A Beaumont Enterprise article of April 30, 1905 reports that Lightfoot and Hornsby to have a mill at the new town of Rush on the Santa Fe. It employed twenty-five hands and had constructed about ten tenant houses. Lightfoot and Hornsby machinery included a Ames twin-steam crank-star 10-inch by 12-inch 40-horsepower engine; Ames 44-inch by 14-foot boiler, a Dixie ‘D' sawmill complete two 54-inch Curtis circular saws, four lumber dollies, and one slab carrier. This mill later employed sixty men, paying a monthly total wage of $4,000, and had twenty-two rent houses, and a stocked commissary worth of $3,000 in goods. Logging was done with animals, and the stock was hauled to railroad at Bronson.
Lightfoot and Walden, the filer at Rush, had a mill located in Nacogdoches County in 1903. Key personnel included M. A. Lightfoot, superintendent; A. C. Millicent, mill foreman; J. H. Walden, filer; John Ayres, sawyer; Porter Slay, engineer.
Until a new post office was established at Rush, all postal service for Rush's inhabitants was handled at the Pineland office.