Name: Groves, Texas
Address: Groves, TX

The Man Who Planted a Town RoadyGoat

The very name of this town tells its origin story. Asa E. Groves was a Port Arthur pioneer and the editor of the paper that became the Port Arthur News, and he looked at this flat, cleared coastal land not as empty space, but as a blank canvas. He and his partners developed a big tract along the Kansas City Southern railroad, and then they did something remarkable: sometime between 1910 and 1920, he arranged for the Griffing Nursery to put pecan saplings across it — estimates run anywhere from twenty-five hundred to six thousand trees. The goal was to prove the land’s fertility and pull in settlers, and it worked; families later harvested those pecans for a second income. The Griffing brothers laid out the townsite in 1916, and the subdivision known as Pecan Grove eventually took the name Groves in Asa’s honor. Every fall since 1969, the Groves Pecan Festival has celebrated that legacy. You’re driving through a town that quite literally grew from a man’s agricultural dream.

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The Wall Against the Water RoadyGoat

How can a town like Groves exist, sitting just a few feet above sea level and a short drive from the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico? The answer is a massive feat of civil engineering. You can’t see most of it from here, but Groves is protected by the Port Arthur and Vicinity Hurricane Flood Protection System, shared with Port Arthur, Nederland, and Port Neches. This isn’t just a small wall; it’s some 36 miles of earthen levees, concrete floodwalls, seawall, and giant gate structures, ringing 107 square miles with sixteen to seventeen feet of protection above sea level. Hurricane Carla in 1961 was the push that finally got it built, and it has turned back storm surge ever since, Rita’s included. But in 2017, Harvey dropped roughly sixty-five inches of rain inside the ring and overwhelmed it from within — so engineers are now raising and strengthening the levees higher still. This constant, high-stakes project is a powerful example of using engineering to battle nature and make life possible in this low-lying coastal landscape.

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Groves, TX RoadyGoat

Groves is a town built on a foundation of community and grit, a place where Friday night lights shine a little brighter, and the air always seems to carry a hint of that Gulf Coast breeze. It's a newer town, really, only officially becoming Groves in 1952, but the spirit here runs deep, fueled by the oil boom of the early 20th century that transformed the whole region. You can feel it in the stands at any Port Neches-Groves High School game, especially when they're facing off against Nederland – that rivalry is legendary.

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 → · 3.4 mi away

Janis Lyn Joplin

1943

(January 19, 1943 - October 4, 1970) A native of Port Arthur, famed blues and rock and roll singer Janis Joplin lived here with her family. She graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1960 and attended Port Arthur College and Lamar State College of Technology (Lamar University) in Beaumont. A liberal and outspoken free spirit, Janis rebelled against the conservatism of her hometown, and in 1962 she moved to Austin to study art at the University of Texas. She connected to the burgeoning Austin music scene and began singing in clubs around town, most notably at Threadgill's, a bar operated by Texas country singer and yodeler Kenneth Threadgill. With her raw and raspy singing style exhibiting the blues, jazz, country, cajun, gospel and soul music influences of east Texas and Louisiana, she was a popular local performer. Searching for wider acceptance, Joplin moved to San Francisco in 1963 and quickly became part of the growing folk music and counter-culture movement of the 1960s. Her performances at the 1967 International Pop and Jazz Festivals in Monterey brought her widespread recognition. Her first album, Cheap Thrills, with the band Big Brother and the Holding Company, was a wild success even as her personal life became marred with alcohol and drug abuse. Later recording with the Kosmic Blues Band and the Full-Tilt Boogie Band, she was an international sensation by the end of the decade. In August 1970, at the height of her fame, Joplin returned to Port Arthur for her ten-year high school reunion. Just two months later, she died of an accidental overdose of heroin and alcohol; her ashes were spread along the coast of northern California. Her final album, Pearl, released after her death, earned a gold record. (2007)

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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 → · 3.4 mi away

