The Nona Mills Lumber Company

Nona Mills never built a company town. It housed its people in Leesville itself, brought many of its mill hands from Beaumont, and built one church for its white Methodist workers and another for its Black Baptist workers. When the panic of 1907 closed mills across the South, it cut hours but kept every employee working. And when the pine ran out in the 1920s and 1930s and other firms abandoned their towns, most Nona families stayed. The mill's old office, its manager G. R. Ferguson's house and bookkeeper H. T. Booker's house still stand.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kisatchie National Forest: Longleaf Vista — 28 mi
  A free ridge-top overlook and 1.5-mile loop above the 8,700-acre Kisatchie Hills Wilderness on the Longleaf Trail Scenic Byway, in the forest Caroline Dormon helped win in 1930.

More markers nearby

• Great Louisiana Maneuvers — 0.3 mi
• Vernon Parish Courthouse — 0.3 mi
• Vernon Parish Founders — 0.3 mi
• Life Along The Sabine River — 0.7 mi