L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company

Dantzler Lumber Company began as a small sawmill owned by William Griffin in Moss Point, Mississippi.

Dantzler had a larger sawmill constructed along the Escatawpa River at Moss Point, and it began operation in 1885.

[5] The sawmill's Moss Point location was well situated for receiving logs that were rafted down the Pascagoula and Escatawpa Rivers and their tributaries.

But in order to access their inland timber-holdings, the company built a railroad from Vancleave, Mississippi, northwest into what would become Stone County.

[2] In addition to sawmills, the Dantzler family owned naval store operations, a marine towing business, a ship building and dry docks company, a foundry and machine works company, a brick kiln, a mill for producing shingles, and a factory for making window sashes and blinds.

[7] In 1911, the Dantzler's began construction of a paper mill in Moss Point to make use of waste slabs from their sawmills.

[8] As the supply of virgin timber declined in the 1920s, the Dantzler Lumber Company gradually ended its use of railroad logging.

By the early 1940s, the company had begun selectively cutting their timber to extend their reserve of larger trees.

[10] In 1949, Dantzler Lumber Company ended all company-owned logging and mill operations, entered the business of tree farming, and began selling their timber on a selective basis so as to yield a variety of wood products: poles, pilings, sawlogs, and pulpwood.