Jones State Forest, 1,722 acres of pine woods on FM 1488 between Conroe and The Woodlands, was bought by the state of Texas in the mid-1920s as State Forest No. 2. It was set aside for research and demonstration, and the Texas A&M Forest Service still manages it for forestry research, education and the protection of its plants and wildlife, from a district office about a mile and a half west of Interstate 45. It holds a population of red-cockaded woodpeckers, a federally listed species that nests in living pines, and the Forest Service burns parts of the forest to keep the open pine stands the birds need. The forest is named for William Goodrich Jones, called the father of forestry in Texas. Born in New York in 1860, he spent two years in Europe as a boy, at school in Germany, and toured the Black Forest with his father, where he saw managed woods supporting the villages around them.
He became a bank president in Temple, urged the town to plant trees, and pressed the legislature for an official Arbor Day. In 1914 he helped found the Texas Forestry Association, which drafted the law that created the state's forestry department, later the Texas Forest Service.
State Forest No. 2 took Jones's name in the 1940s, and the association placed a plaque honouring him at the forest in 1948. He died in 1950.
Getting there
30.2352, -95.4829
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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