Call

Call is at the intersection of Farm roads 1004 and 1013, on the Newton-Jasper county line forty-five miles northeast of Beaumont. The town was founded by George Adams, who named it after a business associate, Dennis Call. The two had joined M. T. Jones in 1890 to form the Cow Creek Tram Company, which established a sawmill at Call in 1895. Two years later Adams bought out his partners and leased the mill to the Industrial Lumber Company, of Beaumont. John Henry Kirby acquired the Call mill in 1901. In 1906 the Orange and Northwestern Railway was completed, linking Call with Newton, Buna, and Orange. The mill and the Call school were both in Jasper County. The Call post office, established in 1896, burned in 1906 and was reestablished in a new location. Call had a baseball team and hosted Chautauqua performances during the early twentieth century. Fire destroyed the pine mill in 1924, but a hardwood plant was rebuilt to replace the earlier structure. The mill closed during the Great Depression, forcing an estimated one-third of the community's inhabitants to leave. It subsequently reopened, only to close again in 1953. In 1937 oil was discovered six miles south of Call on land owned by the Peavy-Moore Lumber Company. The Call oilfield had one producing well with an output of 3,600 barrels in 1938. By 1942 the well had been abandoned. The community has survived its economic setbacks, although its estimated population fell from 250 in 1936 to 170 in the early 1970s. It still recorded a population of 170 in 2000.