Early Texas Sawmill

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say — and friend, this one goes back to the very roots of Texas industry. One-fourth of a mile north of where you're sitting right now, something happened that the marker calls the birth of Texas' first million-dollar industry. Lumbering.

And it didn't ease into history quietly — it arrived in 1819 with not one but two sawmills being built at the same time. One of them sat right here in what is now San Augustine County, on Ironosa Creek, run by a pioneer named Wm. Ward.

The other went up over in Nacogdoches. Two mills, one year, and a whole industry stepping out of the piney dark. Now fast forward just six years to 1825, and there's yet another mill — that one sitting a quarter mile north of this very spot — turning out around five hundred board feet of lumber a day.

The miller working that operation was a man named Wm. Quirk. Five hundred board feet a day.

That sounds modest until you think about how they were doing it. They were felling trees with an ax and a wedge. No machinery coming to the rescue, no shortcuts.

Once a great log hit the ground, one end of it was slung under a heavy cart and dragged — dragged — to a stream or a road. At the mill, logs were often stored in a mill pond just to keep them from rotting before the saw ever touched them. And the sawing itself?

Well, in the early going they had two methods, both of which the marker is kind enough to describe as primitive — and both of which were, not surprisingly, soon abandoned. The first was pit sawing. A two-man process.

Slow. Exhausting. One man up top, one man in a pit below, and the saw moving between them.

You can feel the ache in your arms just hearing it described. The second was the muley-mill, powered by animals. Now, that's an improvement on a man in a pit, but not exactly what you'd call a roaring triumph of human ingenuity.

But then — then — came the sash saw. And here is where the old-timers start talkin'. The sash saw was, according to one of them, so nearly effortless that the attendant, and I am quoting now, could read the Bible or the Galveston News while the saw was cutting.

You let that sit for a second. A man standing beside a running sawmill in East Texas, peacefully catching up on the news. That is a genuine leap forward in the human condition.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, logging had grown into something far bigger than any single mill. It became a pivot-point — the marker's own word — for dozens of subsidiary industries. Railroad building and lumbering pushed each other forward with what the marker calls a strong mutual influence.

One needed the other. The iron rails needed the timber, and the timber needed the rails to move it. And the loggers themselves — the men who swung the axes and rode the heavy carts through the Piney Woods — they left behind something that outlasted the mills and the mill ponds and the muley-mules.

The marker says the gusto of loggers' lore is still alive in the rich heritage of the Piney Woods. It started with an ax, a wedge, and a man named Ward on Ironosa Creek in 1819. Everything else grew from that.

What the marker says

One-fourth mile north to site of Early Texas Sawmill Texas' first million-dollar industry - lumbering - was born to recorded history with the building of two sawmills in 1819. One, located on Ironosa Creek in present San Augustine County, was run by pioneer Wm. Ward; the other was in Nacogdoches. In 1825 yet another mill (one-fourth mi. N) was turning out about 500 board feet of lumber a day. Wm. Quirk was miller. In these times, trees were felled using an ax and a wedge. Then one end of each huge log was slung under a heavy cart and dragged to a stream or road. At the mill the logs were often stored in a mill pond, to keep them from rotting, and then they were sawed by various methods. Two primitive ones -- soon abandoned -- were pit sawing (a slow, exhausting two-man process) and the muley-mill, powered by animals. A later improvement was the sash saw, which was so nearly effortless that one old-timer claimed the attendant "could read the Bible or the ' Galveston News' while the saw was cutting". In the mid-19th century, logging served as a pivot-point for dozens of subsidiary industries; railroad building and lumbering had a strong mutual influence and the gusto of loggers' lore is still alive in the rich heritage of the Piney Woods. (1969)