Geo R. Caton leased a lumber manufacturing facility at Wells in 1947, according to The Jacksonville Journal. He employed seventy to seventy-five men to harvest and mill two million standing feet of timber. He also had contracted two portable mills for their cuts. This sawmill site, one mile south of Wells, began, according to B. Sessions, as a J. W. Sessions steam-powered, circular sawmill in 1939. The plant machinery included a planing mill as well. The site also had a commissary and thirty-five houses. The mill was sold to Caton in 1949.
Caton had begun his manufacturing career at Avinger in 1940.