Among the many things that changed Angelina County's landscape were — and still are — the industries. They make this area what it is.
From Temple-Inland to Lufkin Industries to Lockheed Martin, the horizon of the Lufkin-area's industries is growing.
Photo courtesy of Land of the Little Angel |
This photo shows the Southern Pine Lumber Company's sawmill in Diboll in 1907. The pond in the foreground was used to keep logs wet and green.
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Photo courtesy of Bob Bowman |
An early view from the 1930s of Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company's facility, depicted in this drawing, shows the foundry at far left and the machine shop in the center of the picture. Surrounding buildings included a supply warehouse, a power house, a boiler shop and a pattern shop.
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Photo courtesy of Lufkin Industries |
Lufkin Industries Inc. has recently began installing and operating rod pumping systems in the interior of Oman.
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Photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin |
Himars, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, is shown firing a Guided MLRS rocket in a test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
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According to Land of The Little Angel, in the 1890s, lumberman Thomas Lewis Latane Temple, a native of Virginia, came to the county and purchased from J.C. Diboll some 7,000 acres of timberland. That started a lumbering empire in the county.
Temple organized the Southern Pine Lumber Company with C.M. Putnam and Ben Whitaker, and the partners soon rented a "little square of office space in a long room in an office building on the Texas side of the town of Texarkana," the book says.
In 1948 Arthur Temple Jr. assumed control of the company, rapidly expanded into fiberboard sheathing, particleboard and plywood manufacture, according to The Handbook of Texas Online (www.tsha.utexas.edu). In 1956 Southern Pine merged its Pineland operations into the parent company, which in 1964 was renamed Temple Industries. It built or acquired plants in Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia in the 1970s to expand particleboard and gypsum wallboard manufacture. In 1973 Temple Industries was acquired by Time, Incorporated and merged with Time's Eastex pulp and paperboard subsidiary at Evadale, to form Temple-Eastex. The new company owned more than a million acres of forest in Texas and employed nearly 5,000 people nationwide. In 1984 Time spun off Temple-Eastex and a Time subsidiary, Inland Container Corporation, to form Temple-Inland, based in Diboll, which reported $1 billion in sales in its first year and became one of the nation's primary producers of corrugated boxes, as well as building products, pulp and paperboard.
From the humble beginnings in that long room, to a Fortune 500 company, and still growing, Temple-Inland now has four core operations — corrugated packaging, forest products, real estate and financial services, according to the company's Web site.
Meanwhile, Lufkin Industries celebrated its 105th anniversary on Feb. 17, 2007.
It was on a February day in 1902 when five men sat down together and organized a little repair shop for railroad and sawmill machinery in Lufkin that grew into the corporation that today serves the world through its Oilfield, Trailer, Power Transmission and Foundry divisions.
"Lufkin is recognized as a leading supplier worldwide of oilfield pumping units, industrial gears, foundry castings and truck trailers with an unwavering commitment to employ the highest quality people, provide the highest quality equipment and service for our customers, and support the communities in which we operate," said Doug Smith, CEO.
The five men who began this company's journey — F. Kavanaugh, J.H. Kurth Sr., S.W. Henderson Sr., F. Kavanaugh Jr. and Eli Weiner — believed a repair shop would be quite a successful venture in Lufkin since the timber industry was thriving and it was the sawmills and railroads that serviced that growing business.
The capital stock of the newly formed company was set at $30,000 and was divided into 300 shares of $100 each.
The original shop was set up at a cost of $21,500.
The repair shop grew quickly and soon expanded, and by 1920 had been named Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company.
As the oil patch developed in East Texas, so did the genius of the company. W.C. Trout, who came to the company in 1905, began to explore ways to get into the oil industry. Trout was key in the growth of the company. He saw there was not a lot of improvement on methods to bring the oil out of the ground so he brought about the development of reduction gears for oil pumping wells. It was his vision that led the company to develop the first pumping unit, which was conceived from the worm gear of a truck's rear end and driven primarily by an electric motor. The motor replaced the old type wooden band wheel with its long belt house made of wood.
