NONA, TEXAS. Nona is on the Southern Pacific Railroad two miles south of Kountze and twenty-one miles north of Beaumont in central Hardin County. The construction in 1881 of the local line, then called the Sabine and East Texas and subsequently the Texas and New Orleans, opened the richly forested areas of Hardin County to the lumber industry. W. R. Carroll built a mill 1½ miles south of Cypress Creek in 1881. The site was originally known as Carroll Station, but the name was too similar to that of other Texas post offices and was changed to Nona, supposedly after the girlfriend of one of the owners. By 1887 the mill complex included six miles of tram road, a sawmill capable of handling 65,000 board feet per day, and a planing mill with a 60,000-foot capacity. The mills underwent repeated changes of ownership. In 1884 the Nona Mills Company, organized by F. L. Carroll, the older brother of the mill's founder, acquired the enterprise. The William Cameron Company took over in 1897; ten years later the Meeds Anderson Company gained control. The Benton Lumber Company, subsequently reorganized as the Nona-Fletcher Lumber Company, acquired the establishment in 1913. The mill burned in 1921, and the site was abandoned. The Nona post office, after forty years of operation, closed the same year. The population was estimated at 500 in 1889 and fell to twenty by the early 1940s. The last listing for Nona was in 1947–48. Like so many other areas in Hardin County, the abandoned site proved rich in oil and gas deposits. In 1950 the Nona Mills and Old Nona fields were discovered, and the five wells in the former field were still producing in 1984.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Charlsie E. Berly, "Records of the Nona Mills Company, Inc. (1884–1968)," Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record 20 (1984). W. T. Block, ed., Emerald of the Neches: The Chronicles of Beaumont from Reconstruction to Spindletop (Nederland, Texas: Nederland Publishing, 1980).
