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The property of the Southern Pine Lumber Company, Fastrill took its name from three men connected with logging in the area: Frank Farrington, postmaster at Diboll, the company headquarters, in the early 1920s; and P. H. Strauss and William Hill, both lumbermen. Fastrill was a company town. All its residents were employees of Southern Pine, which purchased the site in March of 1922. A post office was established in July of that year. Fastrill's residential sections were divided among Anglos, African Americans and Mexican Americans. The company provided a general store which began in a boxcar, a barber shop, cleaning and pressing shop, gas pump, electrical power at certain hours, structures in which to hold worship services, farming equipment and a cannery. The company also supplied extra funding for the public school to operate on a nine-month year. At the height of Fastrill's production, the town had a population of 600. The monthly payroll to employees was $30,000 divided among 200 loggers. They cut and shipped 50,000,000 feet of logs annually. During the Depression era, the company operated at least two days a week, keeping Fastrill's citizens from unemployment. By 1941 most of the timber owned by Southern Pine in this area was exhausted. The post office was discontinued in September, and the company closed the town. When the men finished their final workday, they were instructed to take the train to Diboll, where they found their families had been relocated to new homes. Once the largest and longest-lived of the southern Pine Lumber Company's towns, Fastrill quickly disappeared. Two graves are all that remain of twenty-one years of settlement and human habitation on this site. (1999) |