This new unit was attractive in that it eliminated fire hazards and reduced operating and production costs. In 1923 the first Lufkin pumping unit was installed at Goose Creek. And in 1931, Lufkin Foundry built its first twin crank pumping unit.
In 1939, while the pumping unit part of the business grew, company officials continually looked for more opportunities for growth, and so the company purchased the Martin Wagon Company, which was the beginning of the Trailer Division.
At that time, the company saw a promising market for highway transportation, even though the trucking industry barely existed. Building trailers in 1939 was simple — the legal weight limit was only 7,000 pounds.
World War II brought big business for Lufkin Trailers in the form of gasoline transport semi-trailers, ordinance trailers and mobile laundry units for the Army.
In the early '60s the all-aluminum dry freight van was introduced, and high tensile floats were being built, as well as refrigerated vans. Lufkin's Lowboy type trailers were on the drawing board. In 1969 the Trailer Division moved into its present 345,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.
The first gear reducer was developed in 1939. It was built for the pumping units, but its use in numerous applications was easy to see. One of the first gear reducers was made for the paper machine at Southland Paper Mill, Inc.
The company has specialized in the design and manufacture of enclosed gear drives for industrial applications since 1939.
In April 1947, the Foundry Division was opened, starting out in a one-room building to serve the ductile iron segment.
Over the years, Lufkin Foundry and Machine Shop grew, and today it's known all over the world as Lufkin Industries, Inc. It's a company that has built a strong reputation as a quality manufacturer and full service provider in all of the markets it serves.
Today, the Foundry Division has grown to produce medium to large, low to medium volume ductile and gray iron castings.
The Oilfield Division's pumping units are known throughout the world as the industry standard. The types of units produced include conventional, Mark II, beam-balanced, air-balanced, low profile and slant hole. The company's units are extremely adaptable to meet customers' various production demands.
The company's success in the world's market for pumping units has been achieved in part by its production engineering, which utilizes machining cells and conveyor systems for mechanical handling.
Lufkin also has local manufacturing capability in many of its international markets, which allows the company to meet specific country content requirements. Lufkin's well-established position in the major oil producing areas of the world has enabled the company to maintain its presence in all major markets.
The Trailer Division continues to meet industry demands as a high quality manufacturer of flatbeds, drop frames, dumps, conventional and spread axles and specialty trailers.
In the Power Transmission Division, as industrial requirements have driven the demand for gears capable of higher power levels, higher speeds, better efficiencies, longer life and improved reliability, Lufkin has responded by developing the technologies, facilities and organization required to design and manufacture the new generation of critical service, high performance gear units.
Lufkin's "high speed" products include turbo gears for power generation, process compressors, oil and gas transmission and a wide array of pumping applications.
The "low speed" product family includes custom and standard drives for such industries as steel and aluminum mills, rubber mills, plastics mixing and extrusion, sugar mills, marine propulsion, cement mills and mining.
Lufkin also has a separate Industrial Gear Repair facility, which is devoted solely to the aftermarket repair, rebuild and overhaul needs of the end-user market. Its staff of field service technicians supports user needs on a worldwide basis.
The company is proud of its history of growth and success over the years, Smith said. "Furthermore, we believe that the company's continued success will be based on the historical principals of building quality products, training and retaining dedicated employees and taking care of customers by meeting or exceeding their expectations."
From the earth to the skies, the city seems to be home to industries that conquer all.
The Lufkin Operations of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control began producing advanced electronics in the spring of 1996, said Craig Vanbebber, spokesman for Lockheed Martin. The high technology 50,000 square-foot electronics plant started production just 17 months after site selection in late 1994, he said.
The company was looking for a site in a geographic location proximate to our final PAC-3 Missile assembly site in Camden, Ark., as well as a community with a potential employee pool of highly trained individuals — particularly those individuals with technical training — he said. Lufkin was an ideal community due to the variety of educational opportunities, as well as a moderate cost-of-living index, Vanbebber said. Additionally, several influential elected officials and community/civic leaders in the area were instrumental in promoting Lufkin to the company as the company's site selection committee was making its decision, he said.
