| History: | Santa Fe, as it demonstrated with its collusion with Kirby, wanted access to the timberlands of the Sabine River. It chartered Jasper & Eastern Railawy Company in 1904, with the intent to build across the Sabine into the Louisiana pineries. And so it did, from the terminus of the Gulf Beaumont & Kansas City (Santa Fe) at Kirbyville eastward across the Sabine to DeRidder by June 1906, thirty-nine miles; to Cravens, June 1907, eighteen miles; and Oakdale, February 1908, twenty-four miles.
It was not just Kirby Lumber that would use Jasper & Eastern. The railway company was mentioned in American Lumberman in February 1906: “The Industrial Lumber Company is to take a short cut to get a new mill in operation on the DeRidder-Oakdale extenstion of the Jasper & Eastern, . .”. It serviced points in Newton County, with one link at Bleakwood with the Orange & Northwestern. |