Port of Beaumont

The port's story is one of repeated digging. A 25-foot channel reached Beaumont in 1916, the waterway was deepened to 30 feet in the 1920s, 34 feet in 1937 and 36 feet in 1947, and by 1972 the Sabine-Neches Waterway was 40 feet deep and 400 feet wide. In the late 1930s it moved more than 45,000,000 tons of cargo a year, and in 1943 over 40,000 vessels used it. MarineLink places the city's first wharf at the foot of Main Street in spring 1916, when the first ocean-going ship arrived.

What the plaque says

Port of Beaumont The city of Beaumont, 41 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, was served from its founding in 1837 by schooners and sternwheelers navigating the Neches River. The three-foot depth of Sabine Lake between the river's mouth and the Gulf limited passage to shallow-draft vessels. Surveys after 1852 recommended navigation improvements, and dredging of a 12-foot-deep channel at Sabine Pass began in 1876. Competition appeared in 1897 when a new railroad passed through Beaumont to terminate at Sabine Lake. There Port Arthur was established and a 25-foot-deep canal was dug from the Gulf to the new city. Other railroads and Beaumont businesses then supported extension of the new canal and deep-dredging of the Neches. In 1911 Beaumont shared half the cost with the Federal government of dredging a 25-foot-deep channel. One year later a Wharf and Dock Commission was appointed by Mayor Emmett A. Fletcher (1867-1943); Charles E. Walden (1865-1938) was its first chairman. The deep water port and Sabine-Neches waterway were officially opened in 1916. The Port of Beaumont Navigation District was created by the Texas Legislature in 1949. Local citizens approved bonds in 1971 to construct Harbor Island Marine Terminal. (Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McFaddin-Ward House — 1.4 mi
  A Beaux-Arts Colonial Revival mansion finished in 1906 and lived in by one family for 75 years, with free guided tours of three furnished floors, the carriage house and gardens.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 3.3 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.
• Village Creek State Park — 12 mi
  A 2,466-acre state park on one of the few free-flowing creeks in Texas, with a launch for the Village Creek Paddling Trail, boat rentals and sandy-upland trails in the Big Thicket.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 17 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.

More markers nearby

• Jefferson County Courthouse — steps away
• Beaumont: Lumber Mill City of the Nineteenth Century — 0.2 mi
• Nancy Tevis — 0.2 mi
• William G. "Bill" Hall — 0.2 mi