Southern Pine Lumber Company, the mammoth lumber milling operation at Diboll, Angelina County, operated its major logging camp at Fastrill, in Cherokee County. Fastrill, of all the dozens of logging camps operated by Southern Pine, was unique for its size, its permanence, and the length of its operation.
Most of the houses had four rooms, with back and front porches. Smaller families had two-room houses. The community consisted of a four-teacher school, a two-story boarding house, a post office, a commissary, a voting precinct. The commissary was first located in a boxcar, then in a series of box cars, and finally all under one roof: a grocery, meat market, dry goods and shoe department, ice house, the post office, drug store, and doctor's office. The black quarters had a combination school-church. The company provided land, implements, and animals for local gardens and a canning plant for their produce. Recreation was diverse: from the swimming and fishing in the Neches to drinking at the Gouge- Eye Saloon.
Four woods crews normally worked out of Fastrill. The woods train left at six in the morning. Boarding-house workers were cooking by four to feed the men before they left. Mules dragged the logs to Fastrill, where they were loaded onto the company railroad, the Texas Southeastern.