Port Arthur, Texas: The Cajun Capital of Texas

We had a friend and his mom lived in Port Arthur. I'd never heard of it. Since we were in this part of Texas, we stopped to check it out.

You know what I love? Those cool post card-like murals that cities paint somewhere in town. It's your job to find it and record it. Port Arthur doesn't have one. But what they do have is a cool museum.

This is the Museum of the Gulf Coast. It doesn't look like much from the outside but for $8, you can go in and learn all you need to know about the history of the area.

Inside one big wall to the left is a huge mural that shows the history of the area starting here with the dinosaurs that once ruled the roost.

The end of the mural documents the discovery of oil at Spindletop.

This is a photo of an exhibit showing the items found in a pioneer log cabin. The rope bed, for example, is a series of ropes that support the hay stuffed mattress. "Sleep tight" is a reference to the tightness of the ropes of the bed. The wood burning stove would be used to heating items like the iron sitting on top of it or the room that is in as well as potentially for cooking. No indoor plumbing in those days so you used a chamber pot for restroom visits (and I assume you shared) and the pitcher and washbowl to clean up after.

Hello, Baby! You've heard the song about the day the music died? Bye Bye Miss American Pie? That's about the plane crash that killed these three musicians. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, aka JP Richardson. His song, "Chantilly Lace" started out with the words, "Hello Baby!" There's a whole section on the second floor dedicated to musicians who were from the Beaumont/Port Arthur area.

This was so cool. One room had an exhibit of photographs taken by Thomas Mangelson, a wild life photographer. I can't imagine being close enough to a bear to take this photo but it's pretty cool, no?

One of the most famous, if not THE most famous, people from Port Arthur is the legendary Janis Joplin. There's a lovely tribute to her at the museum. This is a replica of her 1965 Porsche Cabriolet. 

The museum also describes the founding of the city. It started out in 1837 as a town called Aurora but it never took off. Then John Sparks and his family settled here a few years later and named their town Sparks. The Eastern Texas Railroad came through and it seemed like the town got a little traction but then came the Civil War. The rail lines were removed. In 1886, the final blow came when a hurricane hit the town and destroyed what was left. At that point, any remaining residents moved to Beaumont.

In 1898, Arthur Stilwell came to town. He bought the land that included the two places mentioned above and planned a town that would be the end of the road for the Kansas City, Pittsburgh & Gulf Railroad. He named the city after himself. In 1901, after the Spindletop discovery, The Texas Company (later Texaco) built an oil refinery in Port Arthur and by 1915, it was the biggest in the US.

The hey-day of the Central Business District in Port Arthur was the during the 1900s. As wealthier people slowly moved out of Port Arthur, they took their businesses with them leaving boarded up buildings like this one. This looks like it might have been either a very nice home or, more likely, a masonic lodge.

The Hotel Sabine is still on Proctor Street but is no closer to being revitalized. It was built in 1929 and originally operated as Vaughn Hotel. It's 10 stories tall, still the tallest building in Port Arthur. It was a luxurious hotel with beautiful columns in the lobby, grand ballrooms and a rooftop garden. There was a restaurant that offered fine dining. Now it's fenced off and slated for demolition and has been for a long time. The hotel closed in the 70s. Then it became a retirement home but that closed in the 80s. There's a video in YouTube where a guy actually goes into this building and you can see remnants of its glory days but you can also see what it would take to renovate the building. The elevator shafts are flooded and it looks like portions of the floors have caved in. It's sad.

Port Arthur is part of the "Golden Triangle" that includes Beaumont and Orange. They had interurban rail service that would go between Port Arthur, Beaumont, Nederland and Orange. This was the station. 

Port Arthur is in Jefferson County and while it's not the county seat, they do have a sub courthouse. I guess during the days of the oil boom, it was too far to go all the way to Beaumont so they opened a "branch" courthouse here in Port Arthur.

This is the Woodworth Mansion aka Rose Hill Manor. This 14 room house includes 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms and was built in 1906 by Rome Hatch Woodworth. He was a banker and the mayor. He "allegedly" left money in a trust with an agreement with the city to maintain the house in perpetuity. I read an article that says the city can't find either. The house is available for events but closed to the general public for restoration. This photo and the one below are from the internet because the road to the houses was closed. 

This pink house is called the Pompeiian Villa and was built in 1900 as a winter resort for Isaac Ellwood. He's the guy that developed barbed wire. Who knew? Anyway, he didn't own it very long. H sold it to a guy named James Hopkins in 1901. Hopkins owned a company called Diamond Match Company. Those are the stick matches in the little boxes. I read that his wife didn't like Port Arthur so he turned around and sold the house to George Craig. He lived here until the 1950s. When he died another couple bought it and they lived here until they died in the late 1960s. When George Craig bought this 10 room house, he traded stock worth a few thousand dollars for the Texas Company. Now that Texaco stock is probably worth hundreds of millions. If you want to see the house you have to call and schedule a tour.

