Diboll

Diboll, on U.S. Highway 59 three miles north of the Neches River in southern Angelina County, was founded in 1894 when Thomas Lewis Latane Temple built a sawmill on the Houston, East and West Texas Railway. Temple came to East Texas in 1893, purchased 7,000 acres of pine timberland from J. C. Diboll, and began operation of his sawmill at Diboll in June 1894 under the name Southern Pine Lumber Company. By 1908 Temple had added a second sawmill at Diboll and enlarged his timberland holdings to 209,313 acres. In its early days Diboll was a company town. Many of its homes, built from lumber produced by the Southern Pine mills, were owned by the lumber company and rented to employees. Between the early 1900s and the 1950s the lumber company also maintained a large commissary, which included a drugstore, a post office, a grocery, and a feed store. Adjoining were doctors' offices, the railroad station, and lumber company offices. Diboll received a post office in 1897 with William P. Rutland as postmaster. The town's first school opened in 1894.