James R. Alexander and John R. Ross built a circular sawmill and grist mill on Brake's Bayou in 1857. Financial difficulties were followed by a fire that burned down the mill in February 1859 and about $15,000 worth of cypress logs. James Long and Frank Carroll bought the site and burned-out equipment in 1860. The Civil War prevented operations at the mill site until 1867 when the Long and Long sawmill was built as a result of Davis Long, James' father, buying an half interest in the mill. The 1870 Census recorded that the single circular sawmill cut 1,200,000 board feet at a value of $14,000 in twelve months from raw materials valued at $6,000. The mill employed nine workers and paid them a total wage of $3,000. In November and December 1877, Long Manufacturing shipped more than 2,500,000 shingles. James Long died in 1873. His widow gave her brothers-in-law permission to run the company. The family formed the Long Manufacturing Company, which produced shingles and became the largest employer, sixty workers, in Beaumont. In 1880, capitalized at $50,000, the mill produced 24,000,000 shingles valued at $50,000. Employing a maximum of sixty workers and an average of thirty-five, twelve of those boys under the age of sixteen, the mill paid skilled workers $3 and unskilled $1.50 daily for an eleven hour shift. The annual wage for ten months of operation totaled $18,000. Long Manufacturing and Beaumont Lumber organized the Yellow Bluff Tram Company to do its logging. The company had a telephone line by 1881, linking it with the Beaumont Lumber Company, a Fletcher-Carroll-Keith operation. Long Manufacturing was a very successful business, helping to push the fabulous ventures of the Fletcher, Keith, and Carroll families. The creation of the Yellow Bluff Tram Company, a takeover of the Wiess Bluff Tram Company, introduced logging steam engines in Jasper County in 1877. Economic recession, excess production, and a scarcity of cypress led to bankruptcy in 1898 in order to satisfy its creditors.