Center

Center is seventeen miles from the Louisiana border and 118 miles north of Beaumont at the center of Shelby County. In 1856 or 1857 J. C. and Margaret A. Wilson and Jesse Amason donated the land for the town. The community was involved in the Regulator-Moderator War. In an election called in January 1866 Center was voted the new county seat, but a number of people disputed the results, and no action was taken for some months. Finally, in August of that year some Center residents stole the county records and moved them to Center, thereby permanently establishing Center as the county seat. A post office opened there in 1866. Sam Weaver surveyed the community's site in 1869. In 1882 the town's frame courthouse burned, and it was replaced by J. J. E. Gibson's Irish Castle, which still stood in the 1980s and was a popular tourist attraction. The town was incorporated in 1893.