The Gray Lumber Company was originally incorporated in 1884 when the founder, Alfred L. Gray of Sussex County, Delaware, decided to move to Sussex County, Virginia, in order to take advantage of the abundance of untouched timber located in the surrounding area. Eventually, the Gray Lumber Company would own over 100,000 acres of timberland throughout Prince George, Surry, Sussex, and Southampton Counties, and have three sawmills located in Waverly, Wakefield, and Gray.

In this period of time before the invention of trucks, the only way lumber companies could thrive and expand is if they had some sort of railroad connection for transporting cut lumber to the sawmills and finished boards and planks to national markets. Gray was no different with all three sawmills being built for direct connection with Class 1 Trunk lines such as the Norfolk & Western Railway at Wakefield, and Waverly, and the Southern Railway, and later, the Virginian Railway at Gray.

Interestingly, Gray's main local competitor, the Surry Lumber Company, owned a rail line that went right through Wakefield and continued south to a lumber camp known as Dory. Due to the competition, I bet Wakefield was the place to go for buying cut lumber! I don't know the exact date of when the Gray Lumber Company started using locomotives for transport, all I know is that they bought their first locomotive in 1898 from the Norfolk, Virginia Beach & Southern Railroad which was a steam powered rapid transit line located in and around Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Throughout it's entire corporate history, the company utilized 36 inch narrow gauge locomotives to switch the sawmills and interchange with the Class 1's. That being said, when the Southern Railway petitioned to abandon the line through Waverly, known as the Claremont Branch, Gray saw an opportunity to purchase the rail line to harvest timber located alongside the right of way. The line being narrow gauge also allowed Gray to use their locomotives instead of having to buy new, standard gauge locomotives. After originally leasing the line in December of 1932, Gray bought it outright and operated it until November of 1938 when the remaining sections of the line were abandoned and torn up.

One cause that led to the abandonment of the line was the companies increasing use of trucks to transport the cut lumber to national markets for sale. Even with the abandonment of the Claremont Branch in November of 1938, and the abandonment of the Wakefield mill in 1948, Gray still used narrow gauge steam locomotives such as Baldwin built Prairie #26 to switch the Waverly Sawmill as late as November of 1951. Number 26 was originally owned by competitor Surry Lumber Company's railroad company, the Surry Sussex & Southampton Railway, until the company went bankrupt in July of 1930, and the locomotive along with a few other locomotives ended up in the hands of Gray.

The reason the Surry Lumber Co. liquidated and the Gray Lumber Co. prospered was because Gray Lumber Company owner Garland Gray believed in replanting seedlings which allowing for continual harvesting that enabled lasting economic prosperity. Surry Lumber on the other hand didn't replant seedlings meaning that once a tree was harvested, that land spot it was located on was vacant. Surry practically wiped the Yellow Pine tree out of existence in many areas South of the James River. It wasn't until Gray took ownership of the former land owned by Surry that trees began to be replanted and harvested again. After more than one-hundred years of operation, Gray Lumber is still operated by the same influential Gray Family of Sussex County, albeit, without utilization of a personal industrial railroad.