Buna

Buna is at the junction of Farm roads 253 and 1004, U.S. Highway 96, and State Highway 62, thirty-six miles north of Beaumont in south central Jasper County. The Beaumont Lumber Company mill in southern Jasper County was first called Carrolla for the Carroll family, prominent Beaumont lumbermen and industrialists. The site was subsequently renamed Buna, however, in honor of one of the family's cousins, Buna Corley. A post office was established there in 1893. With substantial operations in Jasper County underway by 1890, the Beaumont Lumber Company built a tram road from Buna to Ford's Bluff, on the Neches River. John Henry Kirby later bought the ten-mile-long tram line and by 1896 had converted it to a common carrier and extended it to Beaumont in the south and Roganville in the north. The revamped railroad was called the Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City. Buna's economic position was solidified in 1902, when the Orange and Northwestern Railway linked the logging town with Orange. Four years later the Orange and Northwestern was extended from Buna to Newton. A townsite situated between the two railroad lines was platted on July 21, 1916. Although the region's economy suffered as the virgin forests were reduced, in later years second-growth timber continued to provide local jobs. In addition to logging, farming remains important to local residents. Numerous oilfields, first discovered in 1948, lie to the west and north of Buna and further augment the local economy. The weekly East Texas News was founded at Buna in 1967. The population of Buna was estimated at 650 in the early 1940s, 1,650 by the early 1970s, 2,000 in 1985, and 2,127 in 1990. In 2000 the population was 2,269.