Fullerton, a Lumber Mill turned Ghost Town

Over ten five-foot tall footings that once supported the sawmill at Fullerton, Vernon Parish, Louisiana rise from the forest floor of the KIsatchie National Forest.

People tend to think of Louisiana as a place with swamps and bayous, New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. But the state has a very diverse landscape, and during the first half of the 20th century, it was a hot-spot for the timber industry. Temporary "timber towns" owned by companies and serviced by railroads popped up all over amid virgin forests with spring-fed and clear streams. These towns towns didn't last for very long, as the leaving deforestation and environmental damage in their wake. The once-substantial town of Fullerton in Vernon Parish is one such lumber mill site that became a ghost town within less than three decades' time.

In 1906, the Gulf Lumber Company, headed by a man named S.H. Fullerton, purchased tens of thousands of acres of old-growth pine and deciduous forest in Vernon Parish to begin a massive logging operation. The company laid out two towns -- one for whites and one for blacks-- to surround the sawmill, which was built to be the largest mill west of the Mississippi River. By 1907, the mill opened and operated "day and night" to ship logs all over the country. The town had a swimming pool, hotel, schools, and modern amenities like electricity and plumbing. The buildings were mainly made of concrete, which led to a feeling of permanence. But that was just a ploy, because by 1927, all of this ceased to exist. As the acreage had been completely deforested, the Gulf Lumber Company shuttered the mill. The town held on a little while longer but without work, eventually most of the inhabitants left.

This is what famed photographer Dorothea Lange encountered when she visited Fullerton in July of 1937. Tasked with visually documenting the stories of people's economic stories for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, Lange came to Fullerton and met only two people who lived among the concrete ruins of the lumber mill. The mill itself still hovered over the denuded and silted landscape, but was slowly deteriorating into the forest floor.

That's kind of what I witnessed when I visited Fullerton in 2025. The town site and the surrounding lands have since been purchased by the federal government and now sit among two major installations -- Fort Polk, an active military base, and the Kisatchie National Forest, where better management is returning the land back to its semi-original state. Old Fullerton is in ruins, with the concrete shells of the former sawmill, the school, and the hotel peaking out from the forest floor. Rangers stage control burns to stop the overgrowth from completely swallowing this really interesting ghost town along the shore of Fullerton Lake.

If you'd like to visit the ruins of Fullerton, go to Vernon Parish and visit the Lake Recreation Complex.

Dorothea Lange photographed what was left of the sawmill in 1937 for the Farm Security Administration (LOC).

A basement with stairs -- hotel or school? -- in Fullerton.

An interesting ruin, maybe from the mechanism from one of the saws, at the sawmill leftovers in Fullerton.

Most of the sawmill is leveled, but an upright, concrete room still stands among the trees.

This looks like a grave with bones, but it's a trough with a turtle shell. Sadly, the turtle must have fallen in can couldn't get back out.