Mewshaw State Sawmill and Maydell CCC Camp
Maydelle, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In operation from 1908 to 1912, the Mewshaw State Sawmill at this site produced 35,000 board feet of lumber daily and was staffed by convict laborers form the nearby Rusk State Penitentiary. The village of Maydelle later developed on the rail line that ran between Rusk and Palestine, and in 1933 a forest conservation camp under the auspices of the Federal Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established here. The camp was closed in 1937, but the benefits of its programs are still evident in the I. D. Fairchild State Forest, now a wildlife sanctuary.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From 1908 to 1912 the Mewshaw State Sawmill here cut some 35,000 board feet of lumber a day, worked by convict laborers leased from the nearby Rusk State Penitentiary — a stark example of the convict-labor system that powered much Southern industry after Reconstruction. The village of Maydelle grew up along the rail line between Rusk and Palestine, and in 1933 a Civilian Conservation Corps camp was established here. Though the CCC camp closed in 1937, its conservation work endures in the I.D. Fairchild State Forest.
Why it matters
This one site links two defining chapters of American labor history — Southern convict leasing and the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps — showing how differently the nation put people to work on its land.
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Related events
- · Convict leasing at Rusk State Penitentiary
- · Civilian Conservation Corps
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Maydelle
Maydelle, TX
In 1906 the state-owned Texas State Railroad pushed into this area hunting timber to fuel the iron works at the Rusk penitentiary, and a branch prison called Camp Wright rose at the railhead. When Rusk native Thomas Campbell became governor, he had the line extended to Palestine, opening the region to settlers who platted the town of Maydelle in 1910—named for the governor's daughter, who sang at its dedication. Cotton, timber, and tomatoes fueled its early years before the slow rural decline of the later twentieth century.
Site of Ferguson-Ford Mill
Rusk, TX
In 1847 land speculator James Ferguson bought 1,600 acres in Cherokee County and built a mill, running it for several years before losing it to a court judgment. In 1869 Charles E. Ford, a New England Quaker, bought the mill and modernized it to grind corn, saw lumber, and repair machinery, building a small empire of 14 gins and mills across the county. His son kept the mill turning until 1917; today only the mill pond and traces of the race remain.
Texas Civil War Iron Works
Jacksonville, TX
In 1863 the Chapel Hill Manufacturing Co. built an ironworks on this site to make farm and kitchen tools the Confederacy badly needed, smelting native East Texas iron ore with Cherokee limestone and charcoal from nearby hardwoods. A crew that included 100 enslaved workers from Louisiana fed ore down the hillside into the furnaces, where molten iron was cast into molds. By the 1880s at least sixteen ironworks operated across East Texas.
Dialville
Dialville, TX
After coming to Texas in an 1866 wagon train, John J. Dial settled here and took up farming. When the Kansas and Gulf Short Line Railroad arrived in 1882 he opened a store by the tracks and deeded land for a flag-stop station, and the town platted around it was named Dialville when its post office opened in 1885. The community boomed after 1897 as a shipping point for the region's tomatoes and peaches, thriving through the early twentieth century before declining by the mid-1920s.