Village Mills

Village Mills, also called Long Station, is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 69/287 and Farm Road 3063, forty-two miles north of Beaumont in northern Hardin County. It is named for nearby Village Creek. The first town lots appeared in the Hardin County tax rolls in 1882. By 1883 the Village Mill Company was also in operation, using the recently completed Sabine and East Texas Railroad to ship its lumber products out of the area. A post office was also established that year. Village Mills grew quickly, becoming Hardin County's largest town, with a population of 800, by 1890. In 1895 the mill broke world records by sawing 255,403 board feet of lumber in eleven hours with a single circular saw. The Kirby Lumber Company acquired the Village Mills Lumber Company and its 10,000 acres of land in 1902 for around $60,000. In 1907 annual production at the Kirby plant at Village Mills was 16,992,000 board feet. The mill's closing in the early 1930s severely tested the local economy. The population, set at over 300 in the early 1900s, fell to eighty by the mid-1940s, but in 1945 the discovery of nearby deposits of oil and natural gas revitalized the town. Thirty-one wells were sunk at the Village Mills fields over the next twenty-five years; seventeen remained in production in 1984. The construction of Wildwood Resort City two miles west of Village Mills has also provided a stimulus for growth. By 1972 the estimated population had risen to 300, where it remained in 1990. The population reached 1,700 in 2000.