| History: | Historical records of the Collwood Lumber Company at White City, in San Augustine County, are fragmentary. It operated from about 1919 until the height of the Great Depression. Its president, Luke E. Wright, owned other sawmill sites at Davisville, Hoshall, and Lufkin, all in Angelina County, during the 1920s. The White City mill had a daily cutting capacity of 30,000 fee, handling primarily hardwoods.
Interestingly enough, most of the primary records concern logging tram acquistions. In 1919, Collwood Lumber bought a steam loader and a Mogul locomotive for $4,000, and four miles of steel rails. In 1922, Collwood, on a $3,370 mortgage to S. A. Iron & Equipment Company, bought a 14x20 standard gauge 0-6-0 Glover-type locomotive (#14207). In 1924, Collwood bought from Angelina County Lumber Company, for $1450, one mile of 35 pound relaying rail and two switches on the L. H. Mashburn Survey. In 1928, the Collwood Lumber Company was listed in the Southern Lumberman's Directory of American Saw Mills and Planing Mills as operating a logging tramroad.
The documentation reveals, then, that Wright was handling his own logging from the beginning of the White City mill's existence. He acquired locomotives, a steam loader, tramroad steel, and switches. Collwood Lumber must have been putting down tramroad in the Mashburn survey in order to get to the stumpage there. Once cut, the logs were lifted onto flat cars with the steam loader and trammed over to the mill. The milled lumber would have been transported out of White City on the Cotton Belt.
No record of the tramroad's demise has been found. This logging operation with its parent mill must have been casualties of the Great Depression. None of the other Wright mills survived beyond the early 1930s.
Keeling noted this tram road in his work but gave no specifications or information about rolling stock.
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