Frost, Livingston Parish, Louisiana
File prepared by D.N. Pardue



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From the book entitled "The Free State - A History and Place-Names Study
of Livingston Parish" by the members of the Livingston Parish American
Revolution Bicentennial Committee in cooperation with the Livingston 
Parish Police Jury and the Louisiana American Revolution Bicentennial
Commission, 1976.  Reprinted by permission.  Dedicated to the memory of
Reuben Cooper and Raymond Riggs.

FROST was once the site of the McCarroll Lumber Company's saw mill, planing

mill, and dry kiln, as well as a terminal for the company's logging railroad

and a stopping place for the Garyville Northern Railroad owned by the Lyon

Lumber Company.

     Today the community is a residential area with several stores and an

elementary school in the vicinity of the intersection of La. Hwys. 63 and

42.  Highway 63 occupies the old Garyville Northern roadbed from Livingston

to Verdun, a small settlement four miles south of Frost.

     The first use of a railroad underpass at ground level in Livingston

Parish occurred at Frost. (When the McCarroll mill was located in Holden,

its logging train crossed the Illinois Central Railroad by going under

their bridge over the Tickfaw River.)  The McCarroll railroad, in order

to cross the Garyville Northern at Frost, had to construct an underpass

beneath the Garyville.

     When Jim McCarroll moved the mill to Frost in 1919, he needed a name

for the location because a post office was to be established to serve

the mill and the surrounding area.  He finally named it after E.A. Frost,

one of the owners of the Frost-Johnson Lumber Company which had a large

holding in Livingston Parish in the early 1900's.  McCarroll purchased 

much of his timber land from Frost-Johnson.

     The town started to develop when the mills and kiln were located 

there.  The walls of the dry kiln are still standing today.  Numerous

whites and negroes worked to produce lumber which went by rail to Gary-

ville or to Livingston.

     Because of its rapid growth, Frost was laid out in lots in order

to achieve maximum use of the available land.  It was surveyed by Henry

Landry.  In an interview with Clark Forrest, Jr., Mrs. Elvie Smiley

Efferson stated that at the height of the development in Frost, the town

had a Baptist church and a Methodist church, two hotels, two beauty

shops, and two meat markets.  It also had three grocery stores, one

theatre, a dentist, a doctor, and numerous houses.

     The Frost Post Office was first established at Colyell and named

Colyell Post Office on November 20, 1885, according to records of the

Post Office Department (Record Group 28) in the National Archives.  The

post office's location and its name were changed to Frost on June 19, 1919.

Colyell is a settlement about two miles west of Frost.

     The Frost Post Office closed permanently on May 31, 1954, and the

end of Frost's prosperity came when the timber supply was depleted

in 1931. -- Clark Forrest, Jr.

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