Southeast Texas Regional Airport

On September 22, 2005, two Air Force missions, a C-9 and a C-130, moved more than 100 patients out of Beaumont and Port Arthur ahead of Hurricane Rita. Air Mobility Command officials had expected to evacuate 1,700 to 2,000 patients from the Beaumont area alone. The 621st Contingency Response Wing sent 25 people to the airport that day. By September 23 three C-5s sat on the ground, and a C-17 delivered 400 patient litters. A senior controller said only two and a half to three hours remained to move the rest.

What the plaque says

Southeast Texas Regional Airport Originally named Jefferson County Airport, this facility has served area residents since the World War II era. Jefferson County Commissioners purchased land to build the airport in 1941, and its development, which included three runways, a taxiway system and apron facilities, began the following year, with initial construction completed in early 1944. Eastern Airlines conducted the first scheduled flight in March of that year. During the war, the airport also served U.S. Marine Air Corps Dive Bomber Squadron No. 931 as a base for advanced training. Pilot trainees used floating targets in the Gulf of Mexico off Sabine Pass for gunnery and divebombing practice. The airport has accommodated developments in air technology through enhancement of its facilities. Improvements in the 1950s and 1960s included additional land, buildings and taxiways, and installation of runway lighting and an instrument landing system. In the early 1980s, when Texas International, Southwest Airlines, Air Texana and Metro Airlines all operated out of the airport, additional improvements were made, including completion of a new terminal. In 1999, County Commissioners approved a name change for the facility to the Southeast Texas Regional Airport. As chemical and petrochemical industries, paper and pulp manufacturing and other area businesses grew, the airport became an increasingly important transportation center. In 2005, it was the site of one of the largest civilian airlifts in U.S. History, when the U.S. military evacuated thousands of local residents with special medical needs during landfall of Hurricane Rita. Today, the airport continues to play a vital economic role in southeast Texas. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 6.5 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.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 7.6 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.
• McFaddin-Ward House — 11 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.
• Sea Rim State Park — 18 mi
  Texas's far southeast corner: nearly two miles of Gulf shoreline backed by 4,000 acres of marsh, reached by boardwalk or paddle trail, rebuilt after Rita and Ike.

More markers nearby

• Beauxart Gardens — 1.0 mi
• City of Nederland — 2.0 mi
• Site of First Mercantile Building — 2.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of Port Neches — 3.6 mi