History of Springhill & the Lumberjack Festival

The families of William Farmer, Samuel Monzingo, J.A. Byrnes, and Joseph Murrell were the first persons to live in the area that is now the city of Springhill. These men, and others, homesteaded the land in the late 1850's.

This was a typical farming community until 1894. In that year, the Bodcaw Lumber Company began buying up land for a sawmill. This company, incorporated under the laws of Arkansas, had William Buchanan as its president, J.A. Buchanan, W.F. Ferguson, J.G. Ferguson, W.C. Brown, T.A. Brown, J.R. Brown, and Marshall Northcutt were other members of the company.

The first land purchase was from J.A. Byrnes in July of 1894.

In 1896, the sawmill operation was begun with approximately 50 employees. The company contracted for the building 25 houses for the workers in the area west of the mill. This area is still referred to locally as "Sawmill Town"

This was the humble beginning of what was to become Louisiana's northern-most industrial city.

The community informally adopted the name of Piney Woods and a Mrs. Maxwell, wife of one of the construction workers, was given the honor of naming the town. Since there were so many men working in bare feet, she selected Barefoot as a suitable name.

Mrs. A.B. Rowland, in a letter, has given a vivid account of those early days. "I landed in Barefoot Station in November of 1896. It was on the L&A right-of-way one mile south of the state line. A grading crew was camping in tents. The L&A tracks lacked about five miles reaching here at that time, but were soon laid. The Pine Woods Lumber Company sent George Harris as general manager and J.F. Giles as secretary and commissary manager, to begin building a sawmill. I was present when Mr. Giles pulled the sign, Barefoot Station, from the store door and wrote Springhill on the reverse side and nailed it up again. That was a few days before Christmas, 1896."