By Jack M. Willis
Journal Correspondent

After an uninterrupted run approaching 100 years, the former thriving sawmill town of Urania, Louisiana is struggling to hold itself together.

The LaSalle Parish community enjoyed prosperity and recognition for over 70 years as a major sawmilling center, and as the jumping-off point for Southern pine reforestation under the guidance of the legendary Henry Hardtner. Urania continued as a forest products manufacturing center under ownerships by Georgia-Pacific and later, Louisiana-Pacific until September 2002, when the proverbial bottom fell out with what turned out to be the permanent closure of the long-running mill and related facilities.

While prosperity is not yet at hand, there are some signs that efforts at renewal guided by the town's Mayor, Ms. Terri B. Corley, and others are bearing some fruit.

In late 2005 Lowe's Inc., one of the nation's largest building materials retailers, leased a portion of one of the mill's facilities to utilize as Lowe's Flatbed Center 1442, and the Town of Urania now furnishes the warehousing operation with 10,000 to 10,500 gallons of water monthly.

More progress in the area, according to Mayor Corley, includes the recent total renovation of the local Hardnter Memorial Hospital. The LaSalle parish correctional facility has added a new wing, and is contemplating another to housd additional prisoners. The town cemetery, containing burials dating back to the 1870s, has a new fence. The convenience store in the heart of town has re-opened and local business is on the upswing, due in part to reconstruction of their sister town of Olla just up the road, which was devastated by a tornado in 2004.

And last but not least, there is a Bluegrass Jamboree held at the Town's Recreation Hall on one Friday night of each month.

Mayor Corley smiled and said, "We just have to pat our foot and keep on dancing with our circumstances."

Henry Hardtner, the Father of Reforestation would probably have liked that statement.

Hanging on the wall next to the front door of the neat, modular-constructed building that today houses the governmental operations of the Town of Urania, is an ancient edger saw blade that was probably rescued from the old original saw mill which operated nearby for nearly a three-quarters of a century. Some unknown artist embellished the blade with several centennially-appropriate artistic renderings commemorating various stages of the town's history from 1898 until 1998. On either side there is caricature of a double-bit axe--with the early date emblazoned on the head of one axe, and the one-hundred years later date on the other.

Unfortunately, the Urania Lumber Company mill proper didn't maintain operations until 1998 because Georgia-Pacific purchased all of the holdings of the company from the Hardtner interests in 1967. Prior to the sale, ULC gave all of their long-time employees a small bonus, and then sold them the company houses they were occupying for a nominal sum. According to Edgar Forest Cook, prominent local historian and genealogist, the bonus was sufficient for his father to purchase the house he had been renting by the month.

Georgia-Pacific operated the original sawmill for two more years, until 1969, when the operations were sold to their sister corporate entity, Louisiana-Pacific. The mill was idled for a short while prior to acquisition by LP. One rumor, that may even be true, is that Georgia-Pacific harvested, processed and shipped enough 2x4s during their two-year tenure to repay them for the original purchase price from the Hardtner heirs.

Today, Urania, Louisiana isn't even located on a major highway, because the hamlet was by-passed, like a lot of other small town originally located on "old 165." Most of these one-time thriving metropolises owed their early existence to timber barons, backed by Northern investors, who built sawmills, and whose operating model was "cut out and git out!" Several old sawmill towns with names like Pollock, Selma, Rochelle, Clarks and Kelly are basically no more. The corporate interests, in effect, clear-cut the towns eventually out of existence--with the exception of Urania, which continued to thrive under Hardtner's visionary philosophy of sustainable reforestation.

Urania's attractive Mayor, Ms. Terri B. Corley, briefly transitioned from her usual, ever-smiling, upbeat facade, to disclose details of what a daunting task she faces every single day in striving to hold the paper-thin infrastructure of the post-sawmill Urania Town governmental operations together.

She said, "Before Louisiana Pacific `idled' their two plants, the revenue we derived from them through the sale of water to operate the two mills, provided the funding to maintain the town's water and sewer systems. We were actually able to replace some antiquated lines and meters, but when they effectively shut down in September of 2002, it's been a long, hard fight with a short stick."

Mayor Corley states that after initial expense, the town is left with less than $3,000 per month with which to operate the water system, with practically no funding to provide sewer maintenance, which is also porous as the proverbial sponge.

In desperation, in an attempt to create a local tourism focal point, Mayor Corley has made several attempts on behalf of the town to acquire a tract of land, located about a mile south of town, known as the "set aside tract," which probably contains the last virgin timber remaining in all of the State of Louisiana.

We again turned to historian par excellence Forest Cook for illumination on the subject.

He stated, "The tale begins in the 1930's when Yale University's School of Forestry sent a class to Urania to scrutinize the forestry practices instituted by Henry Hardtner. The Yale Boys, as they were referred to by the locals, had a camp built by Urania Lumber Company to use as a base. The camp, which was located about a quarter-mile from the present Hardtner Medical Center, consisted of about six cabins, with wooden floors and wooden siding about five feet up, with canvas providing the rest of the walls and roofs, and there was also a makeshift office and a mess hall. This traditional southerly trek by Yale students continued until the student ranks at Yale were decimated by selective service in WWII.

One of the 1930's students was Lloyd P. Blackwell, originally from Lynchburg. Virginia. During his Urania hiatus, he had acquired a local schoolteacher as a bride, the former Miss Mackey, who was probably instrumental in his later accepting a position with Urania Lumber Company.

After deployment with the U.S. Navy during WWII, he returned to Louisiana Tech where he became a mover and a shaker in getting a School of Forestry established at the college, and was the head of that department for years.

He was instrumental is establishing a memorial or "set aside" forest, about a mile east of the present day Hardtner Medical Center. One side is bounded by Tarver's Creek and at one time boasted the State Champion Loblolly pine until the 1957 Hurricane Audrey, and pine beetle infestation caused its demise. The tract consists of around 300 acres of pristine hardwood and pine timber, which tradition claims have never heard the sound of an axe or saw.

Because of its uniqueness, Mayor Corley believes the tract, now owned by an investment group named Barrs and Glawson, should rightfully should belong to the Town of Urania for development purposes on behalf of the town. So far, every overture concerning acquisition of the land has been refused.

Mayor Corley continues to be hopeful that the once proud logging and sawmilling center will find a way to hold onto its tradition and grow again.

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