Download or read book East Texas Logging Railroads written by Murry Hammond and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the first logging railroad was built in Jasper County in the 1870s, the virgin East Texas forest spread across a vast area the size of Indiana. That first eight-mile logging line heralded a boom era of lumbering and railroading that would last well into the 20th century. Before the era was over, thousands of miles of logging railroads would be built, and hundreds of communities would spring up along their routes. As times changed, the mills closed and nearly all of the early rail lines were abandoned, but most of the communities they helped establish survived those changes and thrive into the present day.