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Remembering Fastrillby
Bob Bowman | |
Some
time in the distant future, if Dallas
has its way, a new reservoir could be built on the Neches
River in Cherokee and Anderson County.
If the proposal ever becomes
reality, the lake would inundate a landmark in the history of the forest products
history--an old logging camp known as Fastrill.
There were hundreds of
logging camps in early East Texas,
but few achieved the homely nobility of Fastrill, which was established in 1922
as a logging base for Diboll’s Southern Pine Lumber Company. |
A
Texas State Historical Marker at Fastrill
Photo courtesy Bob Bowman |
The
town got its name from a combination of three names: FA from F.F. Farrington,
a former Diboll postmaster; STR from P.H. Strauss, who was in charge of Southern
Pine’s logging camps; and ILL from Will Hill, the company’s woods foreman.
The
town stood near a bend in the Neches
River about 15 miles west of Alto.
Of all the Southern Pine logging camps, Fastrill is best-remembered by the company’s
old timers. At its peak the community had a four-teacher school, two churches,
a post office, commissary store, boarding house, a voting precinct and a population
approaching 600.
“Fastrill was as pretty a logging camp as a person went
into,” said Wesley Ashworth, a carpenter and repairman for Southern Pine. “It
had wide, long streets, sycamore trees up and down the streets, and stood on a
sandy hill, a beautiful place.”
Southern Pine operated dozens of logging
camps--sometimes called “front
camps,”--in places like Alceda, White City, Buff City, Lindsey Springs, Walkerton,
Neff, Hull, Gilbert, Buggerville,
Gipson, and Apple Springs.
“I suppose Fastrill is remembered so well because
it was a big camp, the most permanent camp, and was in existence longer than any
other camp the company had,” said Vina Wells, whose family moved there from White
City in 1922.
Today, little is left of Fastrill, but some of the town’s
former residents return regularly to its site to wander through the forest, dig
up old railroad spikes, and read a Texas State Historical Marker placed there
years ago. | |
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