The Pine Island Lumber Company mill was located about two miles due south of the juncture of Highways 103 and 7. Although the corporation d its intent “to construct, own and operate, saw and planing mills, at Clawson,” the mill was built at Pine Island, not at Clawson. The site is still known as Pine Island because of the resulting “island” formed by the old and new channels of the Neches River at that point. The company was incorporated in March 1900 by stockholders of the Clawson Lumber Company, mainly R. A. Caruthers. with a capital stock of $30,000. The Company acquired 4505 acres along the east bank of the Neches River in April 1900. Financing had been handled by A. J. Caruthers and the Foster Lumber Company. In 1900, Pine Island was receiving lumber from J. J. Bonner Timber Company, a contract logging outfit. By April 1902, Foster cancelled its liens and Caruthers gave a quitclaim to Pine Island Lumber Company.
In early 1902, negotiations for trackage rights were conducted with the newly built Eastern Texas Railroad, the chartered logging road of the 4-C mill in Houston County, which rails intersected the “Pine Island district.” In Eastern Texas Railroad Company correspondence, the Pine Island mill is referred to as the “Caruthers mill.”
When the Henderson Land and Lumber Company acquired the properties of the Pine Island Lumber Company in 1903, unknown whether purchase or lease, the owners decided not to operate the mill. The Burnett Lumber Company bought the plant and moved it to Durst Station in 1907.