BOWERS, TEXAS (Polk County). Bowers was on an unnamed road off Farm Road 352 northeast of Pluck in northeastern Polk County. The community was established when A. W. Morris moved his sawmill there from Morrisville in 1885 and may have been named in honor of the mill's construction supervisor. Morris used the Trinity and Sabine tap route of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas rail system to get his lumber to market. A fire destroyed his mill in 1887, but he rebuilt his plant, and by 1889 it was capable of sawing 65,000 board feet of lumber a day. The Bowers facilities also included five miles of tram roads, two small locomotives, a planer, and dry kilns. In 1889 a large general store served the community's 300 residents. The local post office was called Clevilas from 1886 to 1887, when its name was changed to Bowers. The mill was sold to W. T. Carter and Brother after their plant at nearby Barnum burned in 1897, and the Carter company moved it to a new site at Camden. Although Bowers continued to be shown on railroad maps for two decades, its post office was discontinued in 1898.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. T. Block, ed., Emerald of the Neches: The Chronicles of Beaumont from Reconstruction to Spindletop (Nederland, Texas: Nederland Publishing, 1980). A Pictorial History of Polk County, Texas, 1846–1910 (Livingston, Texas: Polk County Bicentennial Commission, 1976; rev. ed. 1978).
