The large Kirby sawmill at Bessmay was one of the three sawmill plants built by the Kirby company during 1902. The town was named Bessmay after John Henry Kirby's daughter, Bessie May, and the mill was the largest and best plant in the Kirby system until it was closed and its operations consolidated at the new Silsbee plant in 1954. With a ten hour cutting capacity approaching 250,000 board feet, the mill regularly produced close to sixty million board feet of lumber per year. When first built, the planing mill, electrically driven from generators in the engine room, was reported to have been the only one of its kind in the South.. The appraised plant value in 1904 was $260,987. Six porcupine steam kilns each had a 30,000 foot capacity per day. A six acre pond provided water for the operations. A total of twenty-four buildings comprised the plant in 1911. Camp 3 logged an ample supply of good quality long leaf timber.
Bessmay, along with the Kirby plant at Call, reopened in May, 1932, after having closed for than a year because of the Great Depression. In 1950, the facility burned to the ground, destroying the sawmill, boilers, fuel house, green chain, and much lumber. The planing mill dry kiln, and storage sheds were saved. Kirby Lumber moved 300 to 350 employees to company mills at Voth, Call, Silsbee, and Honey Island in order to take the 150,000-feet slack. The Gulf Coast Lumberman reported on May 15, 1954, that Bessmay had stopped cutting on April 15, and that the facility would be used to operate company logging operations and as a storage facility.
The mill employed around 700 workers, including logging operations, and the town had a tennis court, a baseball “park,” and a dancing pavilion by 1905. The sawmill town had a post office, churches, schools, commissary, and tenant housing.

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