Kirbyville grew where timber, rails, and Trout Creek met

Kirbyville sits on Trout Creek and U.S. 96, about eighteen miles south of Jasper. The place was laid out in 1895, when the railroad reached the site where John Henry Kirby wanted a community tied to his timber holdings. Lots sold on May 1 of that year, and a post office followed. The name started as Kirby, then became Kirbyville after postal officials found another Kirby already in use.

This was not a quiet little stop that happened to have trees nearby. After Kirby formed the Kirby Lumber Company in 1901, Kirbyville became the kind of company town that explains a lot about southeast Jasper County. The rail line, the sawmill site, general stores, hotel, school, and later downtown district all belonged to the same timber-and-transportation story.

The after-story is just as important. State Forest No. 1 was established three miles east of town in the mid-1920s, when the cutover landscape still showed stumps for miles. Kirbyville is a good reminder that East Texas pine country is both forest and recovery. Much of the green around town followed an industrial timber age that had left the ground cut over.