For the most part, Port Arthur's Central Business District is pretty run down and vacant. The gorgeous old buildings were abandoned and just left to rot. Luckily, there's a company that has bought these three buildings and is restoring them and repurposing them for their use. This building is the A. E. Scott Furniture building. It was erected in 1911. I couldn't find out much about the company or A. E. Scott  other than when the building went up. It's a cool looking building so I'm glad it's going to be renovated.

Across the street from the furniture store is the old Federal Building. It was built in 1911 and once housed the US Post Office, a federal courthouse, the customs office and other government functions. It was vacated sometime in the early 2000s and left to decay. 

This building was built in 1924 by John R. Adams during the oil boom days. The Adams building was home to doctors and lawyers. In the 1960s it was renamed the World Trade Building. It was later abandoned like the downtown area. I'm very excited for the city of Port Arthur if this company does indeed revitalize the city and restore these buildings. I know they're working on it. When we were there all the streets were blocked off and construction was taking place!

One last cool building I saw. You know I'm a sucker for them. This is the First National Bank Building. It was built in 1930. Port Arthur Savings is engraved in the stone above the entrance. This is now home to the Port Arthur Chamber of Commerce.

There are about 56K people that live here. The vibe, at least for now, is a "run down Beaumont". Despite the fact that the downtown area is virtually deserted, there are lots of students that attend Port Arthur College about half a mile up the road. It's mostly an oil town supported by Motiva, which is an oil refinery, and Huntsman, which is a petrochemical company. The other large employer in the area is the Port Arthur ISD.

I didn't see a lot of chain restaurants but they had all your standard fast food and more than one H-E-B as well as a Walmart for grocery shopping. Port Arthur has a lot going for it. It would seem to have jobs and they are right on the Sabine Lake. A few miles down the Sabine Pass and you're in the Gulf of Mexico!

If nothing else, they have a fantastic museum and that's worth a visit. If you're in the area, check it out!

Nederland, Texas: The Dutch City with the Cajun Flair

On a tour through southeast Texas, we stopped in this cute little town called Nederland (pronounced Neederland). The tagline in the header is my own. Usually, the cities have their own. 

Nederland was settled in 1897 by Dutch immigrants along the rail line of the Kansas City Railway. They were mostly rice and dairy farmers. In 1907, there was an overproduction of rice and that market collapsed. Some of the Dutch moved away. Meanwhile, in 1901, the nearby Spindletop gusher came in creating other blue collar jobs and inducing immigrants from Louisiana to settle here, hence the Cajun influence.

The Dutch Windmill Museum in Tex Ritter Park. It was built in 1969 to honor the Dutch that settled here. The museum is two floors. On the first floor there are western artifacts, including a suit, had and boots worn by native son, Tex Ritter. The second floor has artifacts from Holland. It's free to go in.

Next to the Dutch Windmill Museum is the La Maison Acadienne, which is a replica of early Acadian homes from Southern Louisana. Working in conjunction with Loveless Theriot, who was from Louisiana and had lived in Nederland for 50 years, the museum was opened in 1974. It, too, is free to enter and explore.

Woodward Maurice "Tex" Ritter was born in Murvaul Texas, which is a very tiny town in Panola County Texas. His family moved here to Nederland when he was a teen and he went to a nearby High School that was in Beaumont. He graduated from University of Texas. Tex Ritter was a singing cowboy. He starred in movies like "Son of the Gringo" and is a member of the Grand Ole Opry. I know him as the dad of John Ritter, who starred in Three's Company back in the 70s.

When you pull into Nederland off the highway on to the main street, you see this welcome arch. 

It's a pretty small town though 19K people live here. The biggest employers are the Nederland ISD and Sun Oil Company. That's the company that started after the Spindletop gusher came in back in 1901! This is the main street that has all the cool little shops in old buildings. We saw a lady riding her bike to the bank and other people driving around in golf carts.

You know how towns have their "thing"? Like Athens had the fiddle and the state of Texas and all the businesses would decorate one? Nederland has these Dutch Wooden Shoes. I love it!

For a small town, they have some stuff. They have an H-E-B to grocery shop. For fast food, we saw McDonald's, Subway, Whataburger, Chik-Fil-A and Chicken Express, among others. There was a Texas Roadhouse as well but I think it was technically in Port Arthur.

Nederland one had Interurban rail service between here, Beaumont and Port Arthur. Service was discontinued in 1933 and the rails were pulled up. I don't know reading that stuff makes me kind of sad.

We only stopped here for about thirty minutes to check things out but I'm glad that we did. It's a cool little town and worth a visit. So, if you're in the area, check it out!

