ARIOLA, TEXAS. Ariola is fourteen miles north of Beaumont in southern Hardin County. A small community called Sharon sprang up around a flag stop on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad at a site once called Buzzard Roost. Seeking to utilize the area's forest resources, George W. Hooks built a sawmill there soon after the railroad was completed. The post office, established in 1888, was named Hooks Switch, although the railroad stop continued to be known as Sharon as late as 1905. The depression of the 1890s forced Hooks to transfer his mill, which had a daily capacity of 75,000 board feet, to the J. F. Keith Lumber Company of Beaumont. The community's name was then changed to Ariola, after the Eduardo and Francisco Ariola leagues, on which the town was built. The post office took the new name in 1901. John Henry Kirby acquired the Ariola mill in 1902. In 1904 the community, still occasionally referred to as Hooks Switch, had a population of 108. The Kirby Lumber Company dismantled the mill in 1907, and the post office discontinued operations shortly thereafter. Ariola, however, remained a flag stop for several years. In 1932 the first of three oil wells in the Ariola field was brought in. Local residents call the community Chance, in honor of a pioneer family of that name. The population is combined with that of Loeb and Lumberton, a growing suburb of Beaumont. Two of the Ariola oil wells were still producing in 1984.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Aline House, Big Thicket: Its Heritage (San Antonio: Naylor, 1967). Mary Lou Proctor, A History of Hardin County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1950).
