Carbur

[ logging community, post office (1915 - 1950 see Salem) & school site ]

Carbur was established about 1915 as a joint logging venture by the Carpenter-Obrien Company (which Brooks-Scanlon aquired in 1917) and the Burton-Swartz Cypress Company, hence the name.

Carbur was on a 640 acre track of land. Carbur was said to be the world's largest logging camp.

Carbur had about 1,000 homes for the employees, a doctor's office and clinic, a large commissary, a hotel, boarding houses, railroad station and freight depot, a moving picture show, schools, machine shop and logging equpment.

The black community had a church that was used alternately by the Methodist and the Baptists. The church was also used as the black school.

The whites had a Methodist and Holiness churches. Much of the community life revolved around the churches.

There was a hotel and nearby the "Bullpen" where the bachelors lived. The Carbur Mercantile Company provided food, clothing, vital necessities, and a drug store. The nearby farmers delivered produce, pork sausage, and other edibles on Saturday. Each morning, the mercatile clerk and the clerk from Winchester, would come by to take orders and the orders were delivered  to their homes. Movies were shown on Saturday night.

There were two streets in the village seperated by a vacant space. One section was for the colored people and the other for the white. Neither of the streets was paved. Both had board walks. The houses were painted and had fences. They had sewer connections. The school was small. The commissary handles little but necessities.

In Winchester, there was a garage to service the growing number of cars that traveled the road connecting Carbur to Perry.

Sim Parker was a cattleman in the area west of Carbur and Salem. For many years he drove a school bus to the Carbur School.

S. L. Walker's family moved to Taylor County and spent his early years on Fish Creek. Later he taught at Sand Hill, Stephensville, Carbur, Cabbage Grove and Pleasant Grove.

W. H. Denmark grew up on a farm but went to work in the turpentine business. Hunter worked as woods rider for Blair & Hinely in their Perry establishment. Later he was with Alston Brown at Blue Creek where convicts were utilized. Later still he was postmaster at Carbur.

George W. Whitfield was a farmer in early life, but became interested in the lumber business and he engaged in logging operations at Townsend and Carbur.

Article from The Taylor County Herald, Sept. 8, 1916 - E. P. Rentz of the Rentz Lumber Company of Carbur, was in town Friday in the interest of his firm.

From notes by June Parker McLeod: The Carbur School started off as a one-room school with the first teacher a Miss Williams. Later the school became a two story buiding.

Carbur School was in the Carbur logging community. The town was out on a 640 acre track of land.

Mr. Wentworth spent four years from 1926 to 1930 as school principal. During this time the enrollment ran from 225 to 300. The Carbur Senior High School was state accredited in 1927 for the next four years.

White City

White City was a settlement, recalled by Alton Wentworth, located further down the road from Carbur.

Palmetto Heights

Palmetto Heights was a settlement located down the road from Carbur according to Alton Wentworth.

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Dead City of Carbur once an important Logging Camp

There are cities all over the world that have had their periods of birth , life and death and many have had colorful histories. America has more of these than all the rest of the world, despite the fact that it is relatively new to civilization compared to Europe and Asia. Most of America’s dead cities are those in areas where a particular industry brought them into being and maintained their life until the industry no longer existed. The most notable of these are of course, the dead gold mining cities of Colorado, Nevada and Montana, but they are by no means the only ones.

STILLS NUMEROUS

They exist right here in our community. There was once a time when the dense woods abounded in turpentine stills, so numerous, say the old timers, that they had to be designated by letter or number rather than by name. Then of course there were the huge logging camps, said to have been the largest in the world. There was Scanlon, Agnes, Tide City, Hampton Springs, but probably the greatest of them all was Carbur, where 1500 people lived at one time and where every day of the week for years, a full trainload of logs pulled out for Eastport, near Jacksonville where the logs were sawed. Carbur stood about one mile south of the Highway Zoo on Road 19, and half a mile to the east.

At the time there were 600 miles of standard gauge railroad lines forming a network through the woods. It took 8 section crews to maintain these tracks and 16 locomotives worked out of Carbur only. Today they are gone with the wind, for the big timber companies finally cut out the timber they considered fit for their use and suspended operations, which doomed Carbur and along with it many other smaller camps.

There is a story that the high school at Carbur once had 4 graduates but S. L. Walker, still living here at one time taught school in Carbur and he says they never had anything higher than a Junior High School and he doubts if there were even 64 that finished there at one time.

$20,000 Payroll

Nevertheless, it was for years a camp of intense activity and the payroll ran to $20,000 per week for many years. The story is told that in those days everyone seemed to have plenty of money and those who went there to collect, often came back with many thousands of dollars. This huge circulation of money naturally produced good times.

Strange as it seems, none of this started until 1914, and at first there were two companies operating – the Carpenter-O’Brien Company and Burton-Swartz. The latter cut only cypress and the former cut only pine. It was the pine that was shipped to Eastport, while the cypress was sawed in Perry.

During this time that logging was going on, the turpentine operations were also and they would usually start in at an estimated three years ahead of the cutters and move forward as the cutters moved. Countless thousands of barrels of gum were shipped out each year. The companies that owned the land took a 33 1/3 percent of the total gross take from the turpentine operations, yet, despite this extraordinary rental, it must have been a paying proposition for the turpentine operations.

COMPANIES MERGED

There had been constant misunderstandings between the two main companies and in 1922 they decided to pool their activities and the Brooks-Scanlon Company bought out Carpenter-O’Brien and thereafter it was known as the Carbur Logging Company.

Nothing could survive