John A. Musick and Floyd Wallace owned adjacent properties on White Oak Creek, six miles west of Alto. They organized a small sawmill in partnership and cut the several acres of virgin pine on their properties. They each built a house from the lumber and sold the remainder.
Grady Singletary noted that a man “named Box that was buying timber for Musick back in the 1910 decade, actually 1906 and ‘07 before Musick and the other guy ever tried to start the mill, but he was going to farm and buying virgin timber for $1.00 an acre with ten years to cut, right-of-way for the railroads anywhere he wanted to go and the use of any fuel he wanted to cut for his railroad.”