Kountze: Gateway to the Big Thicket

Kountze is the seat of Hardin County and the nearest town to the heart of the Big Thicket, one of the most biologically diverse regions in North America. The town was founded in eighteen eighty-one when the Sabine and East Texas Railroad laid tracks through southern Hardin County, bypassing the existing town of Hardin in favor of a new stop named for Herman and Augustus Kountze, the railroad's financial backers. Sawmills went up almost immediately.

Kountze later became the county seat, and the population grew on the strength of the timber trade. Today the town bills itself as the Gateway to the Big Thicket, perched at the edge of a landscape Congress recognized as a national preserve in nineteen seventy-four.