The Dekalb Tie & Lumber Company was listed as manufacturing lumber, timbers, and crossties in 1928 at DeKalb and again in 1934. M. Cooper told Vernon L. Beasley that he remembered a T. F. Keasler operating a steam-powered circular sawmill at De Kalb in the 1930s. The work, An Economic Survey of Bowie County, lists, in 1947, De Kalb Tie and Lumber Company (with more than a 100 employees manufacturing lumber and timber produces) as being active at De Kalb.