Attempts to found a town in this area began in the 1890s, but Huntington drew a thriving population only after railroad lines arrived. Established in 1900 during the southern pine timber industry's heyday and carved from virgin forests, it was named for Collis P. Huntington, chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In June 1900, E.A. Blount and W.J. Townsend, Sr., established a townsite and sold lots at public auction, and that year a post office opened with R.D. Chapman as postmaster. The Huntington Common School District was created in 1901, and within a year A.F. Smith built a sawmill outside town. Lumber and agriculture formed the area's economic heart, while Baptist and Methodist Episcopal churches were established in 1901 and 1902. After the Texas & New Orleans rail line from Beaumont to Dallas was built through Huntington in 1902, a permanent railroad station was erected in 1903, making the town a center for lumber shipping and helping it prosper. A local telephone exchange was established in 1907, and The Huntington Messenger was succeeded by The Huntington Herald in 1911. Huntington also had hotels, drugstores, mercantile and grocery stores, a bank, several saloons, blacksmith shops, cotton gins, and local physicians. Highway 30, later U.S. Highway 69, reached the county line in 1924, area electrical service began in 1927, and the McMullen Memorial Library was dedicated in 1953 as a memorial to the nineteen Huntington men who died in World War Two. Huntington grew steadily through the rest of the twentieth century and continued to thrive at the dawn of the twenty-first.