Kountze information

Kountze (pronounced 'Coontz') is a city in Hardin County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,115 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Hardin County Kountze, Texas was originally established as a railroad town in 1881. The seat of Hardin County, Kountze boasts an area of more than 89 percent forested lush green terrain. Local area produces over 3.5 million board feet (8,300 m³) of lumber annually.
Kountze describes itself as: "The Big Light in The Big Thicket" - a Thicket is that vast area of tangled, often impenetrable woods, streams and marshes. Now portions of this thicket are nationally protected as the Big Thicket National Preserve.
The cradle of this country's oil industry is found in the Big Thicket of east Texas. The thicket is a circle of canebreak-rattler infested swampland about north of Beaumont. Claustrophobically dark and dank, dripping with vines and Spanish moss, hunters bring their best dogs here trailing razorback hogs, wildcats and wolves. And if they veer off the trails, the sheriff keeps a pack of bloodhounds to rescue lost souls.
At night in the thicket, big luminous balls of fire rise up, which is probably something to do with the petroleum content of the swamp. The thicket's Sour Lake and Saratoga oil fields are the fields from which Chevron and Texaco began. On the east edge of the thicket is the town of Kountze: 2,115 people and the home of the fighting Lions and Lionettes. (...) more....

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