| History: | The brief narrative of the Pollok & Angelina Valley Transportation Company spans thirty years and two counties. The Fisher Lumber Company began building a 5-mile unincorporated tram road in 1891 at near Bodan Station (Pollok), in Angelina County, on the route of the St Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt), into the nearby timberlands. An 1896 county record notes the tram used log cars but does not mention steam locomotives.
Bodan Lumber Company, beginning with John A. Young's involvement in either 1895 or 1896, took over Fisher Lumber operations at Pollok about 1899 and ran the sawmill until 1917. In 1897, John A. Young & Co bought more than 113 tons of tram rails and steel from the defunct Tyler Street Railway Co.
The companies sawmilling at Pollok apparently did some of their own logging. J. A. Young ‘s assets in 1899 included a small Shay geared engine. Bodan Lumber operated a tram road across the county line into Cherokee County, maintaining a logging front at Wire Creek. The American Lumberman reported, in 1906, that Bodan Lumber Company's tram road was the Pollok & Angelina County Transportation Company. It had fourteen miles of narrow gauge track with an additional twenty miles under construction. Rolling stock included five locomotives and thirty-five logging cars. The Chronister operations from the beginning had been located in Cherokee County. The same American Lumberman listing of 1906 noted that Chronister was operating a narrow gauge logging railroad over which one locomotive and fifteen cars ran.
Research about the sawmill companies of the Angelina & Pollok reveal that Charles William Fisher of Alto began buying land in Angelina County in March 1889. Apparently a mill was not constructed, however, until after April 1893, since no mill at Pollok was noted in an 1893 listing of sawmills on the Cotton Belt railroad. Soon thereafter, C. W. Fisher and his brother, H. Y., obviously had built a small mill in Angelina County, for Angelina County deed records and the Galveston newspapers reveal the Fisher Brothers mill at Pollok was in serious financial trouble by August 1896. The company was consequently restructured. J. A. Young, possibly a cousin of the Fishers, and Elizabeth R. Fisher, possibly the Fishers' mother, assumed control of the mill and formed J. A. Young and Company, Pollok. J. A. Young became outright owner of the Fisher mill and properties on July 6, 1897, by Sheriff's Deed. C. W. Fisher, the original owner of the mill, still resided in Pollok.
Subsequently, J. A. Young and J. J. Carter, both of Pollok, and J. Lipshitz, of Tyler, incorporated the Bodan Lumber Company on February 10, 1899. The lumber manufacturing business at Pollok undoubtedly prospered under new management, for J.A. Young decided to expand the business. Bodan Lumber Company acquired the mill and properties of J.A. Young and Company, including a Shay locomotive, on April 26, 1899. The company dissolved officially in 1917. Records from the Angelina County Lumber Company, Keltys, revealed that the Pollok mill under J.A. Young's direction filled orders for the Keltys mill from at least March to October of 1897. The saw mill itself was situated upon a tract of land owned by Henry Claiborne and heirs, an African-American family. Beginning with the Fishers, operators of the mill leased the property annually. The Bodan Lumber Company did secure quit claim deeds from some family members who had relocated to Louisiana, but leases were paid even into 1918. Chronister Lumber bought the operations and tram road, moving it all to Cherokee County.
Keeling notes that Bodan Lumber Company at Pollok operated about twenty miles of tram road.
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