LOEB, TEXAS. Loeb is on U.S. Highway 69/96/287 in extreme southern Hardin County, just north of Pine Island Bayou, which separates Hardin and Jefferson counties. It is on the site of one of the earliest towns in Hardin County, known as Concord during the nineteenth century. A post office was established there as early as 1858. Concord was an important landing on Pine Island Bayou and had been an assembly point for trade to the Big Thicket during the heyday of Southeast Texas steamboating. At that time the town had several saloons and mercantile establishments. In the 1870s Concord's importance diminished, and its post office was closed in 1877. With the construction of railroads through the area in the 1880s, Concord lost its position as a shipping center for Hardin County, even though it was on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. The community's declining economy received a boost when Henry Loeb erected his Diana Brick and Tile Company there during the early 1900s. The town was renamed Loeb, and a post office by that name was open from 1903 to 1908. Although Loeb was a flag stop on the Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City Railway, it never became as economically important as Concord had been. Its population was estimated at twenty in the early 1940s and in the early 1990s was counted with that of nearby Lumberton, a growing suburb of Beaumont.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mary Lou Proctor, A History of Hardin County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1950).
