Cleveland & the Big Thicket's Edge

Cleveland grew up where the railroad met the great pineywoods of Southeast Texas — right at the western edge of the Big Thicket, that legendary tangle of forest, swamp, and biological diversity that early settlers called impassable. When the Houston East and West Texas Railway pushed through in the 1870s, landowner Charles Lander Cleveland gave the right-of-way and the town took his name, becoming a shipping point for the timber and farm goods of Liberty County's northern reaches. This short drive visits the historic homes and the memorials that trace the town's founding and its lumber-era prosperity. Cleveland still calls itself a gateway to the Big Thicket; keep to the public streets and picture the wall of forest that once pressed right up to the tracks.