WRIGHT CITY, Okla.—The American Dream changed here Tuesday with the silence of the saws at the Weyerhaeuser lumber mill.

“You could hear a roar and the trains on the track all night. The steam whistle would blow every so often. On New Year’s Eve, they would sound the whistle at midnight. They would blow the whistle for work and for play. The town was run by the sound of the mill. They used the whistle if a tornado was coming,” said Anjie Mussett, a waitress at Sissy’s Corral, one of two cafes in town.

The town of 800 in Southeast Oklahoma, about 95 miles from Texarkana,...

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