Machinery from Early East Texas Logging Railroads
Lufkin, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Steam locomotive and tender No. 3 were bought 1908 by Carter-Kelley Lumber Co., for use in building a sawmill at Manning (about 18 mi. south); then in railroad building, logging, and passenger and freight hauling schedules. The 1906 wood-burning steam loader was also used by Carter-Kelley in building Manning Mill, and later served on "portable" logging railroads. Its cables could skid logs to tracks from distances of 300 to 500 feet. Carter-Kelley merged (1930s) with w. T. Carter & Brother. This equipment was retired in 1950s. (1972)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The surviving engines document the industrial logging railroads that stripped and rebuilt the Southern forests, a defining chapter in America's timber economy.
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Equipment Typical of Early Texas Logging
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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.
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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.
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In 1908 Daniel Webster Martin and his two sons opened a small wagon shop in Lufkin, where Martin, an inventor and designer, developed specialized wagons for the booming lumber industry. Incorporated as the Martin Wagon Company in 1910 with partner B. L. Zeagler, the business thrived until the Depression cut demand for timber products. It was later absorbed by the Lufkin Foundry and Machine Co.—renamed Lufkin Industries—and became the seed of that company's trailer division.
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