Although mostly unheralded today, railroads profoundly shaped our cultural landscape and brought revolutionary change unlike anything the world has known before.
For centuries the fastest that any person, thought, or idea traveled was only as fast as a horse could run or a ship could sail. Railroads basically annihilated space and time and birthed the telecommunications industry along its rights-of-way. Even adoption of standard time, spread across four time zones, was a direct result of these unprecedented advances in travel and communication.
Photo courtesy of The History Center |
This photo, taken somewhere around 1910, shows the Burke railroad depot and post office, with a railroad handcar on the tracks. The railroad as well as the depot were owned by the Houston East & West Texas Railway. The man standing on the station platform wearing the vest is identified as Daniel Bynum McCall, who served as both railroad station agent and postmaster for Burke.
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Photo courtesy of The History Center |
Employees sit on the cow-catcher of this Texas South-Eastern Railroad locomotive, Engine No. 7, as they take a break from hauling logs from the East Texas Pineywoods to the Southern Pine Lumber Company sawmill in Diboll. This photo was taken in 1907.
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In East Texas, as elsewhere across America during the 19th century, railroads connected existing communities and created new ones almost overnight. In Angelina County, the cities of Lufkin, Diboll, and Huntington simply did not exist before the railroad's arrival.
Angelina County was largely an undeveloped region when railroads from Houston and Tyler arrived in the 1880s. Population growth during that decade was only 20 percent, while the state average was 40 percent. Yet during the 1890s, with standard gauge railroad connections secured and expanding, the county's population grew by a whopping 114 percent, from 6,306 in 1890 to 13,481 in 1900. Lufkin, with barely 500 persons in 1890, grew to more than 1,500 in 1900, a 189 percent increase, and was one of the state's fastest growing cities at a time when the state average was only 36 percent.
Influencing the area's rapid growth was a fast-developing forest products industry made possible by a growing and mobile nation looking to the southern forests to supply its ever increasing soft-wood building material demand. The forest products industry and railroads enjoyed a synergistic relationship from the beginning. Railroads nationwide needed lumber for millions of crossties and also for bridge pilings, trestle timbers and rail car construction. Timber companies needed railroads to move raw materials to mills and finished products to markets. One industry could not have developed without the other.
By the 1880s, as transportation continued to develop and lumber markets increased, what was once only a seasonal business for local consumption became the most important industry in all of Texas. From 1880 throughout the rest of the century, lumber manufacturing ranked first in number of wage earners, wages paid, capital invested, value of products and tonnage hauled over Texas rails. By 1905 Texas became the national leader in railroad mileage and has held that position ever since.
By 1913, a total of 18 passenger trains a day called at Lufkin. Passenger carriers serving the county included the Houston East & West Texas, Cotton Belt, Texas Southeastern, Angelina & Neches River, Eastern Texas, Groveton Lufkin & Northern, and Shreveport Houston & Gulf railroads. All these lines also operated several freight trains daily, and most lumber companies in the area operated non-chartered logging railroads. A steam locomotive's whistle could be heard nearly anywhere in the county and at anytime day or night.
Today, railroads have all but faded from public attention. Yet they are the force that did more than any other material development to create the world we live in; and while we may continue in our love affair with the automobile and public highways, the inherent economy of flanged wheels rolling on steel rails insures the viability of railroads for years to come.
Jonathan Gerland is director of The History Center in Diboll and is a member of the Angelina County Historical Commission. He is also an award-winning photographer of subject matter dealing with history and historical sites.
