Southern Pine Lumber Company Commissary

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Way out in Angelina County, there's a building that's seen just about everything a East Texas timber town could throw at it. It started, as so many things in this part of the world do, with lumber.

Around 1894, a man named T. L. L.

Temple, born in 1859, got the first Southern Pine Lumber Company sawmill up and running right here on this site. And where you've got a sawmill, you've got workers. And where you've got workers, you've got needs.

So up went a commissary. A company store, the kind that was the beating heart of a mill town. Now the original building didn't last forever in that spot.

When a new building was completed in 1923, the store moved right in and made itself at home. And what a store it was. We're talking groceries, medicine, ice, furniture, dry goods.

And then, tucked right in there among the everyday necessities, coffins. Because life in a timber town had its full range of occasions, and the commissary was ready for all of them. Here's the detail that really sticks with you, though.

You couldn't just walk in with cash money. Transactions ran on company checks, special tokens made of metal or wax-coated paper. The company town had its own currency, its own rhythm, its own world.

Through all of it, from 1896 clear through to 1938, a man named W. P. Rutland managed the place.

That is a long stretch of early mornings and long days behind a counter, keeping the whole operation moving. The commissary itself kept its doors open until 1953. After that, the building didn't sit idle.

It housed company offices all the way until 1979. T. L.

L. Temple, who set this whole thing in motion back around 1894, was born in 1859 and died in 1935. He didn't live to see the last chapter of what he'd built.

But the building outlasted just about everything else, standing there in Angelina County, quiet now, holding the memory of metal tokens and wax paper and a town that ran on timber.

What the marker says

The original commissary at this site was constructed about 1894 when T. L. L. Temple (1859 - 1935) started the first Southern Pine Lumber Company sawmill here. The store was moved to the present building when it was completed in 1923. The inventory included groceries, medicine, ice, furniture, dry goods, and coffins. Items were purchased with "company checks," special tokens of metal or wax-coated paper. Managed from 1896 to 1938 by W. P. Rutland, the commissary closed in 1953. The building housed company offices until 1979. (1980)