Joplin, Janis Lyn

1943

Janis Lyn Joplin, blues and rock singer, daughter of Seth Ward and Dorothy (East) Joplin, was born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas. She grew up in a respectable middle-class home; her father was an engineer and her mother a Sunday school teacher. The future queen of nonconformity is remembered as a bright, pretty, and artistic little girl. Signs of rebellion, however, against the religious, sexual, and racial conservatism of her environment were evident in junior high school, and by the time Janis graduated from Jefferson High School in Port Arthur in 1960, her vocabulary of four letter words, her outrageous clothes, and her reputation for sexual promiscuity and drunkenness (signs of alcoholism were already apparent) caused her classmates to call her derogatory names. Bereft of friends, without dates for school dances, ashamed of her acned face and overweight figure, Janis responded with contempt and insults to cover the rejection that scarred her for the rest of her life. In her junior year she found acceptance in a small group of Jefferson High beatniks who read Jack Kerouac and roamed the nightspots from Port Arthur to New Orleans, thus mining one of the motherlodes of American ethnic music. There were Anglo, African American, Cajun, Mexican, and Caribbean sounds. There were the lyrics and rhythms of country , gospel , jazz , soul, and the blues. Janis did not read music, but at the roadhouses or at home listening to records of Odetta, Bessie Smith, or Willie Mae Thornton , she had an uncanny ability to imitate the sounds she heard. Out of imitation there slowly developed the timing, phrasing, inflections, and talent at evoking changing moods that were the Joplin trademarks. She found Lamar State College of Technology at Beaumont no improvement over Port Arthur; she was characterized as a rebel in both places. She fled to the University of Texas in Austin in the summer of 1962 to study art. Indifferent to classwork, she found soulmates at the Ghetto, a counterculture enclave, and got gigs around Austin, most importantly at Threadgill's, a converted filling station and late night hangout for lovers of music and nonstop partying. The proprietor, country singer Kenneth Threadgill , offered Janis encouragement and lifelong friendship. Janis craved such acceptance, but her nonconforming behavior often provoked rejection, as when university fraternity pranksters nominated her as their candidate in the annual Ugliest Man on Campus contest. Characteristically, she laughed to cover the hurt, and dreamed of San Francisco, where Beats and Hippies were not outsiders. She spent 1963 to 1965 in the Bay area and won attention from local audiences, until drugs became more important than singing and reduced her to an emaciated eighty-eight pounds. Her friends passed the hat and gave her a bus ticket home. Parental care restored her health, and fear of relapse produced a period of sobriety. Business suits and bouffant hairdos announced conversion to the Port Arthur ethos. But Janis's mind was torn: Port Arthur was safe but dull. San Francisco offered both excitement and potential self destruction. She made her decision after receiving an offer to audition for a new rock band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and headed west in May 1966, toward four years of meteoric fame-and death at age twenty-seven. "Imagine a White girl singing the blues like that!" they said of Big Brother's lead singer. And Joplin's belting of rock gathered huge swaying, clapping, shouting, and dancing audiences. For Janis a good audience was an audience in motion, and her body joined her voice in pleading for audience participation. She stopped the show at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 with "Ball and Chain." That triumph and the album Cheap Thrills (1968) elevated her to national stardom. A new manager, Albert Grossman, whose stable of stars included Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan, urged Janis to dump Big Brother for more versatile and discipline

Tsha Handbook → · 3.4 mi away

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

1911

(June 26, 1911 - September 27, 1956) One of seven children, Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants Hannah Marie (d. 1945) and Ole Didrikson (d. 1943). For the first several years of her life, the family occupied a frame house at this location. Later they moved to Beaumont. The Didriksons encouraged their children to develop their natural athletic abilities. Called "Baby" by her family, Mildred was later nicknamed "Babe" for baseball star Babe Ruth. Babe first demonstrated her athletic skill as a high school basketball star. After training in track and field events, she won two gold medals at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. An exceptionally versatile athlete, Babe excelled in baseball, bowling, tennis, and other sports. Eventually she concentrated her efforts on golf and won many tournaments as both an amateur and a professional. The Associated Press named her the "Woman Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century." In 1938 Babe married George Zaharias. Popular with sports fans for her skill and personality, she won further admiration during a long and courageous battle against cancer. She died in Galveston and was buried in Beaumont.

Historical Marker → · 4.0 mi away

The Hughen School

1933

Since 1937, the Hughen School and other related facilities have provided assistance to individuals with disabilities. The school grew out of a vision by the Rotary Club of Port Arthur to start a movement in the interest of children with disabilities. In 1933, the Port Arthur Society for Crippled Children organized, and in 1936, the society was incorporated. In 1937, the society started a school in St. Mary’s hospital. By the end of the year, the community constructed a building at this location. First called the Spastic School, the institution was renamed for benefactor and businessman Thomas W. Hughen and his wife Juliet. To meet community needs, the institution added services, including physical, occupational and speech therapy programs. Additions to the campus allowed special needs students from outside the area to live at Hughen School. The Port Arthur Society for Crippled Children also advocated for change in state legislation, promoting the Texas state education act of 1945, which became law and played a major role in education of children with special needs. Other facilities were later added through donations given during fundraising campaigns. Famed entertainer Bob Hope participated in a telethon co-sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which raised $1.2 million to erect a high school on the campus. The school was named for Hope, who also appeared at other Hughen Center fundraisers. By the mid-1980s, funds were donated to construct the Hebert Adult Vocational Training Center to help adults with physical disabilities gain skills to advance their careers. Today, the facilities of the Hughen Center continue to offer needed assistance and care to children and adults with physical disabilities. (2010)

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Groves, Texas

Music in Groves

Songs About Groves

Artists From Groves

Rivers & Roads in Song near Groves

History of Groves

The Man Who Planted a Town RoadyGoat

The Wall Against the Water RoadyGoat

Groves, TX RoadyGoat

Zaharias, Mildred Ella Didrikson [Babe]

Janis Lyn Joplin

Butler, Chad Lamont [Pimp C]

Joplin, Janis Lyn

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

The Hughen School

Things to Do in Groves

Everything Near Groves