Two Storms, and the Town That Rebuilt RoadyGoat

2005

Wedged between the Neches River and Sabine Lake, Bridge City sits low, and twice in three years the Gulf tested it. First came Hurricane Rita in September 2005. Orange County ordered a mandatory evacuation on the twenty-second, and roughly eighty percent of residents fled. Forecasters warned of six to eight feet of water on Green Avenue, but a late northward wind shift spared the town the worst of the surge, leaving mostly wind damage. Hurricane Ike in September 2008 showed no such mercy. Its surge, among the highest ever recorded nearby at the Sabine Pass gauge, swept through the streets. Of roughly four thousand homes, only about fourteen to sixteen came through livable. Then something quietly remarkable happened. For months, grapple trucks hauled off the ruined belongings piled along every street, and nearly everyone rebuilt. Bridge City came back before the next storm even arrived.

From Prairie View to Bridge City RoadyGoat

1900

Before it was Bridge City, this was Prairie View, a name earned honestly from the flat coastal grassland where cattle grazed among scattered homes, roughed-out roads, and ferry crossings in southern Orange County. The community sat between the Neches River and Cow Bayou, twenty-two miles southeast of Beaumont. Everything changed in 1938, when the towering Port Arthur to Orange highway bridge rose over the Neches. To reach this place, you had to cross a bridge, and the settlement quietly took the name Bridge City. A post office opened in 1946. Twice, in 1961, residents voted against becoming a formal city. They finally said yes in 1970, by a margin of 677 to 466, with roughly 1,123 votes cast. A cattle prairie had become a bridge-anchored town, powered by nearby oilfields and petrochemical plants.

The Bridge That Turns on a Pin RoadyGoat

1938

Bridge City is named for its bridges, plural, and the second one still performs a vanishing trick. The Cow Bayou Swing Bridge, completed in 1940, does not lift or draw open. Its entire center span pivots sideways on a single concrete pier, turning like a revolving door on a pin to let boats slip past. Built by the Jensen Construction Company to a Texas Highway Department design, it runs 806 feet long, and an electric motor can swing it fully open and shut in about ten minutes. It was the last major piece completed on old Highway 87, the coast-hugging road from Orange toward Brownsville, and its design was modeled on an earlier swing bridge over the Sabine River at Deweyville. Recognized as a rare surviving movable span, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

Orangefield

1913

THIS COMMUNITY HAS ITS ORIGINS IN THE FIRST WELL DRILLED IN THE ORANGE OIL FIELD. A SHALLOW WELL DRILLED IN 1903 YIELDED NO OIL. AFTER SUCCESSFUL DEEPER DRILLING ON OTHER SALT DOMES, RIO BRAVO OIL CO., A SUBSIDIARY OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD, DRILLED THE NO. 1 BLAND WELL IN 1913. THIS “WONDER WELL” PRODUCED 150 BARRELS PER DAY FROM 3,209 TO 3,227 FEET, THEN THE DEEPEST WELL IN TEXAS. IN 1921, HUMBLE OIL’S CHESSON NO. 5, ON A HILL ON THE WEST SIDE OF COW BAYOU NEAR THE OLD BRIDGE, PRODUCED 15,000 BARRELS DAILY. ITS SUCCESS SPURRED WILDCATTING AND LED TO DISCOVERY OF THE ORANGE OIL FIELD. TO OVERCOME MARSHLAND AND COW BAYOU FLOODING, ORANGE COUNTY BUILT A SIX-MILE PLANK ROAD TO ACCOMMODATE HEAVY OIL COMPANY EQUIPMENT. EIGHT BUSES HAULED WORKERS TO ORANGE FIELD, WHICH WITH ORANGE EXPERIENCED A POPULATION BOOM. BUSINESSES SPRANG UP, INCLUDING STORES, HOTELS, ROOMING HOUSES, CAFES AND TWO THEATERS. JAPANESE NATIVE KICHIMATSU KISHI ESTABLISHED AN AGRICULTURAL COLONY NEAR THE OIL FIELD. JAPANESE INVESTORS ALSO HEADED THE ORANGE PETROLEUM COMPANY, WHICH RECORDED THE WORLD’S DEEPEST ROTARY-DRILLED WELL AT 5,589 FEET IN 1922. THE ORANGEFIELD POST OFFICE OPENED IN 1922. A JULY 1923 FIRE SPREAD THROUGH THE BUSINESS DISTRICT, CAUSING AN ESTIMATED $75,000 IN DAMAGES. THIS MAY HAVE MARKED THE TURNING POINT IN THE TOWN’S PROSPERITY. BY 1925, MOST OF THE DRILLING CREWS WERE GONE, AND ONLY ONE SECTION CREW REMAINED IN 1927. A 1926 TORNADO AND 1927 FIRE WHICH RAZED THE SCHOOLHOUSE WERE ADDITIONAL SETBACKS. DEMAND FOR OIL AND GAS AFTER WORLD WAR II LED TO A SURGE IN DRILLING ACTIVITY. IN 1963 THE U.S. CONGRESS AGREED TO CHANNEL THE FIRST 7.7 MILES OF COW BAYOU TO SOLVE FLOODING PROBLEMS. HURRICANES AUDREY (1957), RITA (2005) AND IKE (2008) DESTROYED OIL DERRICKS ALONG COW BAYOU. TODAY THE COMMUNITY IS CENTERED AROUND THE ORANGEFIELD INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, CHURCHES, BUSINESSES AND HOMES.

