Biohazard Cleanup Near West Silsbee Silsbee, TX

Silsbee is a town in eastern Hardin County, about 21 miles north of Beaumont in the Piney Woods of Southeast Texas, and it owes its existence to lumberman John Henry Kirby, whose Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City Railway reached the site in 1894 to open the East Texas forests to the timber industry.

The community was first called Mill Town, but was soon renamed Silsbee in honor of Nathan D. Silsbee, one of Kirby's East Coast business partners.

The Kirby Lumber Company took control of the Silsbee sawmill in 1902, and after rebuilding from a 1904 fire the mill was producing more than twelve million board feet of lumber a year by 1907; Kirby later consolidated its huge new flagship plant at Silsbee in 1955.

Railroading shaped Silsbee alongside timber: in 1901 the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe system built mechanical shops and a roundhouse in the town.

A major oilfield was discovered just north of Silsbee in 1936, and its most productive well had pumped more than 23 million barrels of crude oil by 1984.

Silsbee had a population of 6,935 at the 2020 census, up from 6,611 in 2010 but below its 1980 peak of 7,684, and it is part of the Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan area.

According to Census Bureau QuickFacts, Silsbee has about 2,610 households with a median household income of $59,907, and about 68% of its homes are owner-occupied.

Silsbee High School, whose teams are the Tigers, is the only high school in the Silsbee Independent School District; its current campus opened in 2000 and enrolls roughly 825 students.

The Silsbee Bee, the town's weekly newspaper, has served the community since 1919.