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The Hines Company built a much larger sawmill where the Carre mill had once stood on the banks of Jordan River and extended the Carre railroad to Lumberton, over 40 miles away, where they had another big mill. The railroad was chartered as a regular railroad. Passenger and freight services were operated from Lumberton to Kiln over the new road. Hines had big logging camps at Gum Pond in the northeast part of Pearl River County to log the sawmill at Lumberton and at Barth in the southeast corner of Pearl River County to log the Kiln mill.
Over 300 men were employed in the big new mill at Kiln and many more in the logging operations. For about 17 years Kiln was an important business community. There was a company store there with a tremendous inventory and several smaller stores belonging to independent merchants. A 50 room hotel was built with a big dining room to feed many people. There was a moving picture show, and a modern school building was erected. Where people had formerly had to go by boat to Bay St. Louis and other points, good roads were built to Bay St. Louis, to the east of Kiln and the road to Picayune was greatly improved. At the peak of the business activity at Kiln there were approximately 1000 homes in the area.
With the Hines timber exhausted the mill at Kiln shut down February 4, 1930. Kiln went down much like a punctured balloon. There were many people there but no payrolls. Some of the people moved away but many stayed on because they had come to like the place—it was home. Some got jobs along the coast and drove back and forth daily to their work.
Too far away from markets to farm and with the land all covered in fine growth of pine timber, practically all the people in the entire area around Kiln had, since the beginning of the settlement by whites, earned their livelihood from timber-turpentining, lumbering, piling, poles and the shipment of wood and charcoal. Now with the timber all gone what were they going to do? As stated many got jobs and worked away from home while others in the general area became engaged in the production of “shinny”—home made whiskey. By far the greater number of the people were law abiding and took no
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Kiln Hines-Company-Kiln
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