Created by the West Yellow Pine Lumber Company

John W. West, of Valdosta, Georgia, with his brothers Eugene E. West and Abram Hunter West, owned the West Yellow Pine Company, in addition to various merchandising, lumbering, and turpentine manufacturing enterprises in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. Based at Olympia, in Lowndes County, Georgia, the West Yellow Pine Company consisted of a lumber mill and a store (possibly a company store). These records indicate that they also incorporated a railway, the Madison Southern Railway.

W.J. Kelly and William P. Smith of Jacksonville, and John W. West chartered the Madison Southern Railway Company in 1906. Their purpose was to build a 60-mile line from Madison southward to Deadman's Bay (now Steinhatchee), Florida. According to Elmer Spear, in his Madison County Florida Family History Book (2002), for reasons unknown, the road was not immediately built. Before and after the turn of the century, several roads were projected to Deadman's Bay with the idea of developing a deep-water port at that location. However, none of these efforts proved fruitful because offshore barrier reefs rendered the construction cost of such a port prohibitive.

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