Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

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Above: Looking Northward at Port
Arthur from Pleasure Island, c. 1931
COURTESY OF THE PORT ARTHUR PUBLIC LIBRARY,
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
Left: Pleasure Pier in the 1920s
looking northward from Sabine Lake.
Note the fan-shaped material placed
in the area by dredges maintaining
the canal. This dredged material built
Pleasure Island as we know it today.
Gates’ Plaza Hotel is directly in line
with the bridge.
COURTESY OF THE PORT ARTHUR PUBLIC LIBRARY,
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
department began two years later.
Before 1904 ended, Cosmopolitan Lodge
No. 862, A.F. & A.M., the area’s first fraternity,
began meeting. The Port Arthur News became
a daily publication, and former Mayor
R.H. Woodworth constructed the Woodworth
Mansion, or “Rose Hill,” which became a city
landmark and eventually a public facility. Over
35,000 tons valued at $1.9 million cleared Port
Arthur’ s docks in 1900; by 1905 exports had
exploded to 647 tons, by now mostly
petroleum, valued at $14.8 million. The next
year Congress approved the designation of Port
Arthur as an official port of entry and assumed
authority and responsibility for the ship canal,
and Russell Dunn became the first customs
collector there; L.E. Wood also became the
first harbormaster of the port. Within little
more than a decade, Port Arthur joined
the ranks of the nation’s busiest ports in
tonnage, mostly petroleum. In separate
legislation, Congress also authorized dredging
of the Sabine and Neches rivers from Orange
and Beaumont to a connection with Port
Arthur’s ship channel, to make those cities deepwater
ports as well. The first barge from Orange
carried lumber to the Texas Company Docks;
wagons hauled this essential building material
to various company, lumberyard, and
construction sites.
Chapter III ✦ 27