Geography of Oklahoma Page: 85
vii, 182 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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in close proximity to an adequate water supply. Plentiful water was needed
to produce steam for powering the mills. Wherever these 2 conditions were
met a mill was likely to be built. Many milling towns were built along the
periphery of the Ouachita Mountains on the south where the upland met
the coastal plain. Farris, Antlers, Rattan, Glover, Fort Towson and Eagle-
town were settlements where lumbering provided fresh impetus to previous-
ly established small agricultural communities. Within the Ouachitas lum-
bering also stimulated additional settlements and brisk commercial activity.
At Kosoma, on the Kiamichi River, lumbermen stripped the large pine
timber from the mountain slopes. Rodney, also on the Kiamichi River, had
a large sawmill with a dam and an overshoot waterwheel. Pine timber was
cut near the river and floated to the mill. There were also several other mills
along the river as at Eubanks, Crum Creek, Stanley and Clayton in the
189os. Large quantities of lumber were shipped from these mills by rail to
Kansas City. Logs to supply the mills were hauled from adjacent ridges by
horse and mule teams. The Moyers sawmill used an easily moved narrow
gauge railway.
The Potato Hills, located in the northern part of the Kiamichi drainage
area, were originally covered with a dense stand of pine trees. Tuskahoma,
located on the north bank of the Kiamichi River and near the Potato Hills,
became an important milling center for handling timber from this part of
the Ouachitas. On the south side of the Kiamichi River several sawmills
rough cut logs brought from the northern slopes of Kiamichi Mountain.
Piles of sawdust today are a mute reminder of the once busy mills. This
lumber was hauled by wagon to Tuskahoma. All the lumber brought across
the river, in addition to that cut north of the river in the Potato Hills, was
planed in the large Tuskahoma planing mill.
Portable sawmills were used in the more remote areas in the interior of
the mountains. When timber reserves near a mill had been depleted the
saw could easily be moved to nearby virgin stands. Hauling of either logs
or lumber from remote areas was extremely slow, first by ox teams and later
by mule and horse teams. The largest producers along the line of the St.
Louis-San Francisco Railway in 1893 were the Fort Smith Lumber Com-
pany and the Long-Bell Lumber Company. Long-Bell had mills near where
the Kiamichi River flows onto the coastal plain at Moyers and Antlers.
In the early 189os, after the railroad was constructed along the Kiamichi
River, the Long-Bell mill at Antlers sharply increased production to a daily
output of 100,000 to 150,000 board feet of lumber. The Antlers operation
brought logs to the mill by a io mile long tramway reaching back into the85
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Geography of Oklahoma (Book)
Historical book discussing the geography of Oklahoma, including the climate, physical environment, minerals composition, and the evolving cities and transportation system; the book also contain maps to illustrate the temperature ranges, population, etc. Index starts on page 175.
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Morris, John W. Geography of Oklahoma, book, 1977; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc862898/m1/95/: accessed May 3, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; .