Historical Marker → · 3.2 mi away

Rainbow Bridge

1920

The rapid growth of the petrochemical industry in Jefferson and Orange counties in the early 20th century led to increased population in this area. In order to serve escalating transportation needs, plans began in the 1920s for the construction of a bridge to span the Neches River. Due to the depressed economy and differences of opinion among business leaders, the campaign to build the bridge (led by the Port Arthur "News" and American Legion Post No. 7) lasted for seven years. In 1934 Gov. Miriam A. Ferguson signed a special law to enable county bond and Federal Public Works Administration funds to pay for state highway bridge construction. The project engineer, G. G. Wickline, used innovative techniques to design a bridge that would cross 7,742 feet of marshy terrain and river bottom. The bridge's 680-foot central span, designed to clear a Navy ship carrying a moored dirigible, was, at 176 feet, the world's highest elevated roadbed over tidal waters. The final cost of the bridge was $2,750,000. Its dedication on September 8, 1938, drew huge crowds and was a major local event. In a 1957 contest sponsored by the North Port Arthur Lions Club, it was named "Rainbow Bridge." (1990)

Historical Marker → · 4.9 mi away

Cow Bayou Swing Bridge

1938

THIS CENTER-BEARING SWING BRIDGE, COMPLETED IN 1940, IS ONE OF ONLY A FEW SUCH HIGHWAY BRIDGES REMAINING IN TEXAS. THE BRIDGE WAS THE LAST MAJOR COMPONENT CONSTRUCTED ALONG TEXAS HIGHWAY 87, WHICH WAS KNOWN AS THE “HUG-THE-COAST-HIGHWAY” RUNNING FROM ORANGE TO BROWNSVILLE. THE STRUCTURE ALSO CREATED A VITAL CONNECTION BETWEEN THE REGIONAL ECONOMIC CENTERS OF ORANGE AND PORT ARTHUR. THE COW BAYOU BRIDGE WAS MODELED AFTER AN EXISTING SWING BRIDGE OVER THE SABINE RIVER IN DEWEYVILLE, NEWTON COUNTY, WHICH HAD BEEN COMPLETED IN 1938. THIS STRUCTURE IS 806 FEET IN TOTAL LENGTH AND CARRIES TWO LANES OF TRAFFIC. THE BRIDGE HAS A CENTRAL PLATE THAT PIVOTS OR “SWINGS” ON A CENTER-BEARING CONCRETE PIER MOUNTED ON TIMBER PILES. AN ELECTRIC MOTOR POWERS ITS MOVING PARTS, AND A COMPLETE OPENING AND CLOSING OF THE BRIDGE CAN OCCUR IN TEN MINUTES, ALLOWING MOVEMENT OF BOTH ROAD AND WATER VEHICLES. AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE BRIDGE, THE PRAIRIE VIEW AND WINFREE SCHOOL DISTRICTS, WHICH WERE LOCATED ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF COW BAYOU, WERE CONSOLIDATED. THE NAME BRIDGE CITY WAS SUGGESTED FOR THE NEW DISTRICT, BECAUSE OF THE COW BAYOU BRIDGE AND THE NEARBY “RAINBOW BRIDGE” OVER THE NECHES RIVER, WHICH HAD BEEN COMPLETED IN 1938; THE COMMUNITY INCORPORATED AS BRIDGE CITY IN 1970. IN 1999 THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (TxDOT) CONSIDERED REPLACEMENT OF THE COW BAYOU BRIDGE, AND CONCERNED CITIZENS FORMED A GROUP IN 2007 TO ADVOCATE FOR THE BRIDGE’S RETENTION. AS A RESULT, TxDOT INSTEAD TOOK ACTION TO ADJUST AND REPAIR THE BRIDGE SO THAT IT COULD BE PRESERVED AS A FUNCTIONING PART OF AN IMPORTANT TRANSPORTATION CORRIDOR.

Historical Marker →

Zaharias, Mildred Ella Didrikson [Babe]

1911

