Towns & Communities:  Peason & The Lumber Industry, Sabine Parish
Source:  Sabine Index, Many, La., Apr 21, 1999
Submitted by: Carl Dilbeck
              carlrad@earthlink.net 

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  After the large lumber milling operations in New England and the
Great Lakes areas "cut out" during the Civil War, lumbering began
to move southward. By the 1900-1920 period, the lumber industry
began to "boom" in the virgin pine forests of Louisiana, and the
vast acres of unsurpassed pines in the western hills of Louisiana
did not escape. Many sawmills were constructed in the "Calcasieu
District," especially in Natchitoches and Sabine Parishes.

  In December 1916, A.J. Peavy, a young logger turned lumberman,
acquired a tract of 40,000 acres in the southeastern section of
Sabine Parish, in Wd. 1. A large cash payment was made at the
time of the sale, with the balance to be paid in 88 promissory
notes. Other land was acquired later. Peavy formed the partnership
of Peavy and Wilson with R.J. Wilson, an experienced lumberman and
mill manager, and the town of "Peason" was planned, the name being
coined from a combination of the two surnames.

  The mill site was chosen, and in March, 1917, land agent Thomas
Wingate headed up the task of clearing the ground and preparing for
construction. Two-men crosscut saws were used, with horse and mule
teams to drag the cut logs away. Wright Scarborough and F.G. Tarver
were hired by Wingate for this task. By the fall of 1917, the tract
had been cleared and a temporary wood-shed constructed to house
lumber for the construction. Lumber to build the mill was brought
by wagons drawn by mule and oxen from the D.B. Pate sawmill near
the turpentine camp of Shutts, located near the northeastern corner
of what is now Hodges Gardens. Many timbers were handpicked by a
special representative of Peavy-Wilson Lumber Co., usually ranging
from twenty-four inches to thirty inches in diameter, and about
thirty feet long. These were used for the framing of the mill
buildings and larger public service buildings of the town.

  Plans for the whole town were laid out in 1917, with most of the
building being completed during 1918, and lumbering operations
beginning in late 1918. A tap line railroad was constructed, the
Christie and Eastern, running from Sandel on the Kansas City
Southern line some twelve miles to the mill site. It was said that
curves made up much of this mileage, as the track was constructed
to surround steep hills and avoid sharp grades. Later the railroad
was extended east to connect with the Red River and Gulf Railroad
at Kurthwood, with connections to Lecompte.

  The town, which was wholly company owned, was dominated by
the lumber mill across the southern end of the town. A large
commissary or company store building also housed the company
doctor's office and the post office. Other public buildings
included the "Office Building," a movie theatre, garage, ice
house, hotel, church, and school at the opposite end of town
from the mill. Ten long rows of houses faced each other on five
streets, with small alleys separating the backs of the houses.
The population of the town ranged from 1500 to 2000 during the
years of full production.

  The Peason operation was proudly billed as the largest pine
operation west of the Mississippi during its peak from about
1918 to 1929. Its standard production was about 4,000,000 per
month, with a selling price of about $125,000 gross, and
production costs of about $80,000. During the early to
midtwenties, the mill often ran a double shift and produces
about 7,000,000 feet per month. W.W. Goode, who worked in the
office operations, has estimated that during the time of the
operation at Peason, about six hundred million feet of lumber
was produced. This would have sold for about eighteen million
dollars gross, with production costs of twelve to thirteen
million dollars.

  Spur logging roads were constructed to each part of the forest
as harvesting progressed. Two-men crosscut teams felled the
timber, large "skidders," pulled them near the railroad tracks,
and steam loaders loaded the logs on to flat log cars. The
powerful "Shay" engines brought the trains in to the main
tracks, where the faster but less powerful "Rod" engines pulled
them on into the mill and dumped them in the log pond. From here
the logs were transported to the mill to be sawed, then,
according to the kind of lumber designed, it went through the
planer mill, to the steam kilns, and then to huge storage sheds.
The lumber and timbers produced were sold all over the world.

