered. A local telephone exchange was established in 1907. A newspaper, The Huntington Messenger, was succeeded by The Huntington Herald in 1911. Huntington also had hotels, drugstores, mercantile and grocery stores, a bank, several saloons, blacksmith shops and cotton gins. Several local physicians provided medical services. Highway 40 (later U.S. Highway 69) was completed to the county line in 1924, and area electrical service began in 1927. The town was incorporated in 1938. The McMullen Memorial Library was dedicated in 1953 as a memorial to the nineteen Huntington men who died in World War II. Huntington grew steadily throughout the remainder of the 20th century and continues to thrive at the dawn of the 21st. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Huntington is a classic East Texas railroad-and-sawmill town, embodying how rail lines and the pine-lumber boom conjured whole communities out of the forest at the turn of the twentieth century.
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Related people
- · Collis P. Huntington
- · E. A. Blount
- · W. J. Townsend, Sr.
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.
Ewing
Lufkin vicinity, TX
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.
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.