Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

❖
Arthur Stilwell (left), owner and
builder, and Jan De Goeijan, Dutch
businessman who financed the
project, celebrate the completion of
the Kansas City, Pittsburg, and Gulf
Railroad in 1899 at end of the line in
Port Arthur with a symbolic
handshake. In English “De Goeijan” is
pronounced ‘DeQueen.’
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
slowed the work once more. Meantime,
Stilwell’s dock company, already completed,
remained busy despite such legal entanglements.
With the PeeGee bringing grain from
the Midwest and timber production in the area,
workers at the pier on Houston Avenue had
plenty to do loading thousands of bales of
cotton, tons of flour and corn, and millions of
board feet of lumber on barges that tugs pushed
to ocean vessels waiting at the southern end of
Sabine Pass.
Port Arthur’s growth was evident in the
completion of the Hobo Line, a local
transportation system for workers, beginnings
of cultivated oyster beds, a fish oil plant, Horace
L. Rodgers theatre, an electricity plant, banks, a
18 ✦ WATER, RAILS & OIL