Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

CHAPTER III
STEEL
A powerful new force reached southern Jefferson County in December 1899, one whose role as an
urban developer eventually equaled that of Arthur Stilwell. On December 3, John W. Gates arrived
in Port Arthur to inspect the city’s canal and shipping facilities. Gates told those who attended a
banquet at Hotel Sabine on December 3 that what he had learned pleased him, but that more could
be accomplished with additional capital—capital Gates knew he could supply. Before his death in
1911, Gates had taken over Stilwell’s railroad and urban development interests and eliminated his
influence over affairs in the southern portion of Jefferson County.
John Warne Gates grew up on the farm where he was born on May 8, 1855, in DuPage
County, Illinois, near the rural community of Turner Junction. In almost a Horatio Alger template,
even as a youth Gates demonstrated entrepreneurial skills and salesmanship, qualities that in
maturity made him one of America’s wealthiest men. Such traits were manifest in Gates’ trading
various items with other youths, mostly driving a sharper bargain than did his playmates. At the age
of eighteen, Gates purchased partial interest in a used threshing machine and also developed a
business as a distributor of wood. At twenty he became the proprietor of a hardware store in
St. Charles, Illinois, and there met Isaac L. Ellwood, a wholesale hardware dealer of similar interests
and energy.
Ellwood had acquired manufacturing and distribution rights to a barbed wire invented by Joseph
Glidden. He hired Gates as a salesman, and Gates traveled to Texas in 1876, a year of new beginnings
in the “Reconstructed” state. By then the great Texas cattle drives to Abilene and Dodge, Kansas, and
❖
Natatorium built by John Gates where
early Port Arthurians enjoyed
swimming—located on the corner of
Fourth Street and Waco Avenue.
Women and children could enjoy the
water only on Thursdays—at the cost
of five cents for adults.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
Chapter III ✦ 21