Olive

OLIVE, TEXAS . Olive, also known as Sunset, was three miles north of Kountze and thirty miles north of Beaumont, near the present junction of U.S. Highway 69/287 and Farm Road 1003 in north central Hardin County. The construction of the Sabine and East Texas Railroad through Hardin County in the early 1880s opened the densely forested Big Thicket country to the expanding lumber industries of Southeast Texas. The line stimulated the growth of numerous sawmills in Hardin County. In 1881, anticipating the track's completion, Beaumont industrialists S. C. Olive and J. A. Sternenberg built a large mill at the site of the future Olive. Their Sunset Sawmill, with a daily capacity of 65,000 board feet in 1889, was the centerpiece of their large operation, which also included a big drying kiln and nine miles of tram roads.