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The Forest For the Trees

Discover the Texas Forestry Museum

By Ted Gresham

Copyright July 7, 2005

The Texas Forestry Museum sits beneath tall loblolly pines that gave birth to industry and commerce from Eastern Texas across Louisiana and Arkansas and on to the Atlantic coast.  Better known as the place where Cotton was King, the south was and is a major producer of pine timber and paper products.

Lumber mills, plywood or pressboard plants, and paper mills still sprawl across East Texas.  But the industry is fading.  Mills are closing.  Virgin timber is extremely scarce.  Logging trucks that once hauled massive trees to lumber or paper mills now roll along East Texas highways loaded with thin and spindly new growth trees on their way to be turned into chips, or they’re lugging the crooked trunks of hardwoods or sweetgum, once considered useless but now in demand.

Things have changed.  East Texas forests that remain are carefully tended, managed, planted and replanted.  The controversies over old growth forests raging in the northwest do not exist here.  Old growth disappeared many decades ago.  There’s still plenty of woodlands in Deep East Texas.  The Texas Forestry Association, located next to the museum, says there’s twelve million acres of timber in Texas.  But still, it’s not like it used to be.  Only those who remember the Civilian Conservation Corp and lived through a world war remember.  For everyone else there’s the Texas Forestry Museum to remind us.

The Museum covers almost four acres along side state highway 103 just inside the east loop in Lufkin.  Planning for the museum started in the 1950’s.  The first building was completed in 1976.  Through several renovations and expansions, the Museum has grown to house two exhibit rooms that carry a visitor through time from the arrival of Europeans to the modern forest industry.  The Museum now has 7300 square feet of exhibit space.

A few men made fortunes in the timber industry.  Most barely made a living.  Many died young.  A century ago, trees were felled with cross-cut saws, drug by teams, hauled out of the woods with dangerous, animal powered or steam driven equipment.  It was a hard, dangerous job.  The men who built the East Texas timber industry were rugged, muscled, hard-edged but mostly God-fearing.  The Museum is about them as much as it’s about logging and milling timber.

According to the Texas Forestry Association, some ninety thousand people work in the timber industry of Texas.  It’s the third largest manufacturing sector in the state, says the TFA.  Many of those who work among the trees and in the mills today are the second, third, or fourth generation to earn their living from forestry.  Few people who grew up beneath East Texas pine trees have not been touched in one way or the other by the industry.  This writer included.

Within the exhibit halls are the tools and equipment used by a generation past.  Locals can hear the stories told by their fathers and grandfathers about the steam engines, the A-models, the huge log wagons, skidders, belt driven planers like the ones on display in the museum.  The main exhibit hall has as its centerpiece a steam engine display.  The exhibit shows drawings, graphs, and a full-scale model of how a steam engine worked.  For close to a century steam took over where muscle ended.  Steam engines hauled the logs, milled the timber, then pulled carloads of lumber to all points of the compass.  Appropriately the museum pays homage to James Watt’s invention.

Visitors follow the movement of timber from the woodlands to finished products through a collection of photos depicting the process from cutting to lumber.  Along the way there are the tools and implements of the process.  Towards the end visitors discover representations of mill camp life including photos and memorabilia from the company store.

In an alcove beyond the main hall there’s a tribute to East Texas paper products from Southland Paper Mill.  Through photos, exhibits and dioramas the museum gives visitors a virtual tour of the plant and its history.  Founded in January 1940, the mill was the first to produce newsprint in the south.  Abatibi, the Canadian firm who owns the mill now closed it down a couple years ago.  Once, however, before it sold, the Mill was one of the region’s largest employers and a major industry.  The mill produced eight percent of the nation’s newsprint in 1990.

When a visitor moves on to the second exhibit hall they’ll find a plethora of information about East Texas forests, fire safety, and forest management.  There are several maps and diagrams showing the forest areas.  There’s an abundance of information about the national forests in East Texas.  National forests encompass 675,000 acres, about six percent of total forest lands.

