Guy Croom wrote that Boynton Brothers built a sawmill at Zavalla about 1920. It employed about seventy workers. The mill was out of business by the early 1930s. C. Ford remembered that it was on the tracks of the Texas & New Orleans and that the cutting capacity was 25,000 feet. Angelina County records reveal that Boynton Brothers did business in Zavalla under the company name of Retsel Lumber Company. Its primary wholesaler was Geo C. Vaughan Lumber Company. The Retsel Lumber Company was listed in 1928 as cutting 25,000 feet daily of hardwoods and pine into crossties and timbers, according to the Southern Lumberman's Directory of American Saw Mills and Planing Mills.
The sawmill plant was a complete operation with a circular sawmill, planing mill, edgers, trimmers, and dry kilns. Its products included shortleaf yellow pine and hardwood crossties, lumber, and timbers. Some of its timber holdings were located along Popher Creek.