Richard Elmer Jackson
R.E. Jackson was born August 12, 1880 in Leary Georgia. He was six when his family moved to Jasper or Colmesneil and established a general store. He worked in the store, carried mail by horseback and became the first ticket agent of the Gulf, Beaumont & Kansas City railroad at Silsbee. He became conductor and retired in 1945. He was called the father of the Big Thicket who had the nerve to suggest that 435,000 acres of East Texas should be preserved. He was an energetic man, owned three businesses, working on committees and helping develop Santa Fe baseball park. He held four memberships in four science academies and councils and was president of the East Texas Nature Club and the Hardin County Cooperative Pasture and Game Preserve. He was a member of Masonic lodges and the National Audubon and Wilderness Societies. He was inspired to save the thicket in 1929 during a hunt with a game warden who argued about the loss of “our natural things”. He spent most of his money over the next years traveling back and forth to Washington and working toward the formation of the Big Thicket Association. He was also responsible for preserving the Bragg Road.
From the Big Thicket Guidebook