Mildred Ella (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias, athlete, Ladies Professional Golf Association founder, and olympian, was born on June 26, 1911, in Port Arthur, Texas, the sixth of seven children of Norwegian immigrants Ole Nickolene and Hannah Marie (Olson) Didriksen. Ole Didriksen was a seaman and carpenter, and his wife was an accomplished skater in Norway. In 1915 the family moved to Beaumont, Texas, where the children, with the encouragement of both parents, became skilled performers on the rustic gymnasium equipment that their father built in the backyard. Mildred Didrikson, who changed the spelling of her surname, acquired her nickname during sandlot baseball games with the neighborhood boys, who thought she batted like Babe Ruth. The nickname also originated from the Norwegian word "baden" meaning baby, an endearing term used by her mother. A talented basketball player in high school, Didrikson was recruited during her senior year in 1930 to do office work at Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas and to spark the company's semiprofessional women's basketball team, the Golden Cyclones. Between 1930 and 1932 she led the team to two finals and a national championship and was voted All-American each season. Her exceptional athletic versatility prompted Employers Casualty to expand its women's sports program beyond basketball. Didrikson represented the company as a one-woman team in eight of ten track and field events at the 1932 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championships. She placed in seven events, taking first place in five-shot put, javelin and baseball throws, eighty-meter hurdles, and long jump; she tied for first in the high jump and finished fourth in the discus throw. In three hours Didrikson singlehandedly amassed thirty points, eight more than the entire second-place team, and broke four world records. Her performances in the javelin throw, hurdles, and high jump qualified her to enter the 1932 Olympics, where she again broke world records in all three events. She won gold medals for the javelin and hurdles and, despite clearing the same height as the top finisher in the high jump, was awarded the silver medal because she went over the bar head first, a foul at that time. Didrikson received a heroine's welcome on her return to Texas. She had started another basketball season with the Golden Cyclones when the Amateur Athletic Union disqualified her from amateur competition because her name appeared in an automobile advertisement. Her family was badly in need of money, and Didrikson turned professional to earn what she could from her status as a sports celebrity. Never hesitant to capitalize on her own abilities or to turn a profit from showmanship, she spent 1932-34 self-promoting and barnstorming. She did a brief stint in vaudeville playing the harmonica and running on a treadmill and pitched in some major league spring-training games; she also toured with a billiards exhibition, a men's and women's basketball team called Babe Didrikson's All-Americans, and an otherwise all-male, bearded baseball road team called the House of David. Since golf was one of the few sports that accommodated women athletes, Didrikson made up her mind to become a championship player, and between engagements she spent the spring and summer of 1933 in California taking lessons from Stan Kertes. Her first tournament was the Fort Worth Women's Invitational in November 1932; at her second, the Texas Women's Amateur Championship the following April, she captured the title. Complaints from more socially polished members of the Texas Women's Golf Association led the United States Association to rule her ineligible to compete as an amateur, thus disqualifying her from virtually all tournament play. Didrikson resumed the lucrative routine of exhibition tours and endorsements, impressing audiences with smashing drives that regularly exceeded 240 yards. She met George Zaharias, a well-known professional wrestler and sports promoter, when she quali

