| History: | H. Z. Collier remembered during an oral history interview that “CCCC logged at first with mules and oxen later going to skidders.” The Eastern Texas Railroad, chartered in 1900, the incorporators being the Louisiana & Texas Lumber Company, a subsidiary of Central Coal & Coke Company, had its terminus at the Kennard mill. The railroad provided connections with the Cotton Belt, the Texas & New Orleans, and the Houston East & West Texas at Lufkin for Louisiana & Texas Lumber's mammoth mill at Kennard.
More than twenty-eight miles, according to Zlatkovich, had been completed by 1902, linking the mill with Lufkin. Two more miles the following year were finished, linking the mill with Kennard itself. Zlatkovich records that the railroad was abandoned in 1924, the year the mill closed. Reed states the railroad became part of the St Louis Southwestern.
The Southern Industrial and Lumber Review article on October 20, 1903, indicated that railroading, along with logging and milling, were dangerous occupations. A conductor and an engineer died in a train wreck on the tram road in 1903. |