| History: | Silsbee was the headquarters for Texas Pine Land Assocation, an early J. H. Kirby enterprise, in 1894. TPLA functioned as a logging tram to supply the Reliance Lumber Company mill at Beaumont with two million feet of logs monthly. The local tram operation was supplemented by Kirby's Gulf, Beaumont & Kansas City tramroad from Silsbee to Beaumont, constructed by 1893. The TPLA, however, had a surplus of logs, prompting it to build a mill at Silsbee in 1896. I
In 1898, its capacity was increased from 40,000 to 60,000, and the mill was leased to the Industrial Lumber Company of Beaumont. The lease expired in 1901, and the mill became Mill E, one of the original fourteen mills of the newly formed Kirby Lumber Company, on January 1, 1902. By 1904 the mill was connected by tramroad with the Kirby mill at Village, on the Texas & New Orleans railway. This action allowed the Silsbee, Village, and Woodville mills to share the same logging camp (camp #1). The American Lumberman reported, in 1906, that three locomotives and forty-five logging cars worked on the fifteen miles of tramroad.
The mill at Silsbee was reported in 1928 to be still operating twelve miles of logging tramroad. The coming of the trucking industry and the cost-effectiveness of it would soon put the logging tram out of operation.
The Silsbee mill cut long leaf pine mostly and some short leaf pine. Until the building of new Silsbee plant in the early 1950s, the sawmill at Silsbee regularly employed 250 to 275 workers, and often ran nights.
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