  Employees ranged up to 450. Life in the town was good, even
luxurious compared to the country life in southern Sabine before
the coming of the mill. The company had its own water purification
system, and its own generating plant for electricity. Therefore
the pyramidal or umbrella style houses were equipped with
electricity and running water. Rent for a six room house would
be $12 monthly, including lights and water. Heat was provided by
mill ends, costing $1 per wagon load delivered. The church was a
"union" church, Baptist and Methodist. The Methodist Conference
assigned a minister to preach two Sundays out of the month, and
a resident Baptist minister preached the other two Sundays.

  The mill's run ended in 1935, in the midst of the great
depression. A complete evaluation of the life of the town and
the social changes brought about by its existence would be a major
story. I offer these few facts to indicate the scope of the
operation, and conclude with a nostalgic sketch from my own early
life, which has been printed in the SABINE INDEX before, but which
some new readers might enjoy. Much of the factual data on the
production of the Peason mill given in the foregoing paragraphs
was collected by my nephew, Lavell Cole, during a study he made
at Northwestern State University, and I thank him for this data.
Lavell is presently teaching history at the Quachita Baptist
College in Arkadelphia, Ark., and is an eager student of regional
history. I'm sure it is his hope, as mine, that these lines add a
little to the understanding and appreciation of the history of
Sabine Parish.

     OLD PEASON

  "Old Peason!" What waves of memories the words bring back! They
take us back-back to THE TWENTIES. It wasn't "old" then; it was a
lusty young sawmill town built shortly before World War I, and now
in its hey-day. Rows and rows of bungalow type, steep-roofed houses
stretched from the schoolhouse at one end of town to the huge mill
at the other Main Street, and Railroad Street and Churchouse
Street, among others. Main Street, which led to the industrial
"end " of the town, was lined with sycamore trees. At the south
end of this street were the hotel, barber shop, garage, moving
picture theater, the company "office," the ice house, and the
long commissary building which housed the company-owned department
store, the postoffice, and the doctor's office.

  To a little girl accompanying her father on "peddling" trips, the
commissary was the oasis at the end of the trail. Here was the drug
store with its soda fountain and ice cream counter. Best of all,
here were "grab bags" for a nickel. One actually reached into a
gaping hole in a large pasteboard box and selected the small brown
bag. It contained five pieces of assorted candy and a "prize." If
it happened to be one's lucky day, the prize was a nickel, and that
meant another grab bag.

  From the long front porch of the commissary one could watch the
log trains puff in to the mill with their flat cars of logs stacked
like matches or the "local" trains taking box cars of finished lumber
over the old Christie and Eastern Railway to Sandel, on its way to
widely scattered markets. The trains were exciting. They had steam
whistles, and bells that rang and they belched forth clouds of
intensely black smoke, for their fuel was pine knots, rich and
"litered."

  Beyond the railroad tracks stretched the "mill," where my farmer
father worked during slack seasons, He had taken us over the mill
on a Sunday. We inspected the saw mill, the "planer" mill, and the
loading sheds. Terms such as the "green Chain" and "dry kill"
(it was years before I knew the word was really "kiln") were
familiar even to elementary school pupils.

  Since we lived in the country outside of the mill town, I knew
even more about the early stages of the lumber ring operations. I
knew about the turpentine collections that precede lumbering; we
children often examined the curved cups sitting on pegs in a tree
below a wide V-shaped, grooved cut. Sometimes we even "helped" the
workers by emptying the sap in a barrel nearby. Of course we knew
that the men would be around early each morning to collect the
turpentine, for we could hear their melodious calls long before day
on winter mornings.

  I was acquainted with the spur railroads, built up with mule teams
and slips, that might occur unexpectedly in any area of the forest.
After that we might be halted on our walk to school by the cries of
"Timber-rr!" and we would witness the fall of a forest giant. Next,
the skidder would use iron cables to drag the logs near enough for
the loader to stack them neatly in place on the cars of the log
trains. I knew, too, of other fringe projects: the "pine knot crew"
who provided the fuel for the log trains and for other boilers, the
crews who made cross ties for the railroads, or peeled pilings for
the trestles.

