Laurel

Incorporated in 1886 on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad (later the Southern Railway), Laurel developed into a prosperous rival to Hattiesburg to the south. The railway’s brick Craftsman depot of 1913 is at 230 N. Maple Street. The Eastman, Gardiner and Company lumber mill (see PW19) was founded in the 1890s by George and Silas Gardiner of Clinton, Iowa, and brother-in-law George Eastman. Other enterprises included the Laurel Cotton Mill (demolished) and the Lindsey Wagon Company, manufacturer of the eight-wheel Lindsey lumber wagon. In 1924, with clearcutting of the pine forests imminent, local inventor William H. Mason developed a process by which heat and pressure transformed wood waste into hardboard that he named Masonite. The Mason Fibre Company (later known as the Masonite Corporation) opened its first mill in 1926 on the south side of Laurel, the same year Mason and his wife Marian built their Colonial Revival house, Greenbrier, at 1050 N. 6th Avenue as a showplace for their product. Today, the Masonite mill operates under different ownership and in more recent buildings at 1001 S. 4th Avenue.

A streetcar system in operation from 1912 to 1934 stimulated the development of Laurel’s residential neighborhoods. One streetcar ran south to Ellisville parallel to the Southern Railway line, past the South Mississippi Fairgrounds (1930 opened; 1457 Ellisville Boulevard). U.S. 11, completed through Laurel in the early 1930s, roughly paralleled the railroad, and in the early 1960s, I-59 bisected Laurel on a northeast to southwest line.