Village Mills, Texas facts for kids

Village Mills is a small, unincorporated community located in north central Hardin County, Texas. An "unincorporated community" means it's a place where people live, but it doesn't have its own local government like a city or town. It's part of a larger area called the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. Students in Village Mills attend schools in the Warren Independent School District.

The Story of Village Mills

Early Days and the Sawmill Boom

This community was sometimes called "Village" or "Village Station" on old maps. Its name came from a nearby waterway called Village Creek. In late 1881, the Sabine and East Texas Railroad reached the area. This was important for the lumber trade, as it allowed companies to ship their wood products.

The Long Manufacturing Company, based in Beaumont, Texas, bought a large area of timberland – about 40,000 acres (which is roughly 160 square kilometers). They built a sawmill right there. A sawmill is a factory where logs are cut into lumber, like boards and planks.

In 1883, the Texas Tram and Lumber Company, also from Beaumont, bought this mill. A man named William A. Fletcher was the main owner. The same year, a post office was opened in Village Mills. By 1889, the sawmill was very busy, cutting about 75,000 board feet of lumber every single day. A "board foot" is a way to measure wood, equal to a piece of wood 1 foot long, 1 foot wide, and 1 inch thick.

At this time, the community had two main parts. One part was where the mill operations were, called Long Station. The other part, about 1 mile (2 kilometers) away, was Village Mills itself, where the workers' houses were located. In 1895, this sawmill even broke a world record! It managed to saw over 250,000 board feet of lumber in just 11 hours.

From Lumber to Natural Resources

In 1902, a famous lumber baron and businessman named John Henry Kirby bought the mill. A "lumber baron" was someone who owned a lot of timberland and sawmills, making a fortune from the lumber industry. Kirby named this mill "Mill L" and made it part of his large Kirby Lumber Company. By 1907, the mill was producing almost 17 million board feet of lumber each year.

However, the mill eventually closed in the early 1930s. This caused the population of Village Mills to drop quite a lot, from 300 people down to only 80 within the next ten years.

Things started to look up for Village Mills in 1945. That's when natural gas and oil deposits were discovered in the area. This discovery really helped the local economy. Over the next 25 years, more than 31 wells were drilled to get these resources. Even into the 1980s, 17 of these wells were still actively producing oil and gas.