Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

usinessmen throughout the country, urging
them to take advantage of opportunities in the
new city.
Newspaper advertisements enticed the
excursion parties to come to Port Arthur from the
Midwest. They came by the hundreds in response
to a glowing promise: “A healthy climate, good
schools and churches, good farming lands and
good markets in which to sell products of the soil
are just a few inducements Port Arthur and
Jefferson County offer to home seekers.”
While the KCS rail line did not open up vast
reaches of new territory in the west, it did serve
to develop the U.S. frontier by establishing
numerous new towns along the tracks
connecting Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico.
KCS acquired more than forty thousand acres
on the northern shore of Sabine Lake and the
town of Port Arthur was laid out. For paying as
much as seven dollars an acre, people laughed at
him, local historians say, because the land was
nothing but marshes, alligators and hordes of
swarming mosquitoes.
The town of Nederland was also founded
as a mark of gratitude to Dutch investors.
The Mid-County city’s name is the German
and Dutch spelling and pronunciation for
netherland, the descriptive name meaning
“low land” for Holland and the five other
provinces that together form the Republic of
The Netherlands.
Stilwell used four thousand acres for the original
plat of the city, which extended from Houston
Avenue east to what is now Woodworth Boulevard
and from Lakeshore Drive north to Nineteenth
Street. The last spike of Stilwell’s railroad was
driven with great celebration on September 11,
1897. The new city was a mere nine miles from
deep saltwater and oceangoing vessels.
Robert Gillham, Stilwell’s chief engineer,
platted the new town’s streets and other
improvements. He also was involved in digging
of the Port Arthur Ship Canal, which connected
❖
Above: This head-on view of the
Former Port Arthur Municipal
Building shows some of the building’s
tropical landscaping.
Below: The Texaco tanker Contraras,
photographed in 1947, passes through
the Pleasure Pier Bridge, which was
opened to traffic on October 17, 1931.
Struck by marine vessels at least
forty-three times between 1958 and
1968, the double-leaf deck bascule
bridge served as the only nonwaterborne
conveyance to Pleasure
Island until it was damaged beyond
repair on October 2, 1967.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 55