About one mile east of here stood the lumber town of Bowie, named for George M. Bowie, a friend and business associate of William Cameron, owner of the cypress lumber mill there. The town was the site of the largest red cypress mill in the world and developed around the Bowie Lumber Co. mill about 1896. On May 17, 1917, a fire started by a spark from a dummy locomotive destroyed the town. A second fire occurred in 1924, and the last person moved away in 1945, when the remaining buildings were torn down.