Carmona

Carmona is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 287 and Farm Road 1872, ninety miles northwest of Beaumont in northwestern Polk County. It was named for Juan Carmona, on whose 1833 land grant it was located when it was established as a farming community in the 1850s. With the construction of the Trinity and Sabine Railway through northern Polk County in 1882, new interests came seeking to reap the harvests of the area's rich timber reserves. A sawmill, owned by the William Cameron Lumber Company, was built at Carmona in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1894 the Carmona post office was established; by 1897 Carmona was listed as a stop on the railroad, then owned by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line. The Cameron sawmill burned in 1914, and another logging establishment was set up a mile south of Carmona, at a site known as Ragley or Saner Junction. The newer mill, operated by the Saner-Ragley Lumber Company, was expanded in 1934 but ended operations sometime after 1943. The old mill sites are now farm and ranch land. Population changes reflect the rise and decline of the local lumber industry, falling from an estimated 500 in 1925 to 200 in the late 1940s. Early 1970s estimates set the population at fifty, where it remained through 2000.