Saginaw Lumber Company

The Ouachita Mountains region of Arkansas and Oklahoma contained the last virgin pine forest east of the Rocky Mountains. Logging companies converged on this source of profit in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One such company was the Saginaw Lumber Company in Hot Spring County.

The Saginaw Lumber Company was organized in 1895. Andrew Johnson Neimeyer served as the first president, working from the A. J. Neimeyer Lumber Company sales headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. The Monarch Lumber Company (organized on February 15, 1898), also overseen by Neimeyer and located in St. Louis, was the wholesale company for the timber harvested by the Saginaw Lumber Company and other companies administered by Neimeyer. In 1907, a company of the same name was founded in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to oversee the harvest of 68,000 acres west of Little Rock, purchased by Neimeyer for $7 an acre from the Iron Mountain railroad, in addition to the Saginaw holdings.

A legend was told in the area about the first summers of the Saginaw Lumber Company: Dead Man Camp, a crude lumber camp, was situated near one of the highest bluffs on the Caddo River near a small stream. Poor sanitation was the standard, and flies were menacing. Typhoid fever and malaria were common; typhoid gave the camp its name. In the legend, a drifter named Jim took care of ill lumbermen before he succumbed to typhoid himself and was buried under the tall pines near Dead Man Camp.

The Saginaw Lumber Company harvested yellow pine at a rate of 15,000,000 feet annually. To aid in this endeavor, a twenty-three-mile-long logging road was constructed, as well as a narrow-gauge railroad, which was operated by the Saginaw and Ouachita River Railroad from 1905 to 1913. The line connected the Saginaw Lumber Company mill, which produced approximately 65,000 feet of timber daily and sat on the east bank of the Ouachita River, to the Iron Mountain system of railroads about two and a half miles away. The Saginaw Historic Trail within DeGray Lake Resort State Park follows part of the path of this rail system.

The unincorporated community of Saginaw (Hot Spring County) was located near the mill. Almost all the town’s inhabitants were employees of the lumber company. A floating boardwalk and a ferry connected the community on the west side of the river to the lumber company’s base on the east side. The only store in Saginaw was a company store operated by the lumber company.

The Saginaw Lumber Company purchased forty acres of 16^th Section Lands of Hot Spring County, township six, range nineteen, on July 3, 1899. These forty acres had been set aside on January 6, 1829, for the benefit of public schools, a practice that continued from the English tradition. The 16^th Section lands could be sold if the money from the sale was used to directly support the public school of the local township or district.

The 1906 issue of American Lumbermen details the careers of three notable men in the lumber industry who were at one time employed by the Saginaw Lumber Company. G. M. Benner was the sawyer for the company in the 1890s. Frank G. Price served as the foreman of the company’s planing mill for part of 1896 and 1897. Dr. Thomas L. Hodges, an amateur archaeologist of Caddo sites in southwestern Arkansas, moved from St. Louis to be the company’s physician.

The Saginaw Lumber Company ceased operation in 1912 due to being hemmed in by the Arkansas Land and Lumber Company to the north and west, which prevented it from expanding. Its railroad closed the next year.

For additional information:
American Lumbermen: The Personal History and Public and Business Achievements of Eminent Lumbermen of the United States. Chicago: American Lumberman, 1906, pp. 109–112. Online at https://archive.org/details/americanlumberme03chic/americanlumberme03chic (accessed November 14, 2024).

Holt, Dennis. “The Legend of Dead Man Camp.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 9 (Summer 1950): 116–119.

Interstate Commerce Commission Reports: Reports and Decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States. United States: L. K. Strouse, 1912. Online at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Interstate_Commerce_Commission_Reports/vNFx327oncQC?hl=en (accessed November 14, 2024).

Richter, Wendy. “Saginaw Lumber Company of Hot Spring County.” Malvern Daily Record, September 27, 2023. https://www.pressreader.com/usa/malvern-daily-record/20230927/281599540124834 (accessed November 14, 2024).

“Saginaw Historic Trail.” Arkansas State Parks—DeGray Lake Resort State Park. https://www.arkansasstateparks.com/trails/saginaw-historic-trail (accessed November 14, 2024).

Smith, Kenneth L. Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1986. Online at https://archive.org/details/sawmillstoryofcu0000smit/sawmillstoryofcu0000smit (accessed November 14, 2024).

Natalie J. Moore
Ashflat, Arkansas