  Of course, childhood memories would inevitably be bound up with
the two-story lumber school buildings at the north end of town. Not
only was it constructed of pine lumber, but both floors were heavily
oiled for dustless sweeping. It was used for years before wooden
fire escapes were added. School boards had not been made so painfully
safety conscious by school tragedies at that time. The building was
overcrowded, and additions had to be made from time to time.

  Even the school was dominated by the whistles that ruled the life
of the town, blowing at measured intervals from the pre-dawn hours
until evening. When the noon whistle blew, the janitor rang the
dinner bell, whether his watch agreed or not. Occasionally, a
whistle would blow off schedule and the whole school would gasp
anxiously and listen. Was it the "fire whistle" signal? (a series
of short quick blasts) Whose house was on fire? Was it the "doctor
call?" (a long, monotonous, sad tone) Whose father was hurt or
killed? Some students would burst into tears at the awful suspense.
If it was a fire, the high school boys would be dismissed to go
help the fire fighters, and the elementary pupils would watch in
awe as they sprinted down the street.

  Once, we were all taken outside the school to see what was, for
most of us, our first aeroplane, a stray that passed overhead and
made a forced landing in a field a few miles away. During these
years, one of our teachers impressed upon us the headlines in the
daily paper, "FROM NEW YORK TO PARIS IN ONE HOP." Lindbergh, of
course.

  The school and the town flourished and grew. Orders for lumber
poured in. Often, during the summer months, the saw mill and planer
mill "Quartered," working extra hours at night. The workers from
outside the town would walk home late at night by the light of
kerosene lanterns. Those were the days of flapper girls, the
Charleston dance, and the hit song "My Blue Heaven." They were
the days when T-models careening along the narrow roads at 25-30
miles per hour alarmed the cattle, as well as the residents.

  Memory drifts on, then to

     THE THIRTIES.

  Not only had the nation-wide depression hit Peason-with reduced
lumber orders, but a more immediate threat hung over the town. Almost
all of the virgin timber was gone; soon the mill would "cut out;"
already the lumber company was planning a transfer to new territory
in Florida. This was accepted as inevitable, a foregone conclusion,
as the order of the day in the lumbering operations of the time. As
is well known in this area, there were a few notable exceptions to
this policy, such as the Louisiana Long Leaf Lumber Company's
operations at Fisher, but the general rule was the "cut out and out"
policy.

  An air of uncertainty and foreboding hung over the whole mill town.
The big question for every family was whether they should pull up
stakes and follow the mill to Florida, or attempt to find new jobs
in Louisiana, already plagued with unemployment. My own family had
been there long before the mill came, and "guessed they could live
without it-they had before it came," Privately, however, my parents
mulled over how they would offset the loss of income from selling
vegetables in the mill town, and from the labor my father did at
the mill at odd times.

  Many of our classmates bade us a tearful farewell as their fathers'
jobs ended at Peason, and they made the move to Florida, or to
neighboring mill towns. Rapidly, the population of the town and
school declined, In June, 1934, the last class graduated from
Peason High School. This group, sadly depleted by transfers,
consisted of five members: Velma Leach, Agnes Handley, Reba Coins,
Oliver Geeting, Jr., and Floyd Dowden; Principal, F. E. Salter.

  The end was now in sight. Soon the last remaining group of tall
pines were felled on Eagle Hill, a historic landmark near the town.
A few weeks later, the whistles were blown continuously for a long,
long time, until all the steam was exhausted. Many people wept at
the lonely "last whistle," I for one. It seemed such a final thing,
the end to a whole part of my life. The fact that I had just
graduated from high school, and faced many other decisions and
changes made it doubly drastic. My whole world was in a state of
upheaval.

  And so ended Old Peason, not abruptly, as it seemed at the final
whistle, but gradually, over a period of years, with adjustments
and changes resulting from the mill's closing continuing for a
long while afterward.

  It has been symbolic and encouraging to me that the church house,
once in the middle of the town, but now next to open fields, has
remained standing and is in use at the present. It encourages the
hope that many things that were good, and worthwhile and enduring
in the teeming life of Old Peason have perhaps continued to live,
both here and in many far-flung communities. Who could say how many?