This was the largest sawmill west of the Mississippi, second largest in country, at the time. In March 1906, the mill ran from 250,000 to 300,000 feet every day, losing only half a day's work. The motto in 1918 was “capacity-capability-carefulness- consideration.” It was the largest shingle producer in the South. It had artificial electric lighting in the mill, a natural pond,, five boilers at 575-horsepower, two double sheds, five kilns that could dry up to 200,000 feet.
The Shreveport Blowpipe and Sheet Metal Company installed a “cool air system,” because of a reported need of the size of the mill. This was the first air conditioning system ever installed in Texas. A conductor and an engineer died in a train wreck on the tram road in 1903.
According to several oral history interviews, the mill's demise resulted from two causes. The first was socio-economic battle between the company and the merchants at Ratcliff, where selection of goods was better and prices lower. The company attempted to keep tenant buying at the commissary through the building of a sixteen-feet wall between the mill town and Ratcliff, which resulted in the dynamiting of the wall. The second was betrayal: one of its timber purchasers, a man named McTavish, was assisting Southern Pine Lumber Company at Diboll to buy timber lands under his guise as a buyer for 4-C.