At this time, the company employs approximately 125 individuals, he said.
Lockheed Martin's Lufkin Operations will continue to produce components of the battle-proven PAC-3 Missile and Command Launch System, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), as well as continue to develop engineering, design and maturation concepts for the components of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which has been very successfully recently in testing, Vanbebber said.
Lufkin Operations has recently moved into the commercial market, where the "advantage of matching our capability with emerging markets provides a tremendous new growth opportunity," Vanbebber said. "Utilizing disciplined growth to expand our capability and capacity over the last 10 years has created a promising future with a focused outlook on steady employment and the long life of PAC-3 and the other programs that we currently are producing and are seeking to support," he said.
Lockheed Martin is pleased with its decision to locate the facility in Lufkin and has enjoyed "a very close relationship with our business partners and community leaders," Vanbebber said.
The company has offered a great deal of opportunity to local East Texas businesses to partner with Lockheed Martin in providing goods and services, he said. Partnering with community schools to help reach defining moments in education is also important to Lockheed Martin, he said. Students are actually Lockheed Martin's next generation employees, and participating in school sponsored activities allows the company to "share its passion for invention with students and their parents so that it may spark interest in our technology and solidify their commitment to their education," Vanbebber said.
Lockheed Martin provides high-paying jobs with world-class benefits and is looking forward to many more decades of partnership with the Lufkin community, Vanbebber said.
Jim Wehmeier, economic development director, said the current industry is a good mix of companies that were founded here and grew to be major employers and are strong community partners and those that moved in from other areas via expansions.
About ongoing economic development, he said, the first priority is and will remain the retention and expansion of the current industry. The focus will be on creating a business friendly atmosphere and encourage local companies to reinvest in the area in both capital improvements and the expansion of workforce. More than 70 percent of job growth each year is generally attributed to local expansions, Wehmeier said. Lufkin has experienced fantastic job growth over the past year and a half with the vast majority of that coming from internal expansion in the industrial, medical and retail sectors, he said.
"Additionally, we will continue to plan and develop land for industrial use as well as work with corporate and private land/building owners to attract new industry to our area," he said. "We currently represent a number of vacant buildings for corporate entities as well as our own shell building and are working to fill all industrial vacancies in our area. The Lufkin Industrial Rail Park is a great start, but long term I expect other opportunities for development."
The economic development corporation will "generally" focus on the industrial sector, but will assist with medical, commercial and retail as well, he said. "However, to be very clear, we do not recruit retail and we do not provide incentives to retail," Wehmeier said. "Other than the industrial sector our assistance is generally in the form of logistics, provision of community information and acting as liaison between developers and local government."
Within the industrial sector there are several target markets that are "naturals" that the EDC will focus on including energy projects, wood related manufacturing, automotive related manufacturing, transportation and distribution, emergency response and the expansion of the clusters that service the existing companies, he said.
"We also hold a true advantage recruiting projects that are heavy water users, due to East Texas' water abundance and the lack thereof with some of our competition both in and out of state," he said.
Additionally the EDC will continue to be a player and support efforts to promote the Certified Retirement Community status and the Lufkin area as a premier retirement destination as well as promote Lufkin as a premier tourism destination, he said. The Chamber of Commerce takes the lead in both of those areas and will support them in all ways possible, he said. Additionally the Chamber takes the lead on small business development and supports their efforts wholeheartedly and recognize that "the small business" is central to our economy, he said.
Key issues to stay on top of, Wehmeier said, are continuing the work the school district and community college are doing to stay ahead of campuses in other parts of the state and country; making sure there is enough suitable housing at all levels; continuing to look at economic development at the regional level and supporting groups such as PEP which work at organizing economic development initiatives on a regional basis; continuing to work to enhance the community's water access via the Rayburn expansion project and any other available water asset availability; continuing the long term prospect of enhancing our areas transportation system; and the strategic re-development of the town as needed and as the local economy continues to evolve.
