Pineland
Pineland, Sabine County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Like many Sabine County communities, Pineland was established as a result of the arrival of the logging industry to the east Texas pine forests. A lumber camp was first recorded at this site along the route of the newly-constructed Gulf, Beaumont & Great Northern Railway in 1902. The settlement was first known as John Adams’ Mill, after a miller who had recently arrived from Alabama, but it soon came to be known as Pineland. The railroad established a passenger and freight station in Pineland, causing the settlement to rapidly grow. The lumber business continues to drive the economy of the town. A post office was opened in Pineland in 1904, and Walter Everett served as the first postmaster. By 1907 a commercial sawmill began operations in Pineland, and after three years of operation T.L.L. Temple purchased the mill to add to the Temple Lumber Company. In its early years, Pineland was populated almost exclusively by mill workers and their families. The town grew to 1,500 residents by 1925 and incorporated in 1941. The Pineland State Bank was organized in 1957, and other businesses established in Pineland during the 1960s included a hospital and a supermarket. A library and the Pineland Service Club were also formed, and Pineland Day was first held in 1957. Pineland Independent School District was formed in 1917, and operated until 1961, when it consolidated with the Bronson Schools to form the West Sabine Independent School District. The African American school in Pineland was added to the district in 1966, and the district continues to serve the community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Pineland was born from the logging boom that swept the East Texas pine forests in the early 1900s, beginning as a lumber camp along the new Gulf, Beaumont & Great Northern Railway in 1902. First called John Adams' Mill, it grew quickly once the railroad added a station, and after T.L.L. Temple bought the local sawmill it became part of the Temple Lumber Company empire. The town of mill workers grew to 1,500 by 1925 and incorporated in 1941, with timber still driving its economy.
Why it matters
Pineland is a classic company mill town of the piney woods, showing how railroads and industrial logging built—and sustained—whole communities across East Texas.
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Related people
- · T.L.L. Temple
- · John Adams
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Timpson
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Timpson was born of the railroad in 1885, laid out along the new Houston, East and West Texas narrow-gauge line and named for the official who platted it. The first passenger train arrived that August, and within a year two stores separated by a pine thicket had grown into a town of a thousand, complete with a school, churches, a newspaper, banks, and factories. It thrived as an East Texas lumber, cotton, and rail hub until state highways eroded the railroads' dominance in the 1940s.
Yellowpine Cemetery
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Yellowpine was one of many company logging towns that sprang up in the East Texas pine forests in the early 1900s. When J.C. Berryman died in 1932, the Temple Lumber Company allowed his burial atop a hill beside a fire watchtower, giving the ground its first name, Tower Hill Cemetery. In 1935 the company conveyed nearly 78,000 acres — pointedly excluding the cemetery — to the federal government to create Sabine National Forest, and the burial ground is still tended by an association that gathers each September.
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