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THE
FOUR TOWNS OF ONALASKAby
Bob Bowman
This year, as Onalaska celebrates the 100th anniversary of its
founding, townspeople are discovering more about their past |
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Onalaska,
a historic village in Polk County, is a name that seems to have floated into East
Texas from somewhere else. First-time visitors naturally ask if it came from Alaska.
This
year, as Onalaska celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding, townspeople
are discovering more about their past, including the fact there are four Onalaskas
in the United States -- all with connections to the same family.
The story
begins with lumberman William A. Carlisle, who opened a sawmill at Onalaska,
Wisconsin, in 1893. The town’s name came from an old Aleutian Indian word,
“Unalaska,” meaning “dwelling together harmoniously.”
Carlisle and his
son were so smitten with the name that in 1894, when they opened a second sawmill
in Arkansas, they adopted it for the community around the mill. And in
the early 1900s, when the Carlisles came south to Polk County, Texas, to
build still another sawmill, they founded a third Onalaska near the Trinity River.
In 1909 the Carlisles decided to build yet another sawmill. They selected a site
in Lewis County, Washington, and for a third time confiscated the Onalaska
name.
Texas’
Onalaska is celebrating its centennial this month with a variety of events. While
the town’s economy is grounded in the commerce produced by Lake Livingston, there
was a time when Onalaska had one of Texas’ largest sawmills.
William Carlisle
bought 150,000 acres of virgin timberland in Polk County in the early 1900s and
hired L.O. Jackson to oversee the construction of a mill. Jackson favored sites
on Choates and West Tempe creeks, but they were opposed by landowners.
Jackson had looked at a location near the Trinity River and ruled it out because
of large, pesky mosquitoes that plagued nearby residents. But, with the rejection
of two other locations, he was forced to pick the river plot.
To combat
the mosquitoes, Jackson built the sawmillers’ homes with screened windows and
doors -- the first such houses in Polk County. But the mill workers claimed the
screened houses were too hot and began cutting holes in the screens. When Jackson
asked a worker why he had cut two holes in a screen door, the man said he had
a cat and dog who had the run of the house. “But why two holes?” asked Jackson.
The man snapped back, “When I say scat, I mean scat. And they need two holes to
get out.”
Jackson had been warned by local residents that floods on the
Trinity were “deep enough to hide a smokestack”. Jackson had the mill built on
the highest ground he could find and, sure enough, a flood in 1908 almost reached
the community.
The completion of the mill in 1907 attracted a railroad,
the Beaumont and Great Northern, which was extended to Livingston a year later
to connect with the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad, which served towns
and sawmills from Houston to Shreveport.
The Carlisles also built Polk
County’s first concrete sidewalk, as well as churches, a hospital, a post office,
a school and other amenities for the sawmill families. By 1908 the town had two
hotels, a depot, a bank, an electric power company and a population of about 2,000.
Carlisle’s decline as a lumbering center began when the virgin forests were cut
over and in 1909 the Carlisle mill was sold to West Lumber Company. But floods
from the Trinity River and a lack of suitable sawlogs led to the mill’s closure
in 1913. An excellent collection of photographs from the old sawmill days is on
exhibit at the town’s library this month as Onalaska -- one of four Onalaskas
still “dwelling together harmoniously” -- celebrates its centennial. |
All
Things Historical
Oct.
15 , 2004 Column
Published with permission
(Distributed as a public service
by the East Texas Historical Association. Bob Bowman is a former president of
the Association and the author of more than 30 books about East Texas) ForumI
read with great interest Bob Bowman's article, "The Four Towns of Onalaska." It
was enjoyable reading.
I am originally from Onalaska, Wisconsin. It might
be a nice addition to the article if Mr. Bowman would include the information
that the town name "Onalaska" originally came from the poem, "The Pleasures of
Hope" by Scottish poet, Thomas Campbell. Mr. Campbell's poems were very popular
in American grade schools in the mid-1800s. Thomas G. Rowe, one of the men who
platted Onalaska, Wisconsin, carried a copy of Mr. Campbell's poems around with
him on his adventures. He decided to name his new townsite, "Oonalaska" (the original
spelling Campbell used in his poem) but then decided to drop the extra "o" at
the suggestion of his good friend, Harvey Hubbard, an attorney and later, a La
Crosse County, Wisconsin judge. The then "village" of Onalaska was founded in
1851, many years before Mr. Carlisle owned his sawmill in the original Onalaska
of the lower 48 states. Onalaska was a lumbering community from the start. It
was on the Black River, whose watershed was once a great "pinery" of white pine.
Mr. Carlisle owned a mill near the end of Onalaska, Wisconsin's heyday as a lumbering
center. He is not considered a town founder in Wisconsin's Onalaska -- the town
was founded many years before he came on the scene.
Thomas Campbell is
buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, England. The famous "wolf couplet"
that mentions "Oonalaska" is inscribed on his tombstone. By the way, of course
he made a mistake when associating wolves to Unalaska Island -- there hasn't been
any wolves there since the last ice age. Campbell also admitted, before his death,
that he borrowed the wolf couplet from another poem, a common practice at the
time. The poem was originally published in 1799, when Mr. Campbell was only 21
years old. - George Tabbert, now residing in Winona, Minnesota, January 28,
2006
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