Unincorporated community settled in the 1850s in the live oak groves of southeastern Montague County, with a post office established in 1876. Home to the county's first school (1858) and the annual Watermelon Festival, held every summer since 1980.
At a glance
- Population
- 110
- Founded
- 1876
- ZIP code
- 76239
- Status
- Unincorporated
- Distance
- 15 mi from Montague
- Role
- Unincorporated agricultural community; home of Forestburg ISD (PreK-12) and annual Watermelon Festival
- County
- Montague
- Type
- Unincorporated community
- Location
- Northwestern Montague County
- Status
- Small rural settlement
Founding
Settled in the early 1850s by cattlemen Austin Perryman, Wash Williams, and Bob Clark in a grove of live oak trees originally called Horn Hill then Forest Hill. A post office opened in 1876 under the name Forestburg — Forest Hill had already been taken. Montague County's first school, established 1858, was located near this settlement.
Forestburg is a small unincorporated community in northwestern Montague County. Like several other settlements in the county’s outer reaches, it grew up around late nineteenth-century farming and ranching activity and never developed the rail access or population base that produced the larger towns of Bowie, Nocona, and Saint Jo. It remains a rural cluster of homes, working farms, and a small post-office-era community center rather than an incorporated municipality.
The community holds little documented history in the available research record at this publication date.
The Watermelon Stand
Local memory associates Forestburg with the seasonal watermelon stands that appear along the county road in late July and August — hand-lettered signs, cash only, customers welcomed to thump before they buy. It is the kind of small persistent ritual that survives in counties like Montague because the road still carries enough local traffic to make a roadside stand work and because the people who run them are still on the land.
Related: Belcherville | Saint Jo | Bowie
From the archives
Forestburg in the editorial record
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