Mary Erwin, noted Reed in A History of the Texas Railroads and of the Transportation Conditions under Spain and Mexico and the Republic and the State, wrote in the Lufkin News in 1940 that the Spring Creek Lumber Company of Tyler County operated the first logging tram in East Texas in 1880. W. T. Block, the Nederland historian, records, without primary sources, that the Spring Creek sawmill was owned by James and H. E. Craig. The sawmill cutting capacity was 30,000 feet daily and that of the planing mill 20,000 feet. The sawmill community consisted of about 200 people, town hall, general store, and a post office.
No primary sources document that a Spring Creek Lumber Company existed in Tyler County during that timeframe. According to the Lufkin Daily News article; however, this mill and its tram road was sold to the Aldridge Lumber Company operating the nearby Rockland sawmill plant. It is not known if Aldridge incorporated the sawmill plant as he did the tram road into his operations at Rockland.