DEVERS, TEXAS. Devers is at the junction of U.S. Highway 90 and State Highway 61, thirty-two miles west of Beaumont in southeastern Liberty County. The earliest settlement at the site was called Carter Station, after Allen Carter's family. However, the community, settled by 1832, soon became better known as Dever's Woods, after Thomas Philip and John Dever. By the 1870s the town had become a station on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, and in 1880 it reported a population of 100. The name of the Dever's Woods post office, established in 1874, was changed to Devers in 1892. The community had a sawmill and cotton gin. Rice culture^qv was made possible after the construction of a series of irrigation^qv canals. In 1920 the Northern Canal Company became the Devers Canal Company, which was in turn acquired by the Trinity River Authority^qv in 1969. In 1872 voters agreed 86 to 37 to incorporate Devers. The population, estimated at 210 as late as the mid-1970s, had grown to 507 by the mid-1980s. Considerable discoveries of oil and natural gas were made at the Devers field in 1984. The town supported twelve businesses, two rice dryers, and a Trinity River Authority office in 1985. In 1990 the population was 318 and in 2000 it was 416.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Miriam Partlow, Liberty, Liberty County, and the Atascosito District (Austin: Pemberton, 1974).

Robert Wooster