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WIERGATE,
TEXAS An
East Texas Sawmill Ghost Town
Newton County, East
Texas
Farm Road 1415, off State Hwys 87 & 63
70 miles NE
of Beaumont
by
Bob Bowman |
The
signposts up and down the Sabine River valley of East Texas read like a roster
of sawmills that once cut the great virgin pines from the valley's verdant hills:
Haslam, Fawil, Logtown, Steep Creek, Trotti, Yellow Pine.
These and a
hundred more boom towns prospered here in lumbering's golden era between the 1880s
and 1920s.
But when the timber played out, the sawmills closed or moved
on, leaving behind cutover forests, clusters of clapboard buildings, and remnants
of concrete and steel.
Some of the towns, however, overcame the loss
and still cling to life in the pineywoods, supported by a smaller sawmill or some
other form of economic activity.
One such survivor is Wiergate -- the
one-time home of Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company -- in northern Newton County.
Grass grows over the ground where more than 550 homes once stood and bitterweeds
cover the site of the town's business district. But Wiergate, somehow, lives on
as many of the community's 300 or so residents still make their living from working
in the woods.
The town's real tenacity, however, comes from a strong
sense of pride anchored in the days when living in Wiergate was a distinction
among East Texas sawmillers.
At its height, the town of 2,500 was one
of the most progressive of the old lumbering era. Its sawmill was the largest
in East Texas (with an hourly capacity of 20,000 board feet) and its high-roofed
commissary store, the forerunner of today's department stores, stocked everything
from pins to caskets.
There were also schools, churches, a community
center, a movie theater, two swimming pools, two doctors, and other niceties seldom
found in sawmill settlements.
Wiergate was born in 1917 when brothers
Bob and Tom Wier built a sawmill on Little Cow Creek and surrounded it with a
post office, barber shop and doctor's office to serve the millhands. A year later,
the Orange and Northwestern Railroad ran a line from Newton to ship out the Wier's
lumber. The Wiers also worked a turpentine camp in the virgin longleaf forests
around Wiergate, collecting gum three years ahead of their logging crews. The
sawmill began gasping its last breaths in the 1940's when it became apparent the
Wiers' timber holdings -- which had not been replanted or regenerated following
harvest -- would not last long. On Christmas Day, 1942, the mill's giant saws
were stilled and Wiergate's people began to drift away. But today many of the
town's old residents wander back for occasional homecomings. One of their steps
is invariably the Wiergate Post Office, where a collection of photographs from
the town's past is displayed. Former Wiergaters linger for hours over the photos,
trying to pick out familiar faces and places.
A former postmaster, Doyle
Smith, felt Wiergate's durability came from the close-knit fraternity of its old
sawmill families.
"There's something about Wiergate's people you don't
find in a lot of other places. I can't describe it. But I can see it in the faces
of the old-timers when they come back. They talk like they left behind an awful
big hunk of their lives."
And perhaps they did.
© Bob Bowman
"All
Things Historical"
June 13 , 2004 Column
This column is provided as a public service by the East
Texas Historical Association. Bob Bowman is a former president of the Association
and author of 30 books on East Texas. |
Burr’s
Ferry
Several
old ferry cables can still be seen at Burr’s Ferry, which also crossed the Sabine
between Wiergate, TX and Leesville, LA.
(From Ferries
in East Texas by
Bob Bowman) |
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