The Orange Leader

The paper's later owners trace the fate of small-town dailies. James B. Quigley began leading the Leader in 1937 and was owner and publisher until 1985. That year Cox Enterprises, which had bought two local weeklies in 1980, bought the daily and made Harry G. Wood, the Port Arthur News editor, publisher. Cox sold the Leader and the Port Arthur paper to American Publishing in 1991. Community Newspaper Holdings took them in 1999, and Boone Newspapers bought the pair in 2014. Publication fell from seven days a week to three in 2011.

What the plaque says

The Orange Leader Tracing its origins to 1875, this newspaper has served Orange for over a century. It began as "The Orange Weekly Tribune" operated by A. P. Harris, general mercantile merchant. Through subsequent owners and mergers with other newspapers, the masthead underwent several name changes, including "The Orange Leader," "The Orange Leader and Weekly Tribune," "The Orange Daily Tribune," "The Citizen-Record Consolidated," and "The Orange Leader" again. Over the years the newspaper has kept the community informed on matters of local, state, national, and international concern. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

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

• John Harmon — steps away
• Site of End of the Line Station — steps away
• Atakapan Indians of Orange County — steps away
• Old Niblett's Bluff, C.S.A. — steps away