One display that catches the attention of visitors is a cabin from a fire tower with a life size Smokey Bear standup beside it.  For more than fifty years Texas forests were protected in part by fire lookout towers standing over a hundred feet in the air.  There’s a complete tower outside behind the museum.  Towers were built all across East Texas, many by the Civilian Conservation Corp in the thirties.  Thirty percent of forest fires discovered were reported by lookouts.  The lives and livelihoods of many East Texans owe their safety to the people who climbed the tall towers and kept a solitary vigil in the small, hot cabs above the treetops.

Exhibits lead visitors in a circle, bringing them back to a foyer in the front of the building.  There a well-stocked gift shop has everything from dozens of books relating to forestry to toys and hats for the kids.  Prices are reasonable and the people are friendly.  Since the museum itself is open without charge visitors have an even greater incentive to pick up a book or trinket. 

Exhibits and fun do not end at the museum’s door.  When visitors follow a walkway around back, they’ll discover more treasure.  Of course the caboose and steam locomotive with a timber car and crane car in between are hard to miss.  One can stand in the engine behind the massive boiler and imagine an earlier time.  Access is granted to the Caboose too.  Kids love climbing up in the crow’s nest to look out the windows where railroad men once kept watch on the long train ahead of them.  Next to the train sits the second building added to the museum: the train depot from Camden, TX.

A shed next to the depot covers a 1946 Chevy log truck and a Russell Junior Road Grader, a contraption pulled by mules requiring two men to operate.  Next to the shed stands the fire tower rising high above the tree line. 

The Museum’s Urban Wildscape Trail provides a way to complete a visit.  A wooded tract makes up two acres of the Museum grounds.  Winding through the trees and brush is a well-developed trail where visitors can learn of the flora of East Texas woodlands.  There’s a small outdoor theater/classroom within the tract and a picnic area at the trail head.

In movies Texas is most often the land of prairies, cattle, and oil barons.  When outsiders learn that close to a third of the state is forestland and that timber is a major industry they are often surprised.  Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas just twenty miles north of the Lufkin museum, was a Spanish settlement that became a major player in the Texas war for independence and later became an important post and settlement in the Republic of Texas.  The old town sits square in the middle of East Texas forests.  San Jacinto, where Santa Ana lost to the Texians, is a region where woodlands and thickets meet the coastal plains.

Martin Luther King said, “we are not makers of history, we are made by history.”  Texas was made by the history of East Texas and its forests.  Curators of the Texas Forestry Museum maintain a large and growing collection of documents, papers, and photos to keep Texas forest history alive.  A library open for public use and study by appointment is an important element of the museum.  The collection is an extremely valuable resource for students and scholars of Texas’ history and in particular the people and industries of the East Texas woods.

The Texas Forestry Museum is much more than a static exhibit.  It is also an active member of the community.  The Museum has a Kids Club to encourage participation in museum programs and keep children involved.  Three traveling exhibits, or “trunks,” are offered to educators.  Locals and visitors are invited to participate in a number of camps and celebrations throughout the year. 

The museum welcomes visitors any day of the week.  Museum hours are ten AM to five PM Monday through Saturday, one to five on Sunday.   Doors are open year-round except for the major holidays.  Summertime visitors should dress for cool comfort if they’re planning on walking the trail.  East Texas winters are usually mild, requiring only a jacket except on the few frigid days of the year in January and February.  Visitors should plan for two or three hours at least.

Texans are a proud lot. The state has played a major role in American and world history as a Spanish settlement, an independent Republic, and one of the largest and most important states in the U.S.  East Texans are equally proud of their place in history.  The Texas Forestry Museum reveals the pride East Texans hold in their past and hope in the future.  The museum is most unique because it not only shows where East Texans came from, but where they are going by managing Texas’ most valuable renewable resource: its forests.