By Jessica Gorman

Dr. Luther Longino described Yellow Pine as a “noisy, bustling town of two thousand population.” A place where “life was real and in earnest. Children lived and died, men and women were cut down by disease and accident, poverty and sadness went hand in hand; men came and went, some were successful and some failures, character was made, and character was lost.” As a child, Gene Austin lived in Yellow Pine while his step-father worked there as a blacksmith. The famous artist, Ben Earl Looney was born there in 1904. His father, Julian, was a hotel keeper. 

Yellow Pine began with the construction of a sawmill by the Lake Bistineau Lumber Company in 1891. A railroad was built for the operations of the mill, transportation, and as a means for conveying supplies shipped by steamboat to Noles Landing on Lake Bistineau. This railroad became the Sibley, Lake Bistineau, and Southern Railway. 

Ownership of the mill changed hands several times before it was purchased by Long-Bell Lumber Company in 1898 and the name changed to Globe Lumber Company. Just two years later, the mill burned but was rebuilt. 

The new mill was “a modern three-band saw mill…It has full equipped steam dry kilns and the largest planing mill in the South under one roof. All new and up-to-date machinery.” A company office, hotel, and 210 houses for employees were built. According to Allen Dale Lindsey, “The company produced its own electricity and supplied it to some of the employees’ houses, the mill, and the company buildings. They built their own telephone system for communication and installed plumbing in some of their facilities.” There was also a boarding house, post office, doctor’s office, commissary, and of course, the church and school. 

In 1903, the mill employed about 750 men and owned 68,093 acres of timber. Lumber from Yellow Pine was shipped all across the country until 1913 when “the great virgin forest of the area had been cut over and a new mill site had to be selected” leaving “the desolate ruin of what had been the great longleaf pine forest.”

(Jessica Gorman is the Assistant Director and Archivist for the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum in Minden and is an avid genealogist.)