Mountain Pine: A Company Town
Through the years, many athletic contests have occurred between Hot Spring County school teams and the Mountain Pine Red Devils of Garland County. However, many may not know much about Mountain Pine’s fascinating history. In fact, it was the second-largest town in Garland County for about fifty years, from the 1930s through the late 1970s. During that time it was a typical company mill town such as existed during this era throughout the forested South. Established in the late 1920s by Dierks Lumber and Coal Company (later Dierks Forests, Inc.), the town of Mountain Pine remains as the most visible reminder of the Dierks company’s legacy in the upper Ouachita River valley.
Hans, Herman, Peter, and Henry Dierks, sons of German immigrant Peter Henry Dierks, established the “Dierks Brothers Company” in the 1880s. In 1895 the company became Dierks Lumber and Coal Company, which owned and operated numerous lumber yards in Iowa and Nebraska. By 1900, the Dierks brothers owned twenty-four lumber yards in the Midwest. In that year, the company made its first purchase in Arkansas, acquiring a mill in DeQueen.
After that time, the Dierks Lumber and Coal Company experienced tremendous growth, particularly in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Between 1900 and 1930, the company came to operate more than twenty retail lumber yards, built and operated six lumber mills, constructed railroads, acquired at least twelve lumber manufacturing or timber companies, purchased over 1,250,000 acres of land, and implemented some of the first forestry conservation policies in the South. The Dierks family established a lumber dynasty that made their name a household word in the region throughout the twentieth century.
In the 1920s Dierks began to buy up large blocks of timber in the heart of the Ouachita Mountains to supply two new sawmills--one in Arkansas, the other in Oklahoma. Each mill was to have a logging railroad and mill town. Arkansas Power & Light’s plans for a dam on the Ouachita River at Blakely Mountain, approximately one mile northwest of the community of Hawes, presented an appealing opportunity: the dam’s entire reservoir area would need to be completely stripped of trees. Company president Herman Dierks announced in November of 1926, that the company had chosen a site for the new Arkansas facility “close to the reported site of the third hydro-electric dam on the Ouachita River.” Dierks’ purchase of properties in the area not only provided the company with prime timber, but also easy access to the new mill. The company gained relatively easy access to thousands of acres of pine in Blakely Dam’s reservoir area, including some of the finest timber in the Ouachita Mountains.
Work began in January of 1927. Men began clearing ground for the new mill and laid out a town site for workers’ homes. The mill’s projected cost escalated to over $500,000, according to the local news reports.
The new Dierks mill at Mountain Pine became fully operational in 1928 and had a beginning daily capacity of 165,000 board feet. The mill facility covered an area of over fifty acres. The mill initially employed about 350 persons, with another 125 involved in woods or logging work.
The company town of Mountain Pine became a typical mill community. All houses were owned by the company and rented to employees for anywhere from five dollars to twenty dollars per month. A company store, often referred to as “the commissary,” provided food and supplies for the town’s residents. A company doctor provided medical services for employees and their families. Other amenities included a school, church, and theatre.
The Dierks Lumber and Coal Company and its town of Mountain Pine provided jobs and homes for hundreds of people following the mill’s completion in 1928. The phenomenon of the company town was not unusual in the South: even in southwest Arkansas, towns like Graysonia, Rosboro, and Forester, all sprang up around their large mills. Today those communities no longer exist. But the Mountain Pine community has survived through the years, persisting even after the sale of the entire Dierks holdings---including the Mountain Pine facility---to Tacoma, Washington’s Weyerhaeuser Company in 1969.
Weyerhaeuser continued to operate the mill, but the character of the town changed as the company became less involved in the personal lives of the employees: for example, the company offered employees the opportunity to purchase their homes when it sold most of its town assets (except for the mill). The commissary, too, came under private ownership. And, a new school was constructed a few years later, this time outside of the boundaries of the original company town.
Economic downturns and changes in the timber industry resulted in the Mountain Pine mill’s gradual operational slowdown and closure in 2006. At the time, over 300 persons were employed there. A year later, Weyerhaeuser officials deeded several buildings and over 18 acres of land to the City of Mountain Pine. The mill facility was dismantled, not only changing the area’s physical landscape, but also ending the Dierks-Weyerhaeuser eight-decade tenure in the town. The town of Mountain Pine continues today without its mill operation, although Hot Springs Village became Garland County’s second-largest city in the late 1970s.