Weirgate
by Jonnie Miller
On September 2, 1918, the Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company began operation in what became Wiergate in Newton County on Little Cow Creek. Before that this site was Field's Mill around 1847. The mill was owned by the Wiers who produced the beautiful long-leaf yellow pine trees in the largest sawmill in Texas at the time. At its peak Wiergate had between 2,000 and 2,500 people in the town area.
The mill operated for 25 years. While it was in operation the company provided many conveniences for its employees and their families. Churches were erected (Baptist and Methodist). Schools were built, and a super company store or commissary was established. Residents could buy almost anything they needed there. It was very much like a modern department store. There was a meat market at one end and a drug store at the other. People could buy groceries, rocking chairs, axes, cast iron cook stoves and just about anything else in the state, even coffins. The lumber company would pay off a worker in cash any time he wanted it and workers who'd been around a while had no trouble getting credit at the store. Besides the commissary there were clubs and organizations, recreational activities such as a movie theater and two swimming pools. There was a train depot, a hotel, post office, barber shop, machine shop, cleaning and pressing shop, ice house, and an office building. Wiergate at one time supported two doctors who mostly worked from the back of the drugstore even though there was a doctor's office.
The town was built on three hills-the hill in the center was for houses for whites, black workers' houses were on one side and Mexican workers on the other. All three groups were invited to attend the three nights a week movies but were separated by seating and entrances. The mill manager sat with each group one might a week and morale was very high.
Water was free but rent and electricity were not. Rent was about $6 a month and electricity was .25 a drop (per light bulb).
Before the lumberjacks arrived turpentine workers drew resin from the trees. The resin was turned into turpentine at a mill near Wiergate.
One of the doctors who lived and practiced in Wiergate recounts his time there in the Newton County History Center's book Crosscuts. Dr. LeRoy Baird, M.D., who had just completed his internship at Bellevue Hospital in New York City talks about his first impression of Wiergate. It was a beauty of a town in the middle of hills and trees. There were no phones, no plumbing, and no garbage collection and Al Nolan was the only lawman.
Doctors were on their own in Wiergate, no help from X-rays and laboratories. New drug discoveries such as Eli Lilly's pneumonia serum which was developed in horses could be as much a hazard as a help. One of the doctor's patients almost died when she had an asthmatic reaction to it.
Dr. Baird remembered the night he delivered a baby in the dark because the wind blew out the kerosene lamp just at the most inopportune time. He also talked about delivering a 16 lb. baby. He claimed to have delivered at least 2,000 babies in the 12 years he was there. Dr. Baird volunteered for service in the Army Medical Corps in 1941 and was shipped overseas during World War II. He never returned to Wiergate but has fond memories of the town and the people.
The last log in the Wier Long Leaf Lumber Co. went through the big mill on Christmas Day of 1942. Wiergate was the last of the big mills to cut nothing but virgin timber. The former mill workers had no trouble finding work elsewhere. A few stayed on and when the Wiergate Lumber Co. opened a smaller mill a few years later, there was still a town at the site.