Laurel is a city in and the second county chair of Jones County, Mississippi, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 17,161. It is located northeast of Ellisville, the first county seat, which contains the first county courthouse. Laurel has the second county courthouse as there are two judicial districts in Jones County. Laurel is the headquarters of the Jones County Sheriff’s Department, which administers in the county. Laurel is the principal city of a micropolitan statistical area named for it. Major employers combine Howard Industries, Sanderson Farms, Masonite International, Family Health Center, Howse Implement, Thermo-Kool, and South Central Regional Medical Center. Laurel is house to the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Mississippi’s oldest art museum, established by the relatives of Lauren Eastman Rogers.

Following the 1881 construction of the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad through the area, economic money taking place front occurred rapidly. The city of Laurel was incorporated in 1882, with timber as the impetus. Yellow pine forests in the region fueled the industry. The city was named for thickets of mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) which were indigenous to the native town site.

Located in the heart of the piney woods ecoregion of the southeastern United States, the land site that would eventually become Laurel was densely covered in the same way as forests of virgin longleaf pine, making the area an attractive one to pioneering lumberjacks and sawmill operators in the late 19th century.

In 1881, business cronies John Kamper and A.M. Lewin constructed a little lumber mill on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad. Kamper and Lewin’s mill was located in an Place that would innovative become Laurel’s First Avenue. The afterward year, in tribute to a U.S. Postal Service request to find the money for a postal delivery reveal for their mill and its surrounding lumber camp, Kamper and Lewin submitted the name “Lawrell” as an homage to the area’s naturally-growing mountain laurel bushes. The unfamiliar spelling, however, was soon “corrected” by federal postal officials, giving the difficult town its current spelling.