Tsha Handbook → · 9.3 mi away

King, Richard

1850

Richard King, riverman, steamboat entrepreneur, livestock capitalist, and founder of the King Ranch , was born in New York City on July 10, 1824, to poor Irish parents. He was reared in Orange County, New York, until age nine, when he was indentured to a jeweler in Manhattan. He broke his apprenticeship in 1835 and shipped as a stowaway on the Desdemona for Mobile, Alabama. King was discovered, taken in as a "cabin cub," and schooled in the art of navigation by captains Hugh Monroe and Joe Holland. Between 1835 and 1841, with the exception of eight months of formal schooling with Holland's family in Connecticut, King pursued steamboating on Alabama rivers; he was a pilot by age sixteen. In 1842 he enlisted under Capt. Henry Penny for service in the Seminole War in Florida, where he met Mifflin Kenedy , who became his lifelong friend and business mentor. King plied the muddy waters of the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee rivers until 1847, when he joined Kenedy on the Rio Grande for Mexican War service. Commanding the Colonel Cross, he served for the war's duration transporting troops and supplies. King remained on the border after the war and became a principal partner in the steamboat firms of M. Kenedy and Company (1850–66) and King, Kenedy and Company (1866–74). These firms dominated the Rio Grande trade on a nearly monopolistic scale for longer than two decades. By all accounts King was an experienced riverboatman and a hardy risk-taker, who thought that he could take a boat anywhere "a dry creek flows." He was also an innovator who designed specialty boats for the narrow bends and fast currents of the Rio Grande. Perhaps most of all, he was a hardened speculator, a businessman in the classic nineteenth-century mold; he saw business as having no social responsibilities, only profitable ones. As a result, he had his hand in many pies with as many different associates. And of course the big pie in South Texas in the early 1850s was undeveloped land. King began speculating in Cameron County lands and in lots in the new town of Brownsville soon after his arrival on the Rio Grande. As his cash flow increased from the success of his steamboat interests, he invested further in lands in the Nueces country. He learned early about the pitfalls of buying Spanish and Mexican titles by purchasing in 1852 what turned out to be a bogus claim to the southern half of Padre Island . From that time forward, he paid careful attention to the legality of land transactions, and almost all of his subsequent land acquisitions were made through his lawyers, Stephen Powers , James B. Wells , and Robert J. Kleberg . In several partnerships, King first bought land in the Nueces Strip in 1853, when he purchased the 15,500-acre Rincón de Santa Gertrudis grant from the heirs of Juan Mendiola, who held the land under an 1834 grant from the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. In 1854 he purchased the 53,000-acre Santa Gertrudis de la Garza grant from José Pérez Rey, who held title under an 1808 grant from the crown of Spain. These two irregularly shaped pieces of wilderness became the nucleus around which the King Ranch grew. By the time of his death in 1885, King had made over sixty major purchases of land and amassed some 614,000 acres. With partners James Walworth and Mifflin Kenedy, King established a livestock concern, R. King and Company, to manage the holdings, and he moved off the Rio Grande to the Nueces rancho in late 1860 to develop the ranching business. During the Civil War he and his partners entered into several contracts with the Confederate government to supply European buyers with cotton; in return they supplied the Confederates with beef, horses, imported munitions, medical supplies, clothing, and shoes. By placing their steamboat interests under Mexican registry and moving their operations into Matamoros, they for the most part successfully avoided the Union blockade and earned considerable fortunes. In an attempt to dampen this trade, Union for

