Fostoria

Fostoria is at the intersection of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and State Highway 105, seventeen miles east of Conroe in Montgomery County. In the early 1900s the town was called Clinesburg after the owner of a mill there. In 1901 the mill was sold to the Foster Lumber Company of Kansas City, Missouri, and the settlement was renamed Fostoria after the lumber firm in 1903. Between 1910 and 1920 the population was reportedly 1,000, most of whom were employed in the mill. The town reached its peak population of 1,500 between 1915 and 1925. In 1941 the mill produced 20 million board feet of lumber and was thus one of the largest providers of Southern pine in the United States.

Fostoria was a company town. The company store sold employees clothing, groceries, furniture, and saddles and owned a hotel and barber shop for which company scrip was accepted. The scrip was not redeemable anywhere else. Only the post office was not run by the company, but it was closed after 1930. The Foster Lumber Company closed in June 1957. After the mill closed, the company homes were sold, primarily to former employees, and the business district was shut down. From the 1940s to the 1960s the population was 500. In the 1980s only a few scattered dwellings, a cemetery, a pumping station, and a radio tower south of the city remained.