Rockwell Lumber Company Office Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, in my own words. Back in 1911, a company called Rockwell Brothers and Co. made a move. They went straight to the Pecos and Northern Railway, part of the Santa Fe line, and bought up a piece of land.

Their plan was straightforward enough: build a lumberyard to serve a new town called Slaton, out there in Lubbock County. Now, when you're setting up a lumberyard in a brand new town, you need more than just timber and sawdust. You need someone running things.

And if you're going to have someone running things, well, that someone needs a place to sleep. So they put up a two-story vernacular structure, a building that did double duty. Ground floor, the main office.

Up above, living quarters for the manager and his family. The first man to step into that role, to hang his hat upstairs and open the ledgers downstairs, was Robert W. Parker.

He was the first manager to occupy that building, and what a perch it must have been, sitting right at the heart of a lumber operation in a town still finding its footing. That building kept right on doing its job as the main office, year after year, decade after decade. It stood through the teens, the twenties, the thirties, all of it.

Then, in 1941, Rockwell closed its Slaton operation. Thirty years of business, started with a land purchase from a railroad, ended quiet as a closed ledger. But the building, it's still there to tell you so.

What the marker says

In 1911, Rockwell Brothers and Co. purchased land from the Pecos and Northern (part of the Santa Fe) Railway for the construction of a lumberyard to serve the new town of Slaton. This two-story vernacular structure was then erected as an office, with living quarters above for the manager and his family. Robert W. Parker was the first manager to occupy the building, which served as the main office until Rockwell closed its Slaton operation in 1941. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986