Editorial Comment
Spirit: Loggers Hall of Fame will call Dodson Home soon After a couple of false starts, it has been decided that the Louisiana Loggers Hall of Fame, launched two years ago by The Piney Woods Journal, will continue this Fall in Dodson, at a location and date to be announced when arrangements are complete within the next couple of weeks. A date in mid-September is being reserved, and arrangements for the venue are in progress. Why Dodson? The first Hall of Fame awards were made during the Natchitoches-Northwestern State University Folk Life Festival in July, 2007. The second event was scheduled in Winnfield in the summer of 2008, and was postponed on account of weather in Central Louisiana that knocked out electric power in much of the region and made travel and other arrangements problematic. Later plans were announced to return to the Folk Life festival to resume the event. The Natchitoches-NSU event is widely promoted, and enjoys great public support, which is well deserved. However, it was decided that rather than being oriented to the arts, crafts, and folkways of the region, the loggers event is built around a regional and state-wide industry with its own history and issues. It is an economic mainstay and deserves its own free-standing recognition. Again, why Dodson? Several reasons. In the beginning of the late 19th century logging and sawmilling boom, Dodson was one of several communities that sprang up alongside the railroads that sustained the industry. At its peak into the early 1920s, logging in around Dodson supported four major sawmills and was a shipping point for manufactured wood products, including Southern pine and hardwood lumber and crossties for the expanding railroad lines. Population boomed to a peak of around 2,500, making Dodson the largest town in Winn Parish in that era. It was even considered for the seat of the Parish government. While all this is past history, Dodson remains home to a community of loggers who live and operate throughout the local countryside. And, lying just outside its municipal boundaries, Dodson it remains "almost home" to three multi-national wood products industries--the Dodson Weyerhaeuser sawmill to the north, the complete but as yet unopened Jeld-Wen door and window plant, and the Arclin adhesives plant to the south. Three logging and related equipment companies, Dodson Equipment, Gaar Equipment, and HTC Metals, sell locally, regionally, and internationally. The local industry is well-served by railroad, and when the upgrading of U.S. Highway 167 puts us "back on the map, we have no doubt about Dodson's future. Based on its history, and its continuing contribution to the forest industry, we believe Dodson deserves the recognition of hosting the Loggers Hall of Fame, and as sponsors, The Piney Woods Journal is at work to make it happen. The surge of community spirit that came out of the recent cleanup following the village's tornado damage, weare confident of its success. There will be more information soon. |