George Royden Ogletree returned from Indian Territory about 1908 and operated a sawmill at Shepherd for several years before shifting operations to Talco, about 1915, in Titus County, and then finally settling on Livingston. Ogletree at Shepherd bought pine timber and hardwood from F. S. Bailey in 1928. Bailey gave Ogletree the right to access the property, to construct wagon roads, trams, and skidways. Ogletree's company at Shepherd, later named the Ogletree Hardwood Lumber Company, appeared again in 1934 in the San Jacinto County records, identifying Ogletree mills at Shepherd (really Milledge Switch), Crockett, New Caney, Livingston, and Center. He had another mill at Oakwood, in Leon County.
A 1920 mortgage lists the property as including mules, wagons, harness “connected with sawmill near Shepherd [and] 1 sawmill engine, boiler, eqpt. complete; all lumber now on grounds, all logs to be sawed into lumber . . . at Milledge Switch.”