| History: | The Haslam sawmill was built by the Pickering Lumber Company about 1909. In 1906, the Pickering Lumber Company had three large sawmill operations in Louisiana, and, after failing to buy the Emporia Lumber Company mill at Doucette, had planned to build a Shelby County mill at Center to cut their Texas timber holdings. A tax disagreement with Center's townfathers, however, prompted the large lumber company to relocate their proposed sawmill site near the Sabine River, on the Southern Pacific railroad.
Beginning in 1901, Pickering began very large timber purchases in Texas. He had to pay a redemption tax to Shelby County in 1905 to maintain title to his property. By 1906, it had almost 100,000 acres located in Shelby, Sabine, and San Augustine counties. In 1905, a ring of lumber rustlers, which had been stripping Pickering lands along the Sabine River, was arrested due to the work of L. S. Moore, a company operative. By 1910, the large sawmill at Haslam could cut 200,000 feet daily.
Patricia McCoy stated that Pickering operated logging sites named Ragtown, Bedford School, Pickering, Camp Brittain, and Camp No. 1. Dixie Sparks recalled a Pickering logging front at Milam in Sabine County during the 1920s. Bob Bowman points out the destructive logging practices of the company: “flatheads” using “rehaul” skidders to drag logs on cables, some as long as 600 feet, to the spurs instead of oxen or mules, thus destroying countless numbers of young trees, saplings, and seedlings.
W. I. Davis, who served as the company attorney from 1911 to about 1932 for the Haslam operation, described its logging tram practices. He believed they were not unlike other East Texas sawmill companies. The logging road “streched across the length of Shelby County and most of the logs were transported on flat cars to the mill. The tram road was powered by four steam engines and tracks were continuously being taken up and relaid as one section after the other was cut out. In the forest proper, mule teams and cable skidder or slides were used to bring the logs to track side. As in other counties, the Pickering Company would establish a comap or front, laying track to that area and procede to cut out desirable timber. When that operation was finished the camp equipment and tracks were moved to a new lcoation. . . . Mr. Davis noted that Pickering did not practice conservation or careful management of his property. . . . He also recalled that there was good cooperation with H. E. and W. T. Railroad which furnished cars for the shipment of furnished lumber and occassionally paid for the delivery of lumber to track side.”
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