| History: | Lufkin Land & Lumber Company operated many miles of tram roads to the east of Lufkin. It chartered the Texas & Louisiana Railway in 1900 as a common carrier with the intent to run twenty-two miles from Lufkin to Monterrey in Angelina County. In fact, it ran further, into San Augustine County near Broaddus with extensions to the east of the Attoyac River. The Cotton Belt acquired the road in 1904, extended it four miles that year to Warsaw, and bought, in 1907, another sixteen miles of Lufkin Land & Lumber tram road from Warsaw to White City.
The Beaumont Journal noted the road was tramming twenty-three miles by 1904. The company, according to the Beaumont Journal, in articles of November 1904 and January 1905, felt that it was cheaper to bring the logs over distances of thirty miles than to move the mill to the timber. In 1905, according to the Beaumont Enterprise, April 9, 1905, the company employed four engineers who operated seven locomotives and ninety log cars. A steam skidder and a steam loader were added to the inventory in order to harvest the some 53,000 acres of stumpage the company had purchased in Angelina and San Augustine counties. By 1906, according to the American Lumberman, equipment included twenty miles of trcks, seven locomotives, 105 cars, and two steam loaders. Eventually, the road was tramming 32 miles,” with ten miles of extension to the east of the Attoyac River, into the suburbs of Broaddus in San Augustine County.
W. T. Block notes that after the Long-Bell purchase of Lufkin Land and Lumber in 1905, that the former made some important changes in tramming operations. Some of the areas logged were Broaddus, White City, Hamburg, Lakeview, Donovan, and Banister, mostly all in San Augustine County. Tenant housing for the loggers were the typical “shotgun” constructions of bolting two small rooms together. By 1923, the company was cutting second-growth timber and had erected an hardwood mill. The mill closed down in 1930, another economic blow to the hard-pressed Lufkin community.
The Cotton Belt, between 1938 and 1940, received approval to abandon thirty miles from Prestridge to White City and ten miles from Lufkin to Huntington, parts of it being the old Texas & Louisiana. Zlatkovich lists the dates as being from 1933 to 1939.
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