The Union Saw Mill company was the creation of experienced timber men in St. Louis, Missouri and Lufkin, Texas. Incorporated in Arkansas, its stockholders first met in December 1902 in Little Rock. Clarence Dean Johnson (1866-1940) of St. Louis was elected president and general manager and Edwin Ambrose Frost (1869-1950) of Lufkin was elected vice president. The name of the company probably derived from the location of most of the timber: Union County, Arkansas and Union Parish, Louisiana.

C.D. Johnson left the company in 1918 and began investing in Oregon timber. In 1925 the Union Saw Mill became part of E.A. Frost’s Frost Lumber Industries of Shreveport, Louisiana. E.A. Frost died in 1950 and in 1952 Frost Lumber Industries was sold to Olin Industries of East Alton, Illinois. The sale included the Union Saw Mill, its railroad and 250,000 acres of timberland. In 1974 Olin—which had become Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation—spun off its wood products division headquartered in West Monroe, Louisiana. The division, called “Olinkraft,” included the Huttig saw mill. In 1979 Manville Corporation of Denver Colorado purchased Olinkraft and made it part of Manville Forest Products Corporation. In 1991 the name was changed to Riverwood International Corporation. In 1996 Plum Creek Timber Company of Seattle, Washington purchased Riverwood and in 2000 Plum Creek sold the Huttig saw mill to West Fraser Timber Company of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Plum Creek kept the timberland. In 2016 Plum Creek merged with Weyerhaeuser Company.

Union Saw Mill’s first pine mill began operating in 1904. By 1910 a second pine mill had been added. Fires destroyed each of the mills and the company replaced them with one new sawmill in 1934. The company also operated a box factory from the 1920s through the 1940s. The Huttig sawmill was thoroughly overhauled by Olin in the 1950s and a plywood mill was added in 1971. The plywood mill operated until 1988. In 2004 West Fraser completed a comprehensive modernization of the mill.

Logs for the Huttig mill were harvested from thousands of acres of timberland the company purchased, and from independent contractors. At first the company sold its land once the timber was harvested, but by the 1920s the Union Saw Mill was keeping cut-over land and managing it for future yield. The company leased some of its land for oil and gas exploration.

The Union Saw Mill used the Ouachita River and various rail lines to move logs to the mill and lumber to markets. Rail connections northward—from nearby Felsenthal into El Dorado—were accounted for when the first mill was built. Union Saw Mill stockholders (listed in contract 9) invested in the Little Rock & Monroe Railway Company in order to complete a 41-mile line south from Felsenthal to Monroe, Louisiana. In 1905 the Union Saw Mill sold that line to the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company.

The Union Saw Mill company created the Louisiana & Pine Bluff Railway for its own needs. The Louisiana & Pine Bluff had its own locomotives, logging cars, and crews and built spur lines out into company forests.

In 1903 the Union Saw Mill company began construction of a town next to the mill site. The town was named after C.H. Huttig, one of the St. Louis investors. Within two years Huttig had streets, water and electricity, schools, churches, a store, hotel, ice house, meat market, and hundreds of houses. In time a peach orchard, cotton gin, newspaper, bank, community house, bowling alley, skating rink, and movie theater were added. Some of these additions were owned by outsiders but all were sanctioned by the company. A hospital was constructed and company employees were required to contribute to the Huttig Welfare Association which paid for medical and dental services. Residential areas for Black and white workers were separated by a 25-acre reservoir. Huttig remained a company town until the 1950s when Olin Industries sold its town properties. Residents of nearby Felsenthal were fundamentally connected to Huttig and its institutions.

Union Saw Mill workers organized in the 1930s and by the 1940s were represented by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Local 2660. In time, contracts were negotiated by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Local 2346.

Frank W. Scott (1877-1954) was a major player in Union Saw Mill operations for more than three decades. He served first as secretary-treasurer, then vice president, and beginning in 1931, president. Scott managed the construction of the railroads, the town, and the mills. He oversaw the entire operation until the late 1930s when his health began to fail. Scott represented the company in various state organizations. He was elected president of the Associated Industries of Arkansas and the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce. And he chaired the Arkansas Centennial Commission.

Fred H. Wilson followed Scott as manager of Union Saw Mill and ran the company until it was sold to Olin Industries.

Others who supervised various aspects of the operation included: W.F. Addison, W.H. Lee, and E.M. Thornton, forestry; A.W. Corkins, T.T. Pharis, J.S. Montgomery, and W.A. Shields, plant superintendents; D.M. Clowney, store manager; C. Howard, purchasing agent and office manager; G.C. Pyle and W.E. Moore, logging superintendents; F.W. Mulkey, bookkeeper; and A.G. Stephenson, cashier of the First National Bank of Huttig.