Wiergate
Wiergate, Newton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A deal, struck in 1917 between Houston lumberman Robert W. Wier and the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company, owners of vast tracts of virgin yellow pine in this region, led to the construction here of one of East Texas' largest sawmill complexes. The Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company built a mill capable of producing 40 million board feet of lumber annually, and a town consisting of about 550 residences,several church buildings, schoolhouses, a hotel, railroad depot, post office, movie theater, drugstore, commissary, and various other shops by 1922. Housing in the town, named Wiergate after founder Robert Wier,was segregated by race and ethnicity. A central hill was restricted to Anglos, another to African Americans, and the third to Hispanics. Lumber of different sizes including beams as large as 40-50 feet in length and 30 X 30 inches square were shipped to market daily on the Gulf and Northern Railroad. After 25 years of continuous operation the mill was closed on Dec. 31. 1942, and the town was sold to an Arkansas salvage company. Nevertheless, the original mill was replaced by a new electric mill and Wiergate, unlike most East Texas lumber "company towns" of its era, continued to exist as a community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A 1917 deal between Houston lumberman Robert W. Wier and the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company set off the construction of one of East Texas' largest sawmill complexes, cutting into vast stands of virgin longleaf pine. By 1922 a full company town of some 550 homes, churches, schools, a hotel, and shops had risen around the mill, its neighborhoods segregated by race and ethnicity in the manner of the era. The mill ran continuously for a quarter-century until 1942, but unlike most East Texas lumber towns, Wiergate survived its mill's closing.
Why it matters
Wiergate captures the boom-and-bust world of the East Texas timber industry and the company town, a defining and often segregated form of early-twentieth-century American industrial life.
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Related people
- · Robert W. Wier
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bon Wier
Bon Wier, TX
Bon Wier grew up where the Sabine River met the railroad. From an 1836 ferry and steamboat landing that rafted timber to downriver sawmills, the settlement boomed after a company logging town took root in 1898 and the Jasper and Eastern Railroad arrived in 1905. Platted in 1906 and named for Kirby Lumber Company officials, it thrived on a cluster of sawmills, a general store, and a school system until the mills faded in the 1950s.
Pineland
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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.
Kirbyville, Town of, Site of Town Lot Auction
Kirbyville, TX
Kirbyville was born on May 1, 1895, when a town-lot auction marked the point where the Gulf, Beaumont & Kansas City Railroad—built by attorney and timber magnate John Henry Kirby with partner R. P. Allen—reached this spot. Kirby's lumber empire ran through the town, whose big Kirby Lumber Co. sawmill operated from 1903 until it burned in 1917. The community became a hub of the East Texas timber trade and, from 1926, a center of early forest-conservation work, with State Forest No. 1 nearby.
Cade Building
Burkeville, TX
In the depths of the Great Depression, Newton County officials paired local materials with federal Work Projects Administration wages to build this structure in 1940–41, putting men to work while bringing county services closer to the area's residents. Named for Harriet Trotti Cade, who donated the land, it served as a sub-courthouse and town hall, its walls raised from hand-shaped native sandstone and lumber milled in nearby Wiergate. The building and its rock wall are a handsome record of Depression-era public works.