When you consider the history of economic development in Noxubee County, it’s a pretty short list. The arrival of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad in the mid-1850s, made the area a boom town for timber production. About 100 years later, in 1948, the Shuqualak Lumber Company was founded and, with approximately 150 employees, remains one of the largest independent producers of southern pine in the Southeast.

The economic fortune of the county has been based on agriculture, particularly lumber since its founding, but the county’s heyday has long since passed. With 10,285 residents, the county’s population is about a third of what it was in 1900. The county has lost population every decade since 1950. Shuqualak, once the heart of the county’s timber trade and rail transport, has a population of 399, less than half of what it was in 1930. Three-in-10 Noxubee County residents live below the poverty rate and the county has a labor force of just 3,330. It is regularly among the counties with the highest unemployment rate in the state.

We share all this as context.

On Thursday, Huber Engineered Woods of North Carolina announced plans to build a new mill near Shuqualak — a capital investment of $418 million that will produce 158 permanent jobs and another 150 jobs during construction.

So when the project is hailed as the biggest economic development in the county’s history, it is not hyperbole.

According to the latest unemployment data, there are currently 130 unemployed people (residents over age 18 actively seeking work) in the county. In theory, the new mill could bring employment to virtually 100 percent, although that isn’t likely. What it does seem to guarantee is that jobs will be available in the county like rarely before. No doubt, it will be a draw to neighboring Kemper and Winston counties where jobs are also scarce.

The new mill will also dramatically improve the county’s tax base. It will be good for county government and its schools.

There is some symmetry in the fact that this latest economic development is tied to the same industry that created its previous booms – lumber.

Huber manufacturers sub-flooring products for both commercial and residential customers. The mill that will be built in Noxubee County is called an OSB Mill, which stands for Oriented Strand Board. The process uses pine chips bonded by adhesives, not unlike the particle-board plywood you can find at any building supply company. The company said the mill could go through as many as 250 truckloads of pulpwood a day.

It’s big news any way you look at it.

As noted, Noxubee County isn’t wealthy by most standards, but it has always had a wealth of friendly, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people.

That is why we couldn’t be happier for them as this new project comes on line.

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.