Sondra Hernandez Staff writer October 20, 2024

Industries including sawmills and the railroads laid the foundation for Montgomery County’s future in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

Around these hubs of business, communities like Fostoria, Waukegan, Oklahoma, Danville and Karen developed in the county. In their heyday, they were developing communities where the residents lived, worked, shopped, went to school and attended worship. 

Now in some cases, only a historical marker remains of the once bustling town. Here’s what to know about some of Montgomery County’s “ghost towns.”

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Fostoria 

Location: The intersection of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway and Texas 105 between Conroe and Cleveland. 

From the turn of the century up through 1957, Foster Lumber Company enjoyed a productive and progressive existence.

The mill town of Fostoria developed around the mill and its residents often led an idyllic life, some workers spending their entire careers at Foster Lumber Co.

And while there’s little left of the town, the memories live on in the lives of the residents, in photos and in a historical account produced by historian Kay Mayer Dawes called “Fostoria: The Rise and Fall of a Texas Mill Town.”

The Foster family owned 24 lumber yards across the country, according to Dawes’ research. Montgomery County’s plentiful timbers caught the Fosters’ eye and by 1894, the company acquired land in East Montgomery County.

According to the Texas State Historical Association, between 1910 and 1920 the population was reportedly 1,000, most of whom were employed in the mill. In 1941, the mill produced 20 million board feet of lumber and was one of the largest providers of Southern pine in the United States.

Tenant houses were built and a whole town emerged with schools, churches, a store, hotel and more. The only thing not run by the mill was the post office. A highlight of Fostoria life was the baseball team the Fostoria Lumberjacks, a popular team with a rivalry with the Strake Wildcats.

As the timber supply dwindled, the mill closed in June 1957 and the town withered away as the company homes were sold off mostly to employees. Cleveland-area photographer Moon Young captured the town in images prior to its demise. 

Karen

Location: Southwestern Montgomery County on FM 149 

Karen’s existence too is related to a sawmill. According to Texas State Historical Association information, a post office was established in Karen in 1909 and remained in service until 1921. The postmaster, John H. Bauer named the community after his daughter, Karen. 

Its highest population was 40 residents with the Bauer sawmill, a telephone connection and a wood dealer. Today the Magnolia Reserve community is near Karen and The Meekermark wedding venue is off of Karen-Switch Road. 

Oklahoma

Location: Off FM 2978 in South Montgomery County

Also in the Magnolia area, is the Oklahoma settlement. According to the Heritage Museum of Montgomery County, the story goes a Mr. Sanders told a Mr. Leslie that he was moving to Oklahoma. In actuality, Mr. Sanders did not make it out of Montgomery County. He called the place where he stopped Oklahoma Settlement. 

Around 1880,  local farmers constructed the first Oklahoma Community School. The one-room structure functioned both as a school house and church. A cemetery adjacent to the site was started sometime later, and the earliest marked graves date to the 1890s.

In 1944, the students at Oklahoma began attending Magnolia ISD. The Oklahoma Community School received a Texas Historical Marker in 2003. Oklahoma Cemetery was named a Texas Historic Cemetery in 2001. Today the old school is a community center for the area. 

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Danville 

Location: 5 miles northwest of the present-day town of Willis

According to a narrative by late Montgomery County historian William Harley Gandy, Danville had its beginning not long after the town of Montgomery, because in the Telegraph and Texas Register of April 8, 1846, it was listed as one of the towns of Montgomery County for election returns of that year.

A Texas Historical Marker lists its founding year in 1840 as a trade center. The town was named by Samuel and Joseph Lindley, who moved there from Danville, Illinois in 1830. 

Jonathan Lindley, a Danville man, died in the Alamo battle March 6, 1836.

At peak, the town had 15 businesses, several churches and good schools. In the 1870s the town residents did not want the Houston & Great Northern railway to come through town and the town lost residents to nearby new town Willis. 

The Sheperd Hill Cemetery and the Danville historical marker are all that remain of the community. The New Danville community on Sheperd Hill Road serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and is named for the old Danville community. 

Waukegan 

Location: On the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railway seven miles east of Conroe in eastern Montgomery County

According to the Texas State Historical Association, around 1892 the Caruthers family arrived in the area and established a general store. They eventually constructed a sawmill, planing mill and large lumberyard.

By 1914, Waukegan had a depot, boarding house, telephone exchange, recreation hall, several shops and a population of 200. As was common at the time, larger mills like the Keystone Mill had its own commissary where goods could be purchased with Keystone Mills “chits and checks.”

The post office closed in 1928 and the schools were consolidated with Conroe ISD.

Only a battered sign along the railroad tracks, a road with the name and memories remain of the once-bustling sawmill community.

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