Southland Paper Mills, Inc.
Lufkin, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First plant to turn southern pines into newsprint. Mill here revolutionized paper industry in the southern United States. Seeking local paper rather than foreign supplies, Southland was incorporated in 1938 and began operations, 1940. Its mills made possible use of southern pine (earlier rejected for newsprint because of its high resin content). In 1942, additional facilities were built to supply bleached pulp. Success of this pioneer complex gave Texas an avenue for aiding world in supply of vital paper. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Incorporated in 1938 and running by 1940, Southland Paper Mills was the first plant to turn southern pine into newsprint — a wood long rejected as too resin-rich for the job. The Lufkin complex cracked that problem, added bleached-pulp capacity in 1942, and transformed the paper industry across the South.
Why it matters
By unlocking the region's abundant pine forests for papermaking, Southland turned a discarded resource into a major Southern industry and reshaped the economy of East Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lufkin Telephone Exchange
Lufkin, TX
In 1898 two Lufkin friends, Dr. Alexander Denman and Judge Edwin Mantooth, strung a telephone wire between their offices—and the novelty proved so popular they soon formed the Lufkin Telephone Exchange with partner Eli Wiener. Long-distance service followed in 1908, and the company grew alongside the technology itself, eventually absorbing exchanges across much of East Texas before its 1985 reorganization.
KRBA-AM Radio Station
Lufkin, TX
Commercial radio reached Angelina County in 1938, when the Redland Broadcasting Association won the area's first license and station manager Darrell Yates built and launched KRBA-AM from a Lufkin drugstore. Broadcasting news, drama, music, sermons, and Lufkin Panther football, the station adapted with the times — hiring women during World War II, previewing rock-and-roll, and introducing African American and Spanish-language programming in the 1950s and 1960s. It broadcasts still, a fixture of East Texas life into the 21st century.
Lufkin Daily News
Lufkin, TX
First noted in 1907 as a "right newsy little sheet," the Lufkin Daily News grew from a Chicago transplant's one-man venture into a daily paper that mechanized typesetting in 1915 with a Mergenthaler Linotype. In 1940 it printed a record 288-page edition on the first commercially produced southern-pine newsprint in the world, made at nearby Southland Paper Mills. The paper computerized in 1974 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service in 1977.
Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company
Lufkin, TX
Chartered in 1902 as a repair shop and parts house for the East Texas sawmills, the Lufkin Foundry & Machine Company was founded by J.H. Kurth, the Kavanaughs, Eli Wiener, and Simon Henderson. Under W.C. Trout the firm moved into the booming oil industry and built the first enclosed geared pumping unit; Trout's 1926 patent for a counterbalanced crank made the company's name known worldwide. By 1939 it had added industrial gears and truck trailers to its lines.