Cairo Springs

Cairo Springs, also known as Cairo, is between Farm Road 1004 and the Neches River seven miles northwest of Buna and forty-three miles north of Beaumont in southwestern Jasper County. To serve the heavy river traffic a post office operated at Cairo from 1858 to 1866 and reopened in 1872. The Texas Tram and Lumber Company established a logging camp in 1876 near Yellow Bluff, which overlooked the Neches River. By 1877 Long and Company was leasing the Yellow Bluff Tramway, which extended three miles into Jasper County to Cairo. The following year, about sixty men were employed in the Cairo-Yellow Bluff vicinity, cutting timber near Cairo, shipping it along the tram line to Yellow Bluff, then floating the logs down the Neches River to Beaumont sawmills. Machinery for the Texas Tram and Lumber Company mill at Cairo was sent upriver from Beaumont in 1881. Although headquarters were moved to Magnolia Springs in 1882, the logging camp at Cairo continued until 1894. With the depletion of local timber and the coming of the railroads to Jasper and Tyler counties, the camp was abandoned, and the post office closed in 1895. The Cairo Springs church and Cairo Springs lookout marked the old site in 1990. The Sally Withers and Sally Withers Lake oilfields, first discovered in 1956 and expanded in 1961 and 1977–79, lie just to the southeast of the Cairo Springs site.