"Lone Star Historian" is a blog about the travels and activities of the State Historian of Texas. Bill O'Neal was appointed to a two-year term by Gov. Rick Perry on August 22, 2012, at an impressive ceremony in the State Capitol. Bill is headquartered at Panola College (www.panola.edu) in Carthage, where he has taught since 1970. For more than 20 years Bill conducted the state's first Traveling Texas History class, a three-hour credit course which featured a 2,100-mile itinerary. In 2000 he was awarded a Piper Professorship, and in 2012 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wild West Historical Association. Bill has published over 40 books, almost half about Texas history subjects, and in 2007 he was named Best Living Non-Fiction Writer by True West Magazine.
Recently my wife and I drove to the Texas Forestry Museum, the first of three related stops (four, counting lunch!) during a highly interesting day. The Texas Forestry Museum opened in Lufkin in 1976. Indoor and outdoor exhibits trace the history of one of the oldest and most important industries of East Texas, where lumbering enterprises have produced forest products for nearly two centuries.
Outdoor exhibits feature a logging train with locomotive, tender, log loader, log car, and caboose, alongside a venerable depot building. Looming high above these excellent displays is a forest fire tower. Inside the museum are artifacts large and small, including a superb collection of early logging tools and equipment. There is a paper mill room, and enlarged photographs which depict life in sawmill towns.
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| Inside the Texas Forestry Museum |
We were greeted by Museum Coordinator Laurie Vaughn, who courteously responded to our questions and introduced us to the new Museum Director, genial Rachel Collins. Director Collins is in her first week on the job, and her background as a teacher will be of help while legions of schoolchildren descend upon the Texas Forestry Museum. Laurie escorted us to the gift shop, where we found Christmas presents for our little grandson.
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| Bill with Laurie Vaughn |
We drove ten miles south of Lufkin to The History Center in Diboll. Diboll came into existence as a company town in 1894. The previous year T.L.L. Temple purchased 7,000 acres of timberland from J.C. Diboll, and in 1894 his Southern Pine Lumber Company began operating its first sawmill. A school was opened, houses built by the Southern Pine Lumber Company were provided for workers, and a large company store stocked everything from groceries to medicine. There was a company doctor, a post office, and a depot. By 1908 Temple controlled more than 209,000 acres of timberland. Temple's grandson, Arthur Temple, Jr., began managing the company as well as to the town, which was incorporated and elected its first mayor in 1962.
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| Research room at The History Center |
Diboll's T.L.L. Temple Memorial Library collected an extensive archive of local and area history, including newspapers, documents, photographs, and interviews. To house this growing collection, The History Collection was erected just south of the T.L.L. Temple Memorial Library. The 11,500-square-foot History Center boasts a large, well-appointed research library, with company records, manuscripts, 70,000 photos, and many other resources available to researchers. Nearby an exhibit hall portrays the history of Diboll and of the Southern Pine Lumber Company, as well as general aspects of the East Texas timber industry. Outside a statue of Arthur Temple, Jr., overlooks a 1920 Baldwin-built 68-ton steam locomotive, a tender, a log car, and a caboose. The log train is maintained in pristine condition.
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| Logging train at The History Center |
On the way home we drove to Stephen F. Austin State University and parked in front of the Arthur Temple, Jr., College of Forestry and Agriculture. Another log train is parked here, a train used by another prominent area lumberman, W.T. Carter.
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| Logging train at SFASU |
Within 30 miles - from Nacogdoches to Lufkin to Diboll - a trio of historical displays perpetuate the story of the East Texas timber industry. By the late 19th century, logging employed one-tenth of the East Texas labor force. The largest part of Texas's timber production came from three species of pine: loblolly, shortleaf, and longleaf pines. Hardwoods, such as several kinds of oak, also had commercial value for furniture-making, pilings, cross ties, and ridge timbers. Forests across East Texas were abundant, and hundreds of small "peckerwood" mills were set up, while larger mills and operators - such as T.L.L. Temple - began operating on a large scale, with logging trains a key to transportation. A trip to Lufkin-Diboll-Nacogdoches offers fascinating insights to the sawdust trail.
For more information:
www.treetexas.com
www.thehistorycenteronline.com
On a Monday evening last July I received a phone call from Dr. Gregory Powell, President of Panola College in Carthage. After we exchanged greetings, Dr. Powell informed me that he was in the midst of a board meeting at the college and the call was official. He explained that the board had just voted unanimously to name our new apartment dorm "Bill O'Neal Hall," and he asked my permission to use my name on the building.
Panola County Junior College was founded in 1947. When I arrived on campus in 1970, I was one of only 25 faculty members, while the student body totaled just 675. There was only one residence hall, a single-story athletic dorm that accommodated 28 young men. But in the decades since my arrival at Panola, the student population has more than tripled. In recent years Panola has been one of the fastest-growing colleges in Texas, with a commensurate need for residence halls. Two large dormitories were built, but after Dr. Powell assumed the presidency in 2000, he located a residence hall model at Navarro College in Corsicana. These halls were compact, two-story apartment dorms built to house 32 residents apiece. During the past few years Dr. Powell and the board have erected three apartment dorms, utilizing the same set of blueprints. But with the continued student body expansion, it was decided to double the size of the next apartment dorm by placing the blueprints end-to-end, thereby accommodating as many as 64 students.
Dr. Powell had asked me to deliver brief remarks. He welcomed the crowd, then introduced me. I presented an outline history of residence halls on campus, beginning with a surplus army barracks purchased in 1948 by Panola County Junior College as an athletic dorm for the Pony football team. The price of the barracks was $107.50 - PCJC paid more than that to transport the building to Carthage. Twelve years later this spartan athletic dorm was replaced by a single-story masonry hall for scholarship athletes; amenities were limited by the presence of merely one electrical outlet in each two-man bedroom. Another 12 years passed before a dormitory finally opened for non-scholarship students.The two-story co-ed dorm had a wing for women and a wing for men, providing occasional nocturnal adventures. The later construction of a men's residence hall allowed the co-ed dorm to become an all-women's facility.
