Equipment Typical of Early Texas Logging

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, you want to talk about the end of an era, Angelina County has got one sitting right out in the open for you to see. A slip-tongue, high wheel cart.

Built in 1950 for W. T. Carter and Brother, a lumber firm, and by 1951, it was already a relic.

One year. That's all the time it had before tractor-powered equipment came in and replaced it. One year of hauling logs out of those East Texas forests, oxen or mules straining against the tongue, big wheels rolling over the forest floor, skidding timber down to the railroad.

And then, just like that, it was done. What you're looking at is one of the last of its kind, one of the last ox-drawn or mule-drawn carts that worked that way, moving logs from the forest to the rail line the old way, the slow way, the way men and animals had done it for generations before the machines took over. W.

T. Carter and Brother had it built, put it to work, and then set it aside. And here it stands, a slip-tongue, high wheel cart that had exactly one year on the job, carrying the whole weight of early Texas logging history on those big old wheels.

What the marker says

One of last ox-drawn or mule-drawn carts skidding logs to railroad from the forests. Built 1950 for W. T. Carter & Brother, a lumber firm, and replaced 1951 by tractor-powered equipment, this slip-tongue, high wheel cart is a relic of early logging methods. (1972)