The Beaumont Enterprise reported that Carlyle and Snelling were running a mill a mile above Kountze. Sometime thereafter they must have built a second mill closer to town, for by 1884, Carlyle and Snelling were listed independently with their own mills at Kountze by a railroad directory. By 1886, the sawmill was in the estate of R. P. Snelling, but the sawmill did not long survive its owner. The hurricane of October 12, 1886, leveled the mill; it was not rebuilt but was moved to Woodville.
The hurricane of 1886 wreaked disaster throughout the lower end of East Texas. The communities of Sabine Pass, Texas, and Johnson's Bayou, Louisiana, were completely leveled. Almost two hundred people drowned in the two communities.