Research: Tram & Railroad Database

Code: 61
Corporate Name: Spring Creek Lumber Company
Folk Name:
Incorporated:
Ownership: Spring Creek Lumber Company
Years of Operation: 1880
Track Type:
Standard Gauge Wooden Rails
Track Length: Eight
Locations Served: Spring Creek Jasper
Counties of Operation: Angelina
Line Connections:
Track Information:
Tram Road Logging / Industrial Common Carrier Logging Camp
Equipment: Animals. Small locomotive.
History: Mary Erwin wrote, noted Reed in his work, in the Lufkin News in 1940 that the Spring Creek Lumber Company of Tyler County operated the first logging tram in East Texas in 1880. Erwin wrote that “The first logging railroad in East Texas built in 1880 by the Spring Creek Lumber Co. in the northern part of Tyler county. Logs were first brought by oxen to the mill over a wooden tram which ran thrugh the longleaf piney woods a distance of some eight miles. Later a small locomotive, or ‘dinkie' as they were usually called, operated over a wooden tramroad. This mill operated for about 10 years and was sold to W. H. Aldredge, who operated a small plant at Rockland on the T. & N. O. W. T. Block, the Nederland historian, records, without primary footnotes, that the Spring Creek sawmill was owned by James and H. E. Craig. The sawmill cutting capacity was 30,000 feet daily and that of the planing mill 20,000 feet. The sawmill community consisted of about 200 people, town hall, general store, and a post office.