Site of End of the Line Station

The first depot stood at Fourth Street where the tracks met the river, and for a long time the line simply stopped there. Promoters meeting in Houston incorporated the Sabine and Galveston Bay Railroad and Lumber on September 1, 1856, with Madison, as the town was then called, as the planned end. The Beaumont to Orange line was finished in 1861, with passenger and freight cars sharing locomotives. The first passenger-only train arrived on October 16, 1876. It had no turnaround and backed out the way it came, while the engine was turned on a turntable.

What the plaque says

Site of End of the Line Station The original charter for a rail line through the Orange area was granted to the Sabine and Galveston Railroad and Lumber Company in 1856. About the same time the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railroad Company was building a line west from the Mississippi River. The Louisiana Legislature later endorsed a plan to join Texas in the completion of the trade route between the states. The two companies were reorganized as separate divisions of the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. The Texas division completed construction to this site before the Civil War. Since the rail line stopped at the Sabine River, the first depot in Orange was known as the End of the Line Station. Trains unloaded cargo here for transfer to riverboats and ocean freighters. Sections of the line remained in operation during the Civil War, but nearby rails were used to build Confederate fortifications at Sabine Pass (34 mi. SW). The interstate route was completed in 1881 under the direction of Charles Morgan, a steamship line owner. The first station, damaged by an 1885 storm, was replaced by a larger facility with river loading docks. The Southern Pacific Railroad later took over the T. & N. O. Line. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stark Museum of Art — 0.3 mi
  A white-marble museum in Orange built by the Stark Foundation and opened in 1978, holding Western art, American Indian art, Audubon's Birds of America and Steuben glass, free to enter.
• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 1.4 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 19 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.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Atakapan Indians of Orange County — steps away
• John Harmon — steps away
• Old Niblett's Bluff, C.S.A. — steps away
• The Sawmill Industry in Orange County — steps away