The city was named for thickets of mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) native to the original town site.

[7] Located in the heart of the piney woods ecoregion of the southeastern United States, the land site that eventually became Laurel was densely covered with forests of virgin longleaf pine, making the area attractive to pioneering lumberjacks and sawmill operators in the late 19th century.

In 1881, business partners John Kamper and A.M. Lewin constructed a small lumber mill on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad.

The next year, in response to a Post Office Department request to provide a postal delivery name 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.

By 1891, Kamper's company was on the verge of bankruptcy, leading Kamper to sell the mill and extensive land holdings in the area (more than 15,000 acres), to Clinton, Iowa, lumber barons Lauren Chase Eastman and George and Silas Gardiner, founders of the Eastman-Gardiner Company.

By the early 1900s, the success of Eastman-Gardner Company's operations in Laurel and the region's superabundance of timber began to attract other lumber industrialists' attention.

In 1906, the Gilchrist-Fordney Company, whose founders hailed from Alpena, Michigan, began construction on their own lumber mill in Laurel.

[12] The city's population grew markedly during the early 20th century because rural people were attracted to manufacturing jobs and the economic takeoff of Masonite International.

The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters.

[27] Amtrak's Crescent train connects Laurel with New York City; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, North Carolina; Atlanta; Birmingham, Alabama; and New Orleans.

Hattiesburg–Laurel Regional Airport is in an unincorporated area in Jones County near Moselle,[30] 21 miles (34 km) southwest of Laurel.

Laurel residents Erin and Ben Napier are featured in the HGTV series Home Town, which premiered on March 21, 2017.

In Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, fictional Laurel native Blanche DuBois is known here as a "woman of loose morals" who, after the loss of her family estate "Belle Reve", frequents the Hotel Flamingo as told to Stanley by the merchant Kiefaber.