Beaumont, Texas: Boomtown

About 20 years ago I came to Beaumont, Texas for work. At the time, I'd heard of Beaumont but I didn't know much about it, nor was I interested in the small towns of Texas like I am now. I had to fly to Houston, then rent a car and drive about an hour to get to there. I think that's when I got the bug. Driving through the back roads of Texas from Houston to Beaumont I looked around and started to wonder about these places. Now 20 years later, I'm back and checking it out.

Beaumont was founded in 1838 by three guys: Henry Millard, Joseph Pulsifer and Thomas Huling. The town was named for Henry Millard's wife; it was her maiden name. 

Beaumont is the county seat of Jefferson County, which was one of the original 23 counties in Texas. Like the other counties, its first courthouse was a log cabin of sorts. There was one built in 1854 that was a wooden structure that maybe they outgrew? I found this image on the internet. It's the courthouse that was built in 1893. They did eventually out grow this one. Too bad because it's gorgeous.

This is the current Jefferson County Courthouse. It was built in 1931 and, at 13 stories high, is the tallest courthouse in Texas. The windows above the 7th floor (the white brick design) have bars on them as floors 8 -13 were used as the jail. Now those floors are used for storage. The only public entrance is through the Annex.

After the Civil War, Beaumont was a cattle and farming town. The big crop was rice and the Texas Beaumont Rice Mill was built in 1892. By the 1900s, the rail road came to town and the economy boomed. This is the caboose of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. It's right at the Port of Beaumont.

This is the Neches River Railroad Bridge built in 1941. It's a vertical lift bridge, meaning that section in the center is lifted to let river traffic go underneath. We didn't get to see it go up but we did see the train cross.

Beaumont also sits on the Neches River. The Port of Beaumont is on the other side of the Neches River Railroad Bridge. The Port of Beaumont is 42 miles inland but ships can go down the Sabine-Neches Waterway from the Port out to the Gulf of Mexico. Cool, no?

This is the John Jay French House. John Jay French was a New Yorker who moved to Beaumont in 1845. He was a tanner and a trader. He built this house and opened a trading post. You can tour the house for $5, which is a bargain because the historian from the Beaumont Historical Society leading the tour was awesome! It is the oldest house in Beaumont and well worth a visit. It's at the dead end of a beautiful tree-lined street.

This house across the street belonged to French's son, David. It is the office of the Beaumont Historical Society. How cool would it be to work in an old house like that?

Beaumont has several houses that you can tour. We didn't have time to do them all but I wish we could have. I love looking at old houses! This is the McFaddin-Ward House. William Perry Herring McFaddin, the grandson of one of the first settlers in Beaumont (James McFaddin), built this house in 1905. It's three stories tall and has seven bathrooms. When William's daughter married Carroll Ward, she moved in with her parents and lived here until the 1950s.

I would like to have seen the inside of this house. It's the Chambers House Museum and was owned by C. Homer Chambers and his wife Edith Fuller Chambers. Homer came to Beaumont in 1894 and worked as a pattern maker at the Beaumont Iron Works. He eventually became a traveling salesman. The house was built in 1907 but the Chambers family bought it in 1914. They lived in it for almost 100 years. Their daughter, Florence, lived there until she died in 2004. When the Beaumont Historical Society took over, the whole house had all its original furnishings. Nothing had been changed or updated since a big remodel done in 1924! 

In 1892, some people got together and formed the Gladys City Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company. They were drilling for oil in a small area just south of Beaumont.

On January 10, 1901, after drilling 1139 feet down, they hit a gusher. It blew 100,000 barrels of oil per day for nine days before they were able to control it. Beaumont became an oil town. From this one gusher several well known oil companies came into existence: Gulf Oil, Texaco (now both part of Chevron), Humble Oil (which became ExxonMobil) and Magnolia Oil (which became Mobil).

The Spindeltop Gladys City Boomtown Museum tells you all about it. The museum itself is the boomtown. It's made up of several businesses that were set up at the time of the Lucas Gusher.

These were real businesses that were started when the gusher was discovered. Each building was recreated and there's a plaque outside each one to tell you about the owner and how that business fit in with the others during the time. You can go in each one. Inside there may be original items to the owner or items that are representative. It was really cool.

There are lots of cool buildings and things to see in Beaumont. This is St. Anthony's Cathedral Basilica. Back in the 1850s, priests out of the Galveston Diocese would ride around the state on horseback to administer to the people. In 1879, they created a formal parish here in Beaumont called St. Louis. When the Lucas Gusher hit in 1901, they decided on a better more permanent structure. This one. It was completed in 1907 and the name was changed to St. Anthony after St. Anthony of Padua.

This is the Julie Rogers Theater. It was built in 1928 and was once City Hall. In 1982, it ceased being City Hall and was renovated and repurposed as the Julie Rogers Theater. Now it hosts live events such as concerts and plays. It seats 1600 people. It's a gorgeous building. I would love to have gone in.