Tsha Handbook → · 7.0 mi away

Butler, Chad Lamont [Pimp C]

1973

Pimp C, rap artist, was born Chad Lamont Butler in Port Arthur, Texas, on December 29, 1973. He was the son of Weslyn and Charleston Butler. Pimp C is best-known as cofounder and one-half of the Houston rap duo UGK (Underground Kingz) , whose soulful, blues-based version of “Dirty South” hip-hop helped put Texas rap music in the national spotlight. He, along with his UGK partner Bernard Freeman (aka Bun B), helped to define Southern rap. The son of a trumpet player who at one time performed with Solomon Burke, Butler grew up in a home filled with jazz , blues , and soul music. He cited his early influences as B. B. King, Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Marvin Gaye, and many other jazz and blues artists. His parents divorced when he was about six, and his mother married Norwood Monroe. Butler’s stepfather was a band teacher who taught him to read music and later influenced him to incorporate more musical instruments into his sound. Butler first became interested in rap when a friend loaned him an early Run DMC album in 1983. After hearing the record, he began exploring rap’s origins in an effort to learn more about the music that so captivated his imagination. Although his interest in rap music was growing, he also pursued more traditional musical interests. In high school, he studied classical music and received a Division I rating on a tenor solo at a University Interscholastic League choir competition. While still in high school, Pimp C worked with fellow musicians Mitchell Queen, Bernard “Bun B” Freeman, and Jalon Jackson before eventually settling into a rap collaboration with Bun B to form the group UGK. They released a cassette, The Southern Way , on the small Houston label Bigtyme Recordz in 1988. They landed a deal with Jive Records in 1992. During that same year, the duo released its first major label debut, Too Hard to Swallow . It featured the single “Tell Me Something Good,” a laid-back track that contained a sample of Rufus and Chaka Khan’s tune of the same name. Another song from the album, “Pocket Full of Stones,” was featured on the soundtrack to the movie Menace II Society (1993), helping earn the group some national exposure. The song “Pocket Full of Stones” is emblematic of the rise in “gangsta rap” that came to dominate the hip-hop landscape in the early 1990s. In 1994 UGK released Super Tight ; Pimp C produced all the tracks. He also produced most of the songs on UGK’s next release in 1996, Ridin’ Dirty , which reached Number 2 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, proving that the group was much more than a regional act and could sell records on a national scale. Following their success with Ridin’ Dirty , UGK made a number of guest appearances, one on a hit single by Jay-Z entitled “Big Pimpin’” in 1999. This song merged Jay-Z’s Brooklyn-based braggadocio with UGK’s southern slang. The second guest appearance was on a record with the Tennessee-based rap group, Three 6 Mafia, called “Sippin’ on Some Sizzurp,” released in 2000. These recordings boosted the group’s national appeal and proved once again that their fan base extended far beyond the confines of Texas. In 2001 UGK released its fourth album, Dirty Money . It featured several songs that included sexual content and blatant misogyny, such as “Like a Pimp,” “Pimpin’ Ain’t No Illusion,” and “Money, Hoes, and Power.” The album peaked at Number 2 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. The year 2002 brought the release of Side Hustles , the duo’s fifth album. It did not sell as well as previous releases, and UGK suffered further setbacks when Pimp C was arrested and jailed on an aggravated assault charge. After violating probation because he ignored a community service sentence, he spent the next three years in prison. During his imprisonment hip-hop fans and rappers, spearheaded by Bun B, launched a grassroots “Free Pimp C” campaign. While Pimp C was incarcerated, his label Rap-A-Lot Records released his solo record Sweet James Jones

Tsha Handbook → · 9.3 mi away

Bridge City, Texas

Music in Bridge City

Songs About Bridge City

Artists From Bridge City

Rivers & Roads in Song near Bridge City

History of Bridge City