The Yellow Bluff Tram Company begins with the need of Long Manufacturing and Beaumont Lumber Company need for a secure supply of logs. Colonel B. D. Crary and B. F. Van Meter, the former a stumpage owner in Jasper County and the latter an independent logging contractor, wanted to supply Long's and Beaumont's needs. Crary and Van Meter created the Yellow Bluff Tram Company to harvests the pine timber of Jasper County and shortly thereafter leased Yellow Bluff Tram to Long Manufacturing and Beaumont Lumber. Long and Beaumont gained total control of Yellow Bluff Tram and changed its name to Texas Tram and Lumber Company.
The tram route stretched across its cypress tracks from Yellow Bluff, ten miles north of Evadale, to Cairo Springs, five miles to the east, where a logging camp and small sawmill was built. Mules dragged the logging cars to the river. The logs were spilled down a rollway and floated to Beaumont. B. F. Van Meter, then Joseph A. Carroll, were the first two Yellow Bluff superintendents. Soon iron rails and the first locomotive, the Colonel No. 2, in Jasper County upgraded the physical inventory.
The Tram guaranteed Long Manufacturing and Beaumont Lumber sufficient numbers of logs at all times, provided the Neches River was high enough. About sixty men would put between 150 and 200 logs into the River daily. In November 1878 alone, 18,000 logs were floated south. The tram road soon reached Buna, and another spur stretched to Ford's Bluff (Evadale) on the river, shortening by ten miles a log's trip to the river.