A sawmill plant operated near New Hope for many years. A bill of sale dated 10 February 1921 indicates that a mill had been moved a short distance to the Whitton place about seven miles west of San Augustine and then sold to J. R. Greer and R. C. Downs, who probably moved much of the equipment to their mill location near New Hope, several miles away. Robert C. Downs was one of the owners of the lumber facility by the name of Greer-Downs-Knoll in San Augustine County. The Gulf Coast Lumberman carried his obituary in 1948. Greer-Downs-Knoll appeared in the 1957 edition of Nelson T. Samson's Directory of Wood-Using and Related Industries in East Texas. The Directory of Texas Manufacturers 1956-1958 noted that the company was a partnership, formed in 1940, and that R. E. Knoll was the manager. In 1957, the plant employed less than twenty workers in the manufacture of rough and dressed pine lumber.
Oral tradition gives some information about the mill. J. Nichols told interviewer V. L. Beasley that the he believed the “Greer & Downs” sawmill at New Hope, in San Augustine County, began in the early 1920s. J. Johnson believed the mill was located about eight miles northwest of San Augustine. Hubert Busby believes that the sawmill was cutting 30,000 feet of lumber daily during World War II.