Madison Journal - Chicago Mill's Veneer Plant

Date submitted: June 16, 2014

Submitted by: Richard P. Sevier

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LIONS CLUB ORGANIZED IN TALLULAH

Madison Journal October 19, 1929

Veneer Plant to be Completed Soon

More Houses Will be Needed for Workers in New Plant

The veneer plant being erected in Tallulah by the Chicago Mill & Lumber Corporation is nearing completion 
and we understand that the company expects to be ready for operation about the middle of December.

When this new plant is put into operation it will mean that about fifty new houses for white and colored 
will be required in Tallulah. It was rumored in town during the week that the company intended putting up 
some of these houses themselves, but this is a mistake. It is not the intention of the company to erect 
any houses and we are told that they will not do so except as a last resort. It seems that some people of 
Tallulah contemplate building houses, but fear that the town will be over built. From present indications 
it appears that there is little chance of this. The Chicago Mill & Lumber Corporation contemplates the 
erection of a box factory soon after the completion of the veneer plant and we are told that such a factory 
requires a lot of employees. In the event that the box factory is erected the requirement for houses will 
be at least two hundred and fifty more. In fact, it is freely predicted that with all of the additions 
contemplated by this firm the population of Tallulah should double within the next few years.

Few people realize the size the plant being erected in Tallulah. A new power plant is being erected and this 
will be housed in two brick buildings, the walls of which are forty feet high. To take care of the boilers 
concrete smokestacks is being erected measuring about thirty-five feet in diameter and two hundred feet high. 
This is being poured at the rate of seven and one-half feet a day and is already up about sixty feet. The 
power plant for the present it to use lumber refuse for fuel, and electric current will be generated with 
steam turbines. Steam turbines are hardly ever used except where a large amount of electricity is desired. 
Practically everything in the new mill will be electrically driven.

At Helena, Arkansas, where this same company has another mill, a pulp board factory is under construction. 
This mill will utilize the refuse from willow and cottonwood to be manufactured into pulp board. Up to the 
present time it has not been possible to make pulp board from hardwoods, but should such a process be 
developed the probability is that such a mill would be erected at Tallulah.

The saw mill proper is the old mill purchased from Kurz Bros., Company. When this mill was first started it 
cut around sixty-five thousand feet of lumber a day. Now they are cutting more and have cut as high as one 
hundred and fifteen thousand feet of lumber. It is a single band mill, but the expansion program of the 
company calls for enlargement of this to a two-band mill.