Site of East Mayfield
Hemphill, Sabine County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The community of East Mayfield was built here in 1912 and named for Texas Railroad Commissioner Earle B. Mayfield. Formed around the large lumber mill built by Hiram Knox of the Knox Lumber Company, the town was incorporated in 1914. It had a population of about 1,200 and included homes, businesses, churches, a school, movie theater and a hospital. Timber on the company's land was depleted, and when the mill burned in 1937, it was not rebuilt. The town declined and most of its residents moved away; many of the buildings were abandoned. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
East Mayfield sprang up here in 1912 around a large sawmill built by Hiram Knox of the Knox Lumber Company, and was named for Texas Railroad Commissioner Earle B. Mayfield. Incorporated in 1914, the company town swelled to roughly 1,200 people with homes, businesses, churches, a school, a movie theater, and a hospital. But once the surrounding timber was cut out and the mill burned in 1937, there was nothing to rebuild for, and the town emptied out.
Why it matters
East Mayfield is a textbook East Texas lumber boomtown — a community that lived and died entirely on a single extractive industry and the forest that fed it.
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Related people
- · Earle B. Mayfield
- · Hiram Knox
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Starr Funeral Home
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Hemphill
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One of the original 23 counties of the Republic of Texas, Sabine County takes its name from the river that marks the Louisiana border. Long home to the Ais people of the Caddo, the area saw Spanish explorers pass through and later became a gateway for American settlers—Stephen F. Austin among them—entering Mexican Texas. Formed in 1837, the county built its economy on timber floated down the Sabine to sawmills, weathered the Great Depression and years without a bank, and revived when the vast Toledo Bend Reservoir rose in the 1960s.
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