The Emmett Beuhler House

Cypress shingles were Orange's first industry, made by hand before the sawmills came, and Leopold Miller, the partner the marker names, grew the trade large. A hometown account says Miller left Hamburg at sixteen, bought a shingle mill from Sheriff G. W. Michael and cut only cypress. Output rose from 80,000 to 250,000 shingles a day with 75 workers, and by 1892 the mill held a 60,000,000-shingle contract described as the world's largest. He sold to Lutcher and Moore in December 1901. The mill burned on August 1, 1915.

What the plaque says

The Emmett Beuhler House Emmett Beuhler (1853-1943), a native of Alsace-Lorraine, came here in the 1880s, during the lumbering boom. With L. Miller, who came from Germany, he established a cypress shingle mill. They built a railroad to the mill, and had 75 men on their payroll. Buehler erected this Victorian cottage about 1890 as his residence, using cypress and yellow pine, with rare curly pine trim. He built three rooms upstairs and three down. In 1904, the Beuhlers moved to Louisiana. After others had owned and modified the property, it was bought in 1955 by the R. B. Johnson family, who preserve it. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stark Museum of Art — steps away
  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 — 1.0 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

• First United Methodist Church of Orange — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Orange — steps away
• St. Mary's Catholic Church — steps away
• First Christian Church of Orange — 0.2 mi