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The lumber companies which built "company" towns
for their employees to live near the logging sites were usually generous
in building churches and schools for the benefit of their employees. A
good example of one such instance is that of Wiergate, Texas. Don Streetor
wrote in his newspaper column "Another Day" (Beaumont Enterprise
May 30, 1922) about Wiergate:
An important mark was chalked in the history of eastern
Texas Sunday when the people of Wiergate, one of the most thriving sawmill
towns in the state, dedicated its new Methodist Church, undoubtedly one
of the prettiest small churches of the south . . .
There were those who figured Wiergate needed a good strong
jail, rather than a church, but even those admitted a church would do
more good than harm.
Not that Wiergate was a wild town, but it was a sawmill
town, and now and then on hot Saturday nights sawmill workers sometimes
got a little fidgety and contentious.
If you were anywhere in the pineys that Sunday, Methodist
or not, you were aware they were dedicating a church.
Folks came from all over. The Wier family was well respected,
which was fitting. Robert Wier of Houston, one of the owners of the Wiergate
mill, was there, and his brother, a New Orleans minister, gave the dedication
address. Their mother was there, too. Dr. D.S. Wier of Beaumont, his wife
and two daughters, were on hand, along with a lot of other folks, such
as Lutcher Stark of Orange, another of the mill's owners, and the Rev.
W.W. Watts of Beaumont, Methodist minister.
After they all settled down and got the little church
dedicated, they went on tour of the mill, and Robert Wier made a speech,
concerned more with the lumber business than with theology.
Wier told them the mill cost more than a million dollars,
that it employed 800 persons, and that there was enough timber in the
area to keep the mill running for thirty years.
Then everyone went home, contented and secure in the knowledge
that God's work and the lumber business were in good hands at Wiergate.
A new post office was opened in Wiergate in October, 1975.
On October 19, a Sunday, the staff of the post office held open house
on the grounds of the post office. It served as a type of homecoming for
former residents of Wiergate when it was a big sawmill town. The popular
comment of that day was that Wiergate was a town that did not die as is
usual for a sawmill town when the supply of lumber declines. Wiergate
still has a sawmill and it still is very much of a community if not a
town. The Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company went into operation in 1918 and
cut its last log in 1942. Brothers R.W. and T.P. Wier headed the company.
"The company took care of everything" is a common view of people
who once lived in Wiergate. The Wiers wanted to build the mill further
south than Wiergate close to Burkeville, but landowners around Burkeville
did not want sawmill workers moving into their town. Wiers made a deal
to lease timber in northern Newton County and built a railroad spur called
the Gulf and Northern to the town site.
Wiergate was an isolated community but was far from being
backward. It had swimming pools, a recreation house that provided places
to meet to play games, and even had a movie theater. The movie theater
told the story of the social order. There were three distinct racial groups:
whites, blacks, and Mexicans. The whites sat on the main floor and the
other two in the balcony on separate sides. Their residences were also
divided: the whites on the central hill, and the blacks on another hill,
while the Mexicans on still another side. Folks rented their houses from
the company.
The mill specialized in big long beams sawed from the
tall long leaf pines of the region. A mill log would be graded as it was
pulled out of the mill pond and sawyers would decide how to make best
use of the logs. Sometimes it would be for common boards and sometimes
it would be big beams two feet to a side and up to 40 feet long. Slab
wood and saw dust would be used for fuel. Every day a train with up to
twenty carloads of lumber would make a run to Newton, From there Wier
Long Leaf Lumber would go all over the world.
A few people stayed on and when Wiergate Lumber Company
opened another smaller mill a few years later there was still a town at
the site. Where once there were as many as 2,500 people, now there are
about 300.
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