Research: Tram & Railroad Database

Code: 53
Corporate Name: Yellow Bluff Tram Company
Folk Name:
Incorporated:
Ownership: Texas Tram and Lumber Co. Long Mfg. Co. Beaumont Lumber Company. Gulf Beaumont & Kansas City.
Years of Operation: 1876 to 1902
Track Type:
Standard Gauge Wooden Rails
Track Length: Ten
Locations Served: Yellow Bluff (Jasper)
Counties of Operation: Jasper
Line Connections: From Ford's Bluff (Evadale) to the Gulf, Beaumot, & Kansas City at Buna.
Track Information:
Tram Road Logging / Industrial Common Carrier Logging Camp
Equipment:
History: Long Manufacturing and Beaumont Lumber needed a secure supply of logs; Colonel B. D. Crary and B. F. Van Meter, the former a stumpage owner in Jasper County and the latter an independent logging contractor, wanted to supply Long's and Beaumont's needs. Crary and Van Meter created the Yellow Bluff Tram Company to harvests the pine timber of Jasper County and shortly thereafter leased Yellow Bluff Tram to Long Manufacturing and Beaumont Lumber. Long and Beaumont gained total control of Yellow Bluff Tram and changed its name to Texas Tram & Lumber Company. Burke's Texas Almanac for 1879 reports that “This firm [Beaumont Lumber Manufacturing Company] control a tram railway, fully equipped, at Yellow Bluff, in Jasper county, togethrer with the vast timber land which it penetrates, thus affording the advantage of selecting their own timbers and saving the profits paid to the log men.” The tram route stretched across its cypress tracks from Yellow Bluff, ten miles north of Evadale, to Cairo Springs, five miles to the east, where a logging camp was built, mules dragged the logging cars to the River. The logs were spilled down a rollway and floated to Beaumont. B. F. Van Meter, then Joseph A. Carroll, were the first two Yellow Bluff superintendents. Soon iron rails and the first locomotive, the Colonel No. 2, in Jasper County upgraded the physical inventory. Although Reed in his work may be correct in stating that a Beaumont Enterprise article of 1877 did not state who owned the tramway, the Galveston newspapers clearly identify the Yellow Bluff Tram Company as the locomotive's owner. The Tram guaranteed Long Manufacturing and Beaumont Lumber sufficient numbers of logs at all times, provided the Neches River was high enough. About 60 men would put between 150 and 200 logs into the River daily. In November 1878, 18,000 logs were put into the river and floated south.The tram road soon reached Buna, and another spur stretched to Ford's Bluff (Evadale) on the river, shortening by ten miles a log's trip to the river. In 1881, Yellow Bluff Tram built a cross-ties sawmill at its logging camp of Cairo, which operated until 1896. That year the logging camp, which had moved to Magnolia Springs in 1885, were relocated at Kirbyville. In 1893, the stretch of tramroad from Ford's Bluff to Buna, a distance of nine and a half miles, was sold to John H. Kirby and his new Gulf Beaumont & Kansas City Railway Company.