| History: | Keeling noted that the Jasper division of the Palmetto Lumber Company operated three geared and one rod locomotives over a narrow gauge track.
The Palmetto Lumber Company operated several sawmills in East Texas after 1900. The one at Jasper opened in 1915. One of its logging camps, according to Webb, was located at Palmetto, about seven miles from Newton. It operated from 1916 to 1926 to feed the daily capacity of 75,000 feet at the Jasper sawmill. Operations normally employed seventy-men, and the camp population totaled 250. With the cutting out of the surrounding timber, the camp closed in 1926.
The Newton County Tram Company, which would be sold to Kirby Lumber Company, operated a logging and tram camp from nearby Trotti, later known as Klondike, from 1893 to 1905. The development of its logging operation would have paralleled that of Palmetto Lumber. The Cow Creek Tram Company entry in the East Texas Sawmill Data Base states, “Trotti wanted to harvest a stand of virgin pine located two miles from the Sabine and ten miles southeast of Newton. His logging community was called Klondike, later Trotti. It expanded slowly, from using oxen to skid logs into the River, to eventually building a wooden tram road to facilitate the movement animal-pulled wagons of cut timber, to finally bringing a small locomotive up the Sabine to Trotti.”
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