Elizabeth was founded in 1906 when the Industrial Lumber Company established a sawmill and built a town around it. The name Elizabeth was chosen as a tribute to the daughter of Sam Parks, one of the men who established the mill.

Elizabeth has a unique history. What remains today is just a glimmer of the past. The hospital, which now holds the town's City Hall, was the original company hospital. It's halls are said to be occupied with the ghosts of patients past. The Community is known as The Front Porch Community and every house in town has a front porch.

After purchasing tens of thousands of acres of the virgin pine forests, the Industrial Lumber Company built a huge mill to harvest the timber and a complete town to supply the mill. Operations at the huge Elizabeth mill began in 1909 and office buildings, houses, stores and the hospital were owned and operated by the lumber company. Elizabeth was carefully planned and held the components of a town build to feed the lumber mill and made every effort to make them superior. The hospital stands as one example, but the commissary and hotel also meant to demonstrate the progress and prosperity the Industrial Lumber Company offered the region.

In 1926, the Calcasieu Sulphate Paper Company, later renamed the Calcasieu Paper Company, built a plant at Elizabeth for the manufacture of craft pulp and paper. The Industrial Lumber Company, founder and owner of the town, continued in business until 1942, when it disbanded its sawmill operations and leased the industrial site to the Calcasieu Paper Company.

In 1946, C. G. McGehee's Jacksonville Paper Company aquired the Calcasieu Paper Company. McGehee immediately moved another of his properties in from Florida to manufacture paper bags.

McGehee first leased the town from its owner, the Industrial Paper Company, and in 1955, he purchased it outright. Despite Elizabeth's dependence on him, McGehee was an absentee owner, flying in periodically from his home in Jacksonville and landing his plane at the edge of a pecan orchard outside of town.

In the fifties Elizabeth became the center of labor unrest, which brought the twon national attention. In May, 1952, after the workers voted to unionize, the company refused to bargain. The mill workers voted to strike. McGehee ordered a lockout and closed the mills for two months. He fired the strikers and hired strikebreakers. When the strike ended in 1957, management was victorious in the dispute; the company remained nonunion.

Feelings against McGehee were channeled into a noisy grumbling over one point -- company ownership of the town. The company seemed relieved to relinquish ownership of the town and did its best to help Elizabeth in its efforts to be like other towns. For almost three years, officers of the paper compamy and their professional consultants made plans for a new Elizabeth.

On January 23, 1964, Gov. Jimmie H. Davis signed a proclamation making Elizabeth the fith incorporated town in Allen Parish.