Editing Laurel, Mississippi (section)

==History==
[[File:Oak Street, Laurel, Mississippi (circa 1900).jpg|thumb|left|Oak Street, circa 1900]]
Following the 1881 construction of the [[New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad]] through the area,<ref>{{cite web|title=Mississippi Railroads| url= https://www.msrailroads.com/NO&NE.htm}}</ref> economic development occurred rapidly. The city of Laurel was incorporated in 1882, with timber as the impetus.<ref>{{cite book| last=Thames|first=Bill|title=Walking Tour of Historic Laurel Homes| publisher=Lauren Rogers Museum of Art|location=Laurel, Mississippi |pages=6}}</ref> [[Yellow pine]] forests in the region fueled the industry. The city was named for thickets of [[Kalmia latifolia|mountain laurel]] (''Kalmia latifolia'') native to the original town site.<ref>{{cite book| last= Gannett| first=Henry|title=The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States |url= https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ|year=1905|publisher=US Government Printing Office|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ/page/n181 182]}}</ref>

Located in the heart of the [[Piney Woods|piney woods]] ecoregion of the southeastern United States, the land site that eventually became Laurel was densely covered with forests of virgin [[longleaf pine]], making the area attractive to pioneering lumberjacks and sawmill operators in the late 19th century.

In 1881, business partners John Kamper and A.M. Lewin constructed a small lumber mill on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad. Kamper and Lewin's mill was in an area that later became Laurel's First Avenue. The next year, in response to a Post Office Department request to provide a postal delivery name for their mill and its surrounding lumber camp, Kamper and Lewin submitted the name "Lawrell" as an homage to the area's naturally growing mountain laurel bushes. Federal postal officials soon "corrected" the peculiar spelling, giving the town its current spelling.

During its first decade or so, Laurel was little more than a glorified lumber camp surrounding Kamper and Lewin's primitive sawmill. By 1891, Kamper's company was on the verge of bankruptcy, leading Kamper to sell the mill and extensive land holdings in the area (more than 15,000 acres), to [[Clinton, Iowa]], lumber barons Lauren Chase Eastman and George and Silas Gardiner, founders of the Eastman-Gardiner Company.

After their purchase, Eastman and the Gardiner brothers decided to make substantial improvements to Laurel's lumber operations by constructing a new, much larger, state-of-the-art lumber mill. In 1893, the new Eastman-Gardiner Company mill began operations, using the best technology and labor-saving devices of the day.

By the early 1900s, the success of Eastman-Gardner Company's operations in Laurel and the region's superabundance of timber began to attract other lumber industrialists' attention. In 1906, the Gilchrist-Fordney Company, whose founders hailed from [[Alpena, Michigan]], began construction on their own lumber mill in Laurel. By March 1907 the [[Mobile, Jackson and Kansas City Railroad]] made four stops a day in Laurel which was 110 track miles from [[Mobile, Alabama]]. The trains not only carried passengers but hauled freight that included lumber from nine sawmills. Together they produced around 583,000 board feet (bf) a day. WM Carter Lumber Company (milepost 108) 20,000 bf, Eastman-Gardner & Company 200,000 bf, Kingston Lumber Company 200,000 bf, Geo Beckner (shingles) 20,000 bf, John Lindsey 15,000 bf, HC Card Lumber Company (hard wood) 30,000 bf, Lindsey Wagon works mill 15,000 bf, WM Carter (planer) 75,000 bf, and Stainton and Weems 8,000 bf.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.msrailroads.com/Timetables/MJ&KC%20PTT%20Tommy%20Graham.pdf|title=Mobile,_Jackson_and_Kansas_City_Railroad|page=3 & 6|website=|access-date=27 June 2024}}</ref>

The Wausau-Southern mill from [[Wausau, Wisconsin]], followed in 1911, and the Marathon mill from [[Memphis, Tennessee]], in 1914. By the end of [[World War I]], Laurel's mills produced and shipped more yellow pine lumber than those of any other location in the world. By the 1920s—the peak of Laurel's lumber production—the area's four mills were producing a total of {{convert|1|e6board feet|m3|spell=in}} of lumber per day. Laid end to end, that amount of lumber would stretch 189 miles.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lrma.org/|title=LRMA – Lauren Rogers Museum of Art &#124; Laurel, Mississippi|website=Lrma.org|access-date=2 May 2023}}</ref>

The economic prosperity of Laurel's timber era (1893–1937) and "timber families" created the famed [[Laurel Central Historic District]] as a byproduct.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.laurelms.com/news-events/|title=A Story of Growth – The City of Laurel, MS|website=Laurelms.com|access-date=2 May 2023}}</ref> The area is considered Mississippi's largest, finest, and most intact collection of early-20th-century architecture and has been listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]] since September 4, 1987,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/ms/jones/state.html|title=National Register of Historic Places - Mississippi (MS), Jones County|website=Nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com|access-date=2 May 2023}}</ref> for both its historical value and its wide variety of architectural styles. Many of the district's homes and buildings are featured on the [[HGTV]] series ''[[Home Town (TV series)|Home Town]]''. In addition to influencing a diverse architectural district, Laurel's "timber families" influenced the building of the town's broad avenues, the design of numerous public parks, and the development of strong public schools.<ref>{{cite book|title=Lauren Rogers Museum of Art|publisher=The University Press of Mississippi|year=2003|isbn=1-57806-557-7|pages=ix}}</ref>

The city's population grew markedly during the early 20th century because rural people were attracted to manufacturing jobs and the economic takeoff of [[Masonite International]]. Mechanization of agriculture reduced the number of farming jobs. In 1942, Howard Wash, a 45-year-old African-American man who had been convicted of murder, was dragged from jail and [[lynching|lynched]] by a mob.<ref name="lynching in 1942">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1942/10/18/archives/mississippi-mob-lynches-a-slayer-overpowers-sheriff-and-takes-negro.html |title=Mississippi Mob Lynches a Slayer |newspaper=New York Times |date=October 18, 1942 |access-date=October 31, 2019 }}</ref> The city reached its peak census population in 1960, and has declined about one third since then.