Travis Street Substation

The building now houses the Edison Museum, established in 1982. Its collection of more than 1,400 artifacts is tied to W. Donham Crawford, a former chief executive of Gulf States Utilities and an avid Edison collector, whose widow bequeathed it in the early 1980s. Exhibits cover the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph and early motion pictures, and a display on Edison's Botanic Research Corporation, which tried to make commercial rubber from goldenrod. Wikipedia quotes a claim that it is the only facility of its kind west of the Mississippi.

What the plaque says

Travis Street Substation When Gulf States Utilities Company built this Travis Street substation building in 1929, a new era of progress began in Beaumont and all of southeast Texas. Additional farms, homes, and industries received access to dependable and economic electric power. In spite of the Great Depression, the company expanded to include 22 more communities. This substation provided street lighting and power for railway cars and switchboards, as well as electrical service for rice irrigation, cotton gins, gravel pit operations, and underground oil pumping to refineries. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McFaddin-Ward House — 1.1 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 — 3.8 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 — 18 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

• Beaumont Enterprise — steps away
• First Security National Bank — 0.3 mi
• Beaumont — 0.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Beaumont — 0.3 mi