Zavalla Worked With Pine Resin, Drilling Clay, and Tung Oil

At the junction of U.S. 69 and State Highway 63, Zavalla began as Zavalla Prairie. The community was established on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad in 1900. Amos Hodge opened a sawmill by 1901 to cut nearby longleaf pine. More sawmills followed, along with Benton McMillan's turpentine camp and rail shipments of wood products. Cotton, livestock, and farming shared the early economy, but the railroad gave forest products a way out.

By 1928, Zavalla was the center of the Texas naval stores business. The old term covers products drawn from conifers, including tar, pitch, turpentine, and rosin. This was another way to work the same woods. Logs became lumber; pine resin became products with uses far beyond the forest.

In the 1930s, Xact Clays began turning local clay into drilling mud for oil wells. Another experiment took root nearby: a tung orchard, grown for an oil used in furniture polish and lacquer. By 1936, the orchard was producing. In one small Piney Woods town, the working material shifted from longleaf logs to resin, drilling clay, and tree oil. Zavalla kept finding another product in the ground and woods around it.