LUCEDALE, Miss. — Community leaders gathered in Lucedale on Thursday to mark the 100th anniversary of the Mississippi Export Railroad, founded in 1922 by Gregory Luce to serve his mill and lumber operations.
By 1935, the railroad carried freight for cotton gins, bag and canning factories, naval stores, lumber mills and shipbuilding plants along a route from Lucedale to Pascagoula. Today the 42-mile shortline runs through 10 industrial sites in George and Jackson counties, shipping products to the ports of Mobile and Pascagoula.
“It’s a great place to do business. People want to work,” said Kate Luce, the company’s fifth-generation CEO. “We have terrific, smart, hard-working people here. The government is very business friendly and there are those real public-private partnerships.”
The George County Industrial Park took shape in the 1970s through state, county and private collaboration. Tenants such as American Tank and Vessel, TriState Pole and Piling and Vulcan Materials now operate there. Ken Flanagan, the county’s community development director, said the railroad’s early planners “really laid the foundation for what the industrial park is now.”
One recent expansion added 3,000 feet of county-owned rail to reach Enviva’s wood pellet plant, tying the railroad’s lumber roots to its current business. Enviva expects to move about 24 railcars of pellets a day to Pascagoula for shipment to Europe and Japan. Lucedale leaders say the track also serves as a draw for future industry in the park.