Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

EPILOGUE
S EPTEMBER 2005
Long before the weather service gave them names, tropical storms, especially mighty hurricanes,
rearranged the southeast Texas coast dramatically. Arthur Stilwell determined to build an outlet to
the world from America’s midwest, via his Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad, but he decided
against developing his port directly on the Gulf, electing instead to locate shipping facilities on an
inland lake and connect it to the sea by canal. So Port Arthur was founded, and from it came
Nederland, Port Neches, Groves, and other communities in the southern portion of Jefferson County.
Hurricanes are accepted by residents of Gulf coastal counties as the price of living where the nearby
ocean supplies jobs and recreational opportunities as well as hurricanes; they take the good with the bad,
and endured even such mighty blows as Hurricane Audrey in 1957. By 2000, most Gulf Coast residents
had learned to store survival supplies—food, water, batteries, etc.—plywood cut to door and window
measurements, and to have an evacuation plan awaiting the inevitable need for implementation.
Late in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, virtually destroying the Gulf Coast’s
legendary playground, and sending hundreds of thousands of south Louisianans scurrying hundreds
of miles inland seeking shelter. Residents all around the Gulf of Mexico were on edge; by late
September, the season already had spawned seventeen named tropical storms, 10 had become
hurricanes of 75 miles per hour or greater, two already had achieved Category 5, the most intense
designation on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
In September, three weeks after Katrina came ashore in eastern Louisiana, convection low-level
circulation around an upper-level low developed in the Atlantic Ocean east of Cuba. The surface low
caused a gradual acceleration of circular winds until September 20, when the disturbance—now and
forever remembered as Rita—reached hurricane status. Rita passed over southern-most Florida into
❖
Hurricane Rita came ashore on
September 24, 2005, near Sabine
Pass, as a Category 3 storm with
wind speeds of 120 mph and a storm
surge of 10 feet. A group of buildings
along Texas 87 in Sabine Pass took a
hard hit from the storm’s powerful
winds, All of Jefferson County
sustained heavy damage. Rita had
been a Category 5 storm shortly
before landfall and was the strongest
measured hurricane ever to enter the
Gulf of Mexico.
PHOTO BY BRIAN VINCENT,
COURTESY OF THE PORT ARTHUR NEWS.
Epilogue ✦ 51