It was a short-lived logging town to harvest 15,000 acres of monster red Tidewater Cypress trees from the Gulf’s edge. To drive to Centralia, travel CR 476 west and take Centralia Road. When you reach US 19 you are “downtown” Centralia (June 1910 till the Post office closed December 11, 1922). Known locally as the Central Cypress Company, (J. C.) Turner Lumber Company moved here from Michigan by way of Donna, Louisiana and Coleman, Florida where they owned previous mills. About 1200 laborers and their families and support, numbering another 300, occupied the “boom town”.
Loggers, sawyers, skidders, thirty-six millwrights, blacksmiths, planers, mechanics, expert builders, surveyors, foreman, quarter bosses, trail-cutters, lumber inspectors, and craftsman of many specialties came and left with the mill. Workers hailed from Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Finland, Canada and most U.S. states. Fifty sponge diving Greeks moved up from Tarpon Springs and were superb lumber stackers. 1000 board feet of cut cypress contains 309 gallons of water that had to be sun-dried over two or more years before heading to the planing mill to become shingles, laths and construction lumber and/or onto the Northern Tampa Railroad for shipping to Irvington, NY from Port Tampa.
The drying yard was 160 acres with stacks to 15 feet high. Powered by four large steam boilers, two band saws cut 40 foot timber on one line and shorter logs on a second. Narrow-gauged railroad trams were built into the swamps to the W and NW of the mill. Steam skidders moved the cut logs to the RR cars and they were dumped into a mill pond 155 feet from the double band saws. Cypress logs were pulled up the slip jack and out of a mill pond by steam powered chains. After being cut at the saws they were moved onto the “green chain” where they progressed towards the drying area or a planing shed via the same mechanism. The final leg was fueled by mule power and wagons on a board runway.
Town amenities included Flicker Palace, the picture show; Hungry None Restaurant; Mrs. George Varn’s Hotel; a bakery; Dr. Johnson, M. D., on-site; Dr. Heddick, visiting dentist from Brooksville; one church for both Protestants and Catholics and served as the school; and fresh vegetable and beef from local Annutaliga growers bought by George Gamble, who ran a Commissary/General Store.
Gamble’s was stocked with the volume of four railroad cars of merchandise. His first building was 100 foot by 50 foot and he soon expanded with an additional 100 foot by 40 foot space, both 17 feet high. Merchandise was packed on shelves to the ceiling and rolling ladders were incorporated to pull down goods, both food stuffs and dry goods and the most current fashions. His store fed and clothed communities from miles around. Gamble’s was open for business 15 hours a day and supplied the cracker barrels for the evening get-to-gathers for the men to “chew the fat” over the day’s lumber output, which had the capacity to number 100,000 board feet from the double-banded raw timber sawmill operation. The largest cypress taken had to be dynamite blasted to reduce the stump end to manageable size.
It provided 5,476 board feet in 1912. The top twenty feet log was displayed on a RR car for several weeks and is now a favorite photo to depict days gone by in Hernando County. By 1917 the trees were all harvested and the mill shut down as fast as it came. Mr. Robert’s daughter, Queen, blew the mill whistle for the last time. Most of the workers who came here with the sawmill moved on to the next logging jobs with the disassembled equipment. Now only the sawmill foundations remain.