Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

Company A, Texas Engineers, 36th Infantry
Division, National Guard, commanded by
Captain James G.L. Howard; other officers
included Lieutenants Richard B. Dunbar and
Richard A. McClanaghan.
Allied demands and our own military
necessity made for serious shortages during
World War I. Sugar and flour, staples in most
south Jefferson kitchens, disappeared with
use and proved difficult to replace. The War
Garden Association assisted area residents,
including those without yards who could use
vacant lots and even some public parks, to
supplement their tables with fresh produce. And
the impact of war was evident in the decision to
change the name of German Avenue to Pershing
Avenue in Port Arthur. Worse than war, at least
locally, was an epidemic of Spanish influenza
that swept the area in 1918. To prevent
additional communication of the disease, Port
Arthur’s mayor closed theatres and places of
amusement, schools—even churches—until the
danger passed.
Despite the tensions of war and disease,
people continued to be joiners. A Rotary Club
was organized in Port Arthur in 1915, followed
by a Lions Cub in 1917. The next year Local 23
received its charter from the American Federation
of Labor’s Oil Workers International Union, and
the Reverend Otho Morris, pastor of First
Methodist Church, organized the first Boy Scout
troop in the city. Local 1175 of the International
Longshoreman’s Association began in 1921.
In 1920, Port Arthur’s population figures
stood at 22,276. The value of annual exports
through its port exceeded $13 million, and the
city provided several new schools for its young
scholars, including Lincoln School for Negroes.
Residents of the area celebrated being “first” at
many things; in 1921, Port Arthur’s citizens
boasted of hosting the first all-woman jury in
Texas. The case involved a woman accused of
assault, and when an all-male jury voted for
acquittal, the irritated judge dismissed the men
and impaneled a new, all-woman, jury. Jury
Number 2 required only four minutes to return
a guilty verdict, and an observer said they even
used “their vanity cases” during some of that
time. Port Arthur also scored another “first” in
1926 when school superintendent George Sims
added a twelfth grade to the public school
curriculum. Soon all schools in Texas followed
that lead.
Southern Jefferson County, like the rest of
America, witnessed significant social change
after the war. Returning servicemen sometimes
found their old jobs filled by women or
minorities who did not want to return to secondclass
economic citizenship. During that decade
many women shortened their skirts, bobbed
their hair, and behaved in a more liberated
fashion. Traditionalism fought back through the
dismissal of all schoolteachers who had adopted
the “flapper-style,” and in a solemn march by the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan down Procter Street
carrying an American flag and a fiery cross.
Atlantic Refining Company joined Gulf and
The Texas Company as a member of the area’s
industrial community in 1923; Fina eventually
succeeded Atlantic on that site (now BASF).
Additional growth could be seen in the
completion in 1925 of a “Hug-The-Coast” road
linking Port Arthur and Galveston via a ferry at
the end of Bolivar Peninsula. It made use of a
right of way already established from Port Arthur
to McFaddin Beach, and United States Post
Road, a trail along the coast dating back to the
Civil War. When the road opened, the ferry to
Galveston made only three round-trips per day
and cost $1 for an automobile. A road to Orange,
again with a ferry across the Sabine River, also
was completed, and surveyors busily worked
westward to extend the Intracoastal Canal. In
addition, in fulfillment of a decision by the
❖
Opposite: Beaumont capitalist Forrest
Goodhue built the ten-story Goodhue
Hotel in Port Arthur at a cost of
$500,000 in 1929. After serving the
entire region for almost sixty-one
years, it was imploded by the City of
Port Arthur in August 1990. The
Goodhue debris was placed along the
Sabine-Neches waterway to protect
Pleasure Island from further erosion.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
Below: Port Arthur citizens celebrate
Armistice Day in 1920 in front of the
Federal Building on Austin Avenue
and Fifth Street.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
Chapter III ✦ 31