Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

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Port Arthur businessmen celebrate the
last cut through the marsh for the
canal from Sabine Pass to Taylor
Bayou, 1899. In the photo are E. A.
Laughlin, H. H. Beels, Billy Farrell,
L. Schuh, A. H. Scott, Peter Stock,
A. J. M. Vuylsteke, M. R. Box, Colonel
Jim Furlong, J. W. Carr, Hans
Falkenburg, A. Spence, W. A. Hall,
Joseph Bash, Julius Holmes, Jack
Campbell, Doctor Barraclough,
Doctor Hughes, Judge J. B. Bennet,
W. L. Carr, Mr. Cleveland, Mr.
Chronister, Mr. Haggerty, and
Mr. Turner.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
The founding of the Port Arthur News on
March 18, 1897, and of the Port Arthur Herald
one day later, the city’s first newspapers, and a
post office, provided evidence of continued
growth, as did the beginning of the city’s first
regular Christian religious services by the
Reverend W. F. Rentz, a Lutheran, who was soon
joined by members of the First Methodist
Episcopal Church. Also that March, men from
the community donated labor and materials and
erected the city’s first schoolhouse on land
provided by the Townsite Company—in a single
day! Peter Stock, unable to leave his saloon, sent
beer for the refreshment of the workers.
What Port Arthur needed most was people,
so the PeeGee ran excursion trains from Kansas
City, bringing hundreds of prospective new
residents to the area. The Port Arthur News beat
the rival Herald to press by one day, distributing
its first issue to passengers on the first excursion
train before they reached the city. The editor
welcomed them with, “Port Arthur is yours, or
at least as much as you are able to pay for….
Take everything you fancy except the
townsite…. Keep off the grass. Don’t shoot at
the mosquitoes. This is the closed season under
Texas law.”
The next day, the Herald’s editor welcomed
excursionists even more poetically: “Beautiful
Lake Sabine is as changeable as the moon, as
fickle as a woman, and gives us every day a new
and different aspect of its beauty. At times,
beneath a gray and misty sky, it lies with a sullen
face like a sulky child. Then comes a burst of
sunshine, the clouds vanish and the little
breezes dimple its face to smiles....”
PORT ARTHUR AND
STILWELL’ S CANAL
Arthur Stilwell founded his city by Sabine
Lake in 1895, and it grew rapidly. A census
taken in 1898 counted over 1,100 residents,
enough to justify incorporation of the City of
Port Arthur and election of the town’s first
mayor, Nat R. Strong. Workers completed
construction of a roundhouse for the PeeGee
and Hotel Sabine.
Fulfilling Stilwell’s dream required
completion of the canal necessary to make Port
Arthur a seaport, but legal objections from the
Kountze brothers succeeded in delaying
completion of the canal. Stilwell had the
permission of the Corps of Engineers to
construct the canal, “so long as it does not
interfere with the riparian rights of owners
of lands adjoining.” Kountze interests sued
Stilwell and obtained a series of injunctions that
16 ✦ WATER, RAILS & OIL