Kennard
Kennard, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The town of Kennard was founded in 1903 by the Louisiana and Texas Lumber Company and platted on 160 acres. Land agent Alexander McTavish also acted as Kennard's first postmaster. The town served as a terminus for the Eastern Texas Railroad, a line established to transport timber to Angelina County. Many businesses and citizens from earlier settlements nearby moved to Kennard when the rail line located here. Schools were built nearby as early as 1864 and served the area until Kennard School opened in 1903. Religious observances began with tent meetings conducted by traveling ministers. Permanent churches were soon organized. Early establishments included a bank, hotel, drug store, general merchandise stores, cafe, meat shop and Woodmen of the World lodge. In the 1920s and 1930s the timber industry and farming grew while other businesses came to town including a cottonseed mill, cotton gins, syrup mills, a blacksmith shop, gas stations, and a boardinghouse. In 1933 State Highway 7 was built through Main Street, shifting the town's business center there. Incorporated as a city in 1969, Kennard continues as an active and involved community located in the heart of the Davy Crockett National Forest.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Kennard is a classic East Texas lumber town, built and sustained by the railroad and the pine forests, illustrating how the timber industry conjured whole communities out of the woods.
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Related people
- · Alexander McTavish
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.
Druso
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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.
Augustus "Gus" LeGory
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