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235 chapter ten Bonanza Years in the Gulf South The society of the Piney Woods was ill equipped to cope with the sweeping changes inaugurated when outsiders brought industrial forestry to the region following the Civil War. Prewar lumbermen had instituted changes, but they had been too few, their reach too limited, to launch society on a distinctly new course. Indeed, in most places what changes had occurred probably resulted more from the deteriorating condition of pastoral society than the impact of lumbering. Beginning in the 1870s all that changed. Lumbermen—and the railroads on which they depended—remade society in the Southern pineries. Henry J. Lutcher and G. Bedell Moore were pioneers of the new order. Lutcher and Moore were self-made businessmen who owned a mediumsized sawmill in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.1 In the late 1870s, with sawtimber in the Keystone State becoming scarce and the Williamsport strike, in which they had played a small role, fresh in their minds, they began casting about for a new area of operations. For a time, they considered Michigan and Wisconsin, but soon decided so many lumbermen had already moved there that the pine forests of Texas and Louisiana, about which they had heard good reports, might be more promising. On January 11, 1877, the two left Williamsport for the South, intent upon determining if the reports were true. En route they met in St. Louis with railroad officials, who told them about available timberlands and gave them letters of introduction. They stopped to examine timber near Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and around Texarkana, on the Texas-Arkansas border. In the latter location, they found lumbermen paid $4 to $4.50 a thousand for logs and “could sell all the lumber they could make for $10 to $12” delivered at the railroad. From Texarkana to Longview, Texas, they found extensive timberlands and a number of small mills that catered to buyers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Continuing south, they stopped at “a fifth rate country hotel” in Palestine and then proceeded to Houston, carefully observing the waterways, timber stands, sawmills, and railroad systems as they went. They were not impressed.2 Things changed as the pair moved eastward toward Beaumont and the Texas-Louisiana border.3 In Hardin County they met Colonel J. T. Wood who had seventy-two thousand acres of fine longleaf pine, the South’s 236 The Lumberman’s Frontier premier species, that he was willing to sell for $1.50 an acre. With logs selling in Beaumont for $5.50 a thousand, the timber seemed a bargain, even though, as Moore noted, “the natives are noted for their ‘skinning’ propensities with travelers”—and, no doubt, with would-be Yankee timber buyers.4 Departing Beaumont in late January, Lutcher and Moore traveled for six days by canoe and horseback through longleaf pine forest, most of which had never seen an axe. Accompanied by James Ingalls, who served as guide, they covered some 175 miles. For lack of anything better, the trio stayed each night with local settlers, and Moore grumbled repeatedly about accommodations, food, and prices.5 The stands impressed Lutcher and Moore, especially those between the Neches and Sabine rivers, though it was clear that transportation would be a problem. Already logs were being floated from fifty to two hundred and fifty miles down the Neches and Angelina rivers to Beaumont. Eventually rail networks might serve to bring logs to the area’s sawmills, but for some time to come they would have to be floated to the mills. Thanks to their experience in Williamsport, the two had considerable knowledge about floating logs from the woods, and Moore examined every waterway he saw with log transportation in mind.6 After returning to Beaumont, Lutcher and Moore continued by train to Orange, twenty-three miles to the east on the Texas-Louisiana border. There they at last found a site that met their requirements. Orange was closer to the Gulf than Beaumont, while upstream vast stands of reasonably priced, quality timber grew close to the banks of its waterway, the Sabine River (unlike along Beaumont’s Neches, where cutting had already been extensive). Moreover, there was a foot more water over the bar of the Sabine than that of the Neches, making export by sea easier.7 Good millsites were available in Orange, and local business interests encouraging. From there, they pointed out, lumber could be shipped either to Texas markets by rail or out to sea through the...

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