The Babcock Lumber Company was founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1887 and conducted logging operations in the eastern United States.
Today the company has two main divisions: hardwood lumber manufacturing and wholesale building material distribution.
In 1897, with the purchase of 6,900 acres (28 km2) of land and choice hardwood timber in Ashtola, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, Edward, with the help of his two brothers Fred R. (known as F.R.)
Now approaching the turn of the century, the employees of Babcock and Company rode cable cars to work, paying 5¢ in fare.
After this, Babcock founded and constructed the first completely integrated Yellow Pine plant in Miller County, Georgia.
Beginning in 1907, Babcock's operations out of Davis began clear cutting the mountain ridges throughout Tucker County, West Virginia.
By 1910, fires burned continuously — in some areas for years on end, from spring until the first snows — leaving little other than thin mineral soil and bare rock.
As a result, top soils that once produced huge timbers on the mountainside — including the largest tree ever harvested in West Virginia, a white oak some 13 feet in diameter just 10 feet from the ground — washed down into the narrow valleys and bottom lands, which had always been too narrow for harvesting productive crops or livestock.
With the simultaneous operation of these mills, Babcock Lumber Company was producing and shipping more than 1,000 carloads of hardwood per month.