Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

❖
A rendering of the Battle of Sabine
Pass from a mural at the Museum of
the Gulf Coast.
PAINTING BY TRAVIS KEESE. COURTESY OF
THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST, PORT
ARTHUR, TEXAS.
The Battle of Sabine Pass lasted only two
minutes, but its shots were “heard around the
world.” Coming only two months after
significant Confederate losses at Vicksburg and
Gettysburg, President Jefferson Davis, in what
early in the twentieth-first century is called
“spin,” hailed Dowling’s and the Davis Guard’s
success as one of the greatest military victories in
history because so few had prevailed over so
many. The Union did not make another effort to
enter Texas from the Gulf of Mexico until the
very end of the war, in South Texas, since
squadrons based in New Orleans could enforce
the blockade in the entire Gulf. Still, the Battle of
Sabine Pass provided Texas Confederates,
especially those in East Texas, with a moment of
triumph in the most significant military action of
the war fought in Texas.
Near the end of the nineteenth century,
Jefferson County remained agricultural and
overwhelmingly rural, though several port cities,
notably Beaumont, Grigsby’s Bluff or Port Neches,
and Sabine Pass prospered and increased in
population because of water and then rail
transportation. Cattle raising and wood processing
dominated economic activities, and county
government was well established. Schools and
churches provided education and religious
services, the population grew rapidly from
immigration from southeastern states and from
biology—large families of six or more children
were common—all combining to make hope for
even greater growth likely to have a positive
outcome. Few residents of the county could have
imagined that on January 10, 1901, the long
proclaimed and often ridiculed predictions of
Patillo Higgins that oil awaited in a salt
dome located a few miles south of the county seat
came true, or what its discovery would mean to
southern Jefferson County.
12 ✦ WATER, RAILS & OIL