Great Southern Lumber Company

The Great Southern Lumber Company was chartered in 1902 to harvest and market the virgin longleaf pine (Pinus palustris L.) forests in southeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi.

During the latter half of the 19th century, brothers Frank H. and Charles W. Goodyear amassed great wealth by investing in timberlands, lumber mills, coal, and railroads in Pennsylvania and New York.

[1] The secret to their lumber company success was in buying up large tracts of timberland that were considered inaccessible for harvest, because the lands were isolated, away from streams that were normally used to transport cut logs to sawmills.

[2] Between 1901 and 1905, the brothers invested $9 million to purchase 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) of virgin yellow pine timberland in Louisiana and Mississippi near the southern end of the Pearl River.

[7] Once pines were felled, logs were dragged to railroad spurs by rail-mounted steam skidders with 1000-ft (300-m) draglines, loaded onto flatcars, and transported to the sawmill.

[7] Waste material was either converted into boxes, staves, shingles, and lathes or transported to a boiler room for generating steam and electric power to run the mill.

[7] Ten years after the sawmill began operating, the board of directors of Great Southern Lumber Company authorized construction of a paper mill that used the sulfate chemical process for converting wood into pulp.

[4] Early in the 20th century, many timber companies had the philosophy of cut out and get out[13]—a logging technique that removed all merchantable trees and left a barren landscape.

In contrast, the Great Southern Lumber Company was one of the pioneers in reforestation in the South[4] and established a tree nursery that grew pine seedlings for restocking their cutover lands.