"Woodlake is on U.S. Highway 287 four miles southeast of Groveton in southeastern Trinity County. The area was settled around the time of the Civil War... During the 1920s Helen Kerr Thompson, a relative of the original mill owner, organized a model farm. A trading post, a community center, and a number of houses were constructed, but the project failed in the late 1920s because of the combined effects of the Great Depression and the demise of the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity and Sabine Railway... Most of the community buildings and much of the equipment was sold to the Baptist Church of East Texas, which erected a youth camp."
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