Wildhurst

Wildhurst was a logging community on Farm Road 1911 and the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway one mile north of Forest in southern Cherokee County. The settlement grew up around a lumber mill owned by Milton A. Smith, who moved the mill there from Chronister before 1900, when the mill was purchased by Dallas merchants Joe Lipshure (Lipshitz), his son Louis, and his son-in-law A. Harris. Lipshure hired Sam Littlejohn of Tyler to run the mill, and together they expanded and improved the operation. The sawmill was enlarged, a planing mill was added, and a commissary and mill pond were built. Within a short time a small settlement grew up around the mill. About three-fourths of the workmen were Black, and in addition to houses for the White managers and foremen there was a Black quarter with a number of houses and a dance hall. Other Black workers lived in nearby Sweet Union. During the second and third decades of the twentieth century the community had a public school and a Methodist church. The population in 1940 was 200, but Wildhurst declined rapidly after the mill closed in 1944. The mill, commissary, and houses were sold and moved, and by 1990 only two of the original houses remained. A thick forest now covers much of the area.