Laurel, city, coseat (1906) with Ellisville of Jones county, southeastern Mississippi, U.S., on Tallahala Creek, about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Hattiesburg. Founded in 1882 as a lumber camp, it was named for laurel shrubs, native to the surrounding forests. By the early 1900s it was the world’s largest shipping centre for yellow-pine lumber, but as the forests were depleted the city faced economic collapse. In the 1920s William Mason, an associate of inventor Thomas Edison, moved to Laurel and developed a type of hardboard (Masonite) made from sawmill waste.
The Masonite Corporation maintains a plant in Laurel and remains a major component of the city’s economy. The petroleum industry, poultry processing, and the manufacture of machinery and electrical equipment are also important. The Chickasawhay District of DeSoto National Forest extends southeastward from Laurel. The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art has a notable collection of North American Indian baskets as well as American and European paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and English silver. Southeastern Baptist College (1949) is in the city, and Jones County Junior College (1911) is in nearby Ellisville. The writer James Street, who grew up in Laurel, popularized in his novel Tap Roots (1942) the legend that Jones county had seceded from the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Inc. village, 1888; town, 1896; city, 1901. Pop. (2000) 18,393; (2010) 18,540.