FORESTBURG, TEXAS. Forestburg is at the intersection of Farm roads 455, 1655, 922, and 677, some fifteen miles southeast of Montague in southeastern Montague County. It was settled in the early 1850s by cattlemen including Austin Perryman, Wash Williams, and Bob Clark, and remained largely undeveloped, due to frequent Indian raids, until the 1870s. The county's first school was established near the settlement in 1858. It was originally known as Horn Hill, but the name was changed soon after its founding to Forest Hill because of its location in a grove of live oak trees. When its post office application was rejected because there was already a Forest Hill in Texas, the community was renamed Forestburg. A post office began operations locally in 1876. By 1885 Forestburg had a population of 200 and a number of businesses, including sawmills and cotton gins. By 1900 its population had reached 372, and a telephone system had been established there. The community's population declined from 212 in the mid-1920s to 100 by the mid-1950s, when eight businesses were operating there. From the mid-1970s through the early 1990s Forestburg reported a population of 200. In the early 1990s it also had eight businesses and the post office. By 2000 the population had dropped to fifty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Guy Renfro Donnell, The History of Montague County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1940 Jeff S. Henderson, ed., One Hundred Years in Montague County, Texas (St. Jo, Texas: Ipta Printer, 1978).
