Research: Tram & Railroad Database

Code:	40
Corporate Name:	Wiess Bluff Tram Company
Folk Name:
Incorporated:
Ownership:	George W., Jr., and J. G. Smyth. Sold to Beaumont Lumber in 1888, which included Texas Tram & Lumber and Long Manufacturing Company.
Years of Operation:	1883 to 1892
Track Type:	Standard Gauge Wooden Rails
Track Length:	Eleven in 1892
Locations Served:	Wiess Bluff (Jasper)
Counties of Operation:	Jasper
Line Connections:
Track Information:	Tram Road Logging / Industrial Common Carrier Logging Camp
Equipment:	1883: One locomotive, thirteen logging cars, and five miles of rails. January 1, 1892: Eleven miles of 35-lb. steel rails.
History:	Upon the sale of the Eagle Mill to Texas Tram and Lumber by the Smyth Brothers to Texas Tram Lumber Company, a subsidiary of Beaumont Lumber Company, the brothers began the Wiess Bluff Tram Company logging operation at Wiess Bluff on the Sabine River in 1883. Wiess Bluff is located sixteen miles north of Beaumont on the eastern bank of the Neches. Owning more than 13,000 acres of good timberland, Smyth Brothers harvested timber with a locomotive, thirteen logging cards, and five miles of trackage. In 1888, Wiess Bluff Tram was sold to Beaumont Lumber Company. According to Webb, in The Handbook of Texas, the height of the tram operations witnessed a growth in the local population to almost 2,000. The population and the tramming operations on the Neches fell off dramatically when Kirby's Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City tramroad reached Wiess's Bluff in 1894. The Smyth Brothers were sons of George Smyth, Sr., a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and later a U. S. Congressman, and nephews of Andrew F. Smyth, a sawmill owner and captain of the paddlewheeler “Laura,” which plied the Neches in the 1870s.