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Long
before U.S. Highway 59 became the principal highway from East
Texas to Houston and
the Gulf Coast,
Highway 35 ran along a route just west of 59, passing through the
center of towns like Livingston,
Lufkin and Diboll.
Highway 35 had its inception in 1915 when W.L.West, the publisher
of the Polk County Enterprise at Livingston,
used his editorial pages to urge East
Texas counties to build a good road from Lufkin
to Houston.
He helped organize a meeting of East
Texas counties to form the “Lufkin-Livingston-Houston Highway
Association,” a group whose efforts led to the building of Highway
35.
Those who remember Highway 35 also recall an unusual two-story log
hotel at Diboll--the
Antlers, built by Southern Pine Lumber Company and opened on
October 28, 1939.
The Antlers not only provided guest lodging for Southern Pine’s customers,
but was a popular stop for travelers on Highway 35.
The Antlers’ name probably came from the numerous racks of deer horns
adorning the hotel’s interior. Later, the hotel was known simply as
“The Inn.”
The hotel housed a restaurant that was as popular as the old hotel.
As a boy growing up in Diboll,
I was fascinated by the hotel and held a part-time job running the
movie projector at Shirley Daniels’ Timberland Theater across the
street from the hotel.
After each night’s movie, I ate a toasted cheese sandwich at the Antlers
and walked down Highway 35 to our home a few blocks south of the hotel.
Last Christmas, my wife Doris surprised me with a beautiful painting
of the Antlers by Charles Becker, a gifted Lufkin
artist. Unwrapping the gift resurrected a flood of memories from the
1950s.
The Antlers came to an unhappy end in the 1950’s when termites, rats
and rotting logs made it impossible to maintain. Southern Pine had
no choice except to burn it down.
The afternoon the building burned, hundreds of Dibollians stood watching
the fire, tears streaming down their faces. Older Dibollians still
recall “the day the town cried.”
Photos of the Antlers remain, but few of them have the impact of Charles
Becker’s wonderful painting of an East
Texas landmark.
Bob Bowman's East Texas November
8, 2009 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright Bob Bowman |
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