This amazing building is the Tyrrell Public Library. It was built in 1903 as the First Baptist Church.

In 1923, the First Baptist Church moved to another location. The building was purchased by William C. Tyrrell. He turned it into a public library and then donated it to the city. It's free to go in. It's mostly a research library but they have all kinds of books on Texas history which, if I lived there I'd have checked out and read. There's also a whole genealogy section that I would have happily dug into. I'm so glad the building wasn't torn down like it would have been had this been Dallas.

The famed Crockett Street, aka entertainment district in downtown Beaumont. It's one street with some restored buildings that have been turned into restaurants.

This is the Central Fire Station built in 1927. It's now the HQ of the fire department administration but it's also a FREE museum. It's the State Fire Museum of Texas and it has all kinds of old fire equipment and trucks along with the history of them all.

This is a 1909 ladder wagon with a ladder that would go up 75 feet! Note there's only one seat for the driver. That's because it was originally pulled by horses. According to the sign, when the alarm would go off, the "horses would stand at attention in their stalls and harnesses would drop from the ceiling onto their necks. The firemen would set them up and lead them to the truck." The driver would ring a bell with his foot and the horses would go.

The fireman's pole was invented in Chicago in the 1870s to assist the guys in getting to the truck and then to the fire faster. They were made fun of at first but then people realized the fire department using the pole was getting there faster. The first brass pole was installed in a Boston fire house in 1880. Soon after it became standard equipment. Cool, right?

Outside they have the World's Largest Fire Hydrant. You can't pass that up!

This building was originally the Travis Street Substation, which was built in 1929 by the Gulf States Utility Company allowing them to provide "reliable and economic" electricity to people throughout Beaumont, including farm communities. Now it is the Edison Plaza Museum, which closes at 2. So, if you want to check it out, you have to get up early. It has interactive exhibits about Thomas Edison's inventions and about his life. I bet it's cool.

This is another cool historic house. It's not a museum but it's for sale. Robert Sanders moved to Beaumont in 1878 lured by the thriving lumber industry. In 1902, he opened his own cabinet shop but did woodworking before that. For example, remember the Tyrrell Public Library? Sanders built the staircase that leads to the second floor. The house was built in 1895 by another company but Sanders did all the finish work himself.

Driving around downtown I came across another cool building. This is the First National Bank which was established in 1889. This building was erected in 1937 and functioned as a bank until 1963 when the business was relocated. Wouldn't you love to go in there and look around? I think it's vacant these days.

This cool building is the Jefferson Theater. It was built 1927 and hosted live vaudeville shows, silent movies and then regular movies. It's significant feature is a Robert Morton Wonder Organ that has 778 pipes and rises up from the orchestra pit. The theater closed in 1972. Then in 1995, restoration started and in 2003, it reopened. They have "Classic Movie Night" there as well as live shows. Comedian Henry Cho is coming. We went back downtown in the evening to see if (1) there was a movie and (2) if the lights would be on. Sadly, it was all dark.

The building next to the Jefferson Theater is the Hotel Beaumont which was built in 1922. It had 250 rooms and has a tunnel to the Jefferson Theater, I assume so that the performers could stay there and get to the theater without having to go outside. I'd like to explore that. I wonder if it's still open. The hotel closed in 1977 and was then used as a retirement community until 2011. Unfortunately after that it sat vacant. There have been many plans to renovate and revitalize but none of them have come to fruition.

Remember the Tyrrell Library? It was originally the First Baptist Church but then in 1925, they moved. This is where they moved to. This is also the First Baptist Church which was built in 1925. It looks like it was an amazing complex (there's another building next to it). The congregation met here until 2013 when it closed. Now it is unfortunately, vacant.

The Beaumont Botanical Gardens. I liked Beaumont but it had a run down Houston-y vibe. Like it wanted to be the big city (and it is, comparatively. It's the 10th largest city in Texas) but the upkeep is just too much. There are 115K people in the city and it seemed like all the roads were under construction so perhaps it will be better.

The Hildebrandt Bayou.  This place looks so peaceful.

The biggest employers are Lamar University - that's where the Spindletop Museum is, The Beaumont ISD and the ExxonMobil Beaumont Refinery. 

I didn't realize there even was a Port of Beaumont and it's one of the regions biggest contributors to the economy. The 842nd Transportation Battalion and the 569th Transportation Group are both stationed here. They are part of the US Army and deploy military equipment and cargo through Gulf Coast ports. Basically, they move people and their equipment where they need to go.

Beaumont has several museums that we didn't get to go to like the Art Museum of Southeast Texas and the Beaumont Children's Museum in addition to the one's mentioned above.

It's definitely worth a visit. The museums we did visit were cool so if you're in the area, check them out!