Josiah Jordan (possibly spelled “Gordan” at times) built a shingle mill on the Sabine River, in a location that would be adjacent to the later D. R. Wingate mill. His shingles were marketed under the brandname Excelsior. The Census of 1880 revealed that the plant was capitalized at $15,000. An average of thirty workers worked ten hours daily in winter and summer, skilled workers drawing $3.00 daily and unskilled $1.50 daily. Jordan paid a total annual wage of $8,000 during the eleven months that the mill operated during the reporting period. From sawlogs worth $12,000 and supplies valued at $200, ten million shingles were produced valued at $25,000. This company did not do its own logging.
The mill closed in the summer of 1889 because of the local scarcity of cypress logs and the depressed price of shingles. The mill is not listed in the New Orleans Times-Democrat March 22, 1889, issue about Orange sawmills