This mill and town site was built in 1905 by the Interstate Lumber Company. P. E. Parminter was the first mill superintendent. He had been the superintendent of the Interstate mill at High Island the previous year. It was soon acquired, however, by the Nona Mills Company, subsidiary company of Beaumont Lumber. The American Lumberman noted in May 1906: “The new plant of the Nona Mills Company, at Odelia, on the Gulf and Interstate railroad, has been in operation for a week. Dry kilns have been erected with a capacity of 50,000 feet a day greater than formerly possessed by the mill. The plant has been generally overhauled and improved under the superintendence of John McDonald.”
The Southern Industrial and Lumber Review in March 1909 reported that the planing mill of the Nona Mills Company site at Odelia was being dismantled and moved to the site of the Leesville company plant in Louisiana. The old sawmill burned down the year before, and the remaining timber stands did not justify rebuilding the mill.
The Odelia mill of the Interstate Lumber Company appeared in the January 1905 Reference Book of the Lumbermen's Credit Association. It had been operating a mill at High Island, in Chamber County, a year earlier. C. E. Berly was the paymaster and account for Nona Mills and often entrained to Odelia, carrying the payroll with him.
Nona Mills Company operated mills at various times at Leesville, Louisiana; Pipkin's Switch; and Nona (Carrollton).