Four C Mill

Duane's take

The official marker for the Four C Mill tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. October 1899. A man named R.M.

Keith — agent for Central Coal and Coke Company out of Kansas City, Missouri — starts movin' through the pine timberlands of this region, buyin' up virgin forest. Not a little patch here and there. He's purchasing on a serious scale.

Now, to build a mill, you need lumber. And to get lumber, well, you need a sawmill. On January 10, 1901, Keith bought just such a thing — a small sawmill — from a local landowner named J.H.

Ratcliff. Cut the timber, build the mill, start the whole operation from the ground up. Then in July 1901, Keith organized the Louisiana and Texas Lumber Company to run the thing.

The mill itself was known as the Four C mill — a nod to Central Coal and Coke — but it was the Louisiana and Texas Lumber Company doing the operating. By June 1902, that mill was sawing lumber. Three hundred thousand board feet in a single eleven-hour day.

Let that number sit with you a moment. Three hundred thousand board feet. Per day.

The Texas Southeastern Railroad laid tracks in from Lufkin. Tram roads and tap lines pushed out into the forest to haul fresh-cut timber back to the mill. The company built houses.

Built a company store. Set up logging camps deep in the woods to house and feed the lumberjacks workin' those trees. And then the trouble started.

When the Town of Ratcliff was begun nearby, it set up a direct competition for the workers' trade — men who might otherwise spend every dollar at that company store. So the company did what companies do when they feel threatened. They erected a sixteen-foot fence between the mill operation and the town of Ratcliff.

Sixteen feet. Somebody did not appreciate that fence. It was dynamited.

Several times. The attempts to establish a company-controlled town were thwarted, and Ratcliff kept right on existing. But here is the thing about a timber operation burning through virgin pine forest at that kind of pace — the forest does not last forever.

By 1917, the company had exhausted the 120,000 acres it had purchased. Every last acre. The mill was shut down and dismantled in 1920, the timber simply gone.

What remains nearby is Ratcliff Lake — which was, in its working days, the Four C millpond. The forest fed the mill. The mill fed the company.

And when the trees ran out, the whole enterprise folded up and left. The lake stayed. The town stayed.

The fence did not.

What the marker says

R.M. Keith, agent for Central Coal & Coke Co., Kansas City, Mo., in Oct. 1899., began purchasing the virgin pine timberlands of this region. Lumber for construction of a new mill was cut by a small sawmill bought by Keith, Jan. 10, 1901, from local landowner, J.H. Ratcliff. Although known as"Four C" mill, it was operated by the Louisiana and Texas Lumber Co., organized by Keith in July 1901. The mill began sawing lumber in June 1902, producing 300,000 board feet per 11-hour day. The Texas Southeastern Railroad laid tracks from Lufkin; tram roads and tap lines were built into the forest to haul fresh-cut timber to the mill. The company built houses and a "company store" at the mill, and several logging camps in the forest to house and feed lumberjacks. Hostility erupted when Town of Ratcliff was begun nearby, competing for the workers' trade. Between the mill and Ratcliff the company erected a 16-foot fence, which was dynamited several times, thwarting the attempts to establish a company-controlled town. By 1917, the company had exhausted the 120,000 acres it had purchased. The mill was shut down and dismantled in 1920, due to shortage of good timber. Nearby Ratcliff Lake was the Four C millpond.