The Champion International Corporation bought in 1968 the W. T. Carter and Bro lumber facility at Camden, a double circular and gang mill built in 1898. Carter constructed the company tapline, the Moscow, Camden, & San Augustine Railroad, to connect his mill with the Houston East & West Texas at Moscow and to harvest sawtimber in the surrounding pineries. The Camden mill burned in 1910, and a new one of steel and concrete was constructed. It began operations in the summer of 1911 with a double band rig and gang saw, which was still operating in 1964. It is said the workers were paid in gold the first pay day after the new mill opened. W.T. Carter was reluctant to install band mills to replace his burned circular mill. He was reported in 1921 as lamenting that the days of “cheap lumber are over.” As technological change came, so the mill changed, too. In 1957, log were handled by cranes rather than mill ponds, and, in 1961, electricity replaced steam. In 1966, Thomas L. Carter, was the managing partner. In 1972, U. S. Plywood-Champion became Champion International. The school, in 1937, maintained three teachers. Electricity for the workers came in 1926, according to Professor Maxwell. Champion discontinued renting homes and running a commissary, and constructed a new plant, which employed generally more than one hundred personnel until the late 1980s.
The mill added a plywood plant and a tree-length processing and stud milling center. Champion-International by 1980 had restructured the plant as a plywood facility, log processor, and lumber operation. Facilities in 1990 included a planing mill, a softwood plywood plant, a softwood veneer plant, and a stud mill. That year forty-four employees produced 77 million board feet, using a chipping headrig.