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!