His business ventures would help establish Orange, Texas, as the timber-processing capital of the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Realizing the profit potential of lumber sales and cattle-buying, the two partners moved to Texas in 1877 and expanded their business onto the bank of the Sabine River.

The city of Orange was chosen by the partners, primarily due to the proximity to the nearby tracts of land with enormous pine trees, and the ability to use the river to transport the lumber to the markets.

To transport the timber, he built approximately 100 miles (160 km) of tram road known as the Gulf, Sabine and Red River Railroad.

During the 1880s, Lutcher purchased a fifty square-mile (130 km2) tract of virgin cypress swamp near the Mississippi River, and in 1889, he built a sawmill in St. James Parish at a town that was named after him.