Quasquicentennial
Procter Street, Port Arthur, TX 1897
Port Arthur is 125 years old. Its elder sibling, Aurora, failed to thrive, was wounded in the Civil War and died in a hurricane in 1886. The Texas Coast required grand visions and sterner folk, and those that settled Port Arthur rose to the challenge.
Port Arthur was born as the brainchild of Arthur E. Stilwell, an insurance and real estate salesman and railway visionary who is responsible for the founding of more than 40 different cities along his rail lines. He envisioned a city on Lake Sabine that would serve as the port outlet to his railroad project connecting Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico. When the city incorporated in 1898, he named it after himself: Port Arthur.
Neither the naming of the city or the labeling of Stilwell as “visionary” is coincidental; he was literally a dreamer. Stilwell’s original plan was to conclude his railway in Galveston, but in a dream he was spoken to by “brownies” who told him that Galveston would be destroyed by water and that he should build a new city which should carry his name. That sounds far-fetched, but Stilwell placed great faith in dreams and made many of his business and personal decisions (even who he would marry, if you believe it) based on similar visions. Prophetic or not, his convictions were validated in 1900 when Galveston was destroyed by hurricane in an event that remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
In 1899 Stilwell was ousted from the Kansas City, Pittsburg, and Gulf Railway Company – the company he created to fulfill his vision – by John W. Gates. Gates was nearly as strange a man as Stilwell, and perhaps it would have been better for both if they had never occupied the same time zone. Known for his obsessive gambling (he was called “Bet-a-Million Gates”), cutthroat business practices, and generosity, Gates put the KCP&G into receivership over a $40 unpaid printing bill.
It was Gates who completed the railway, which exists to this day by the name Kansas City Southern. It is the only Class 1 Railway to own tracks both in the United State and Mexico thanks to deals cut by Stilwell during his leadership of the company.
During the first three years of existence, Port Arthur served as a resort town as well as a shipping port. The train brought passengers from the north down to the sandy beaches nearby. This arrangement did not last long. On January 10, 1901, the Lucas oil rig at the Spindletop oil field spewed its drill shaft out of the borehole with an ominous rumble. A few moments later, oil burst 150 feet into the air, announcing a new era of energy. The town’s focus instantly shifted to the fledgling industry of oil production and never looked back.
For 123 years, Port Arthur’s symbiotic relationship with oil has been a two-edged sword. The fossil fuel juggernaut brought thousands of jobs into the region and spurred enormous investments from both private speculators and the state. Meanwhile, Port Arthur served as the giant’s alchemist and broker, refining the crude and distributing it to the world via the Port Arthur Shipping Channel (now the Sabine-Neches Ship Channel), which Arthur Stilwell began constructing before his ouster. That’s the prosperous edge of the sword.
On the other edge is hardship. Building its foundations on the oil industry put Port Arthur at the mercy of whims originating far beyond its borders. Oil embargoes, wars and rationing, technological advances; Port Arthur feels fluctuations in these domains acutely. Nevertheless, the city has persevered and has become a powerhouse of oil refining and shipping. When the Motiva refinery (formerly the Port Arthur Texaco plant) was expanded in 2012, not only did the increased capacity make it the largest refinery in the United States, it was also the first new plant construction in the country since the late 1970s. It brought with it 30 years of technological and procedural developments that rapidly modernized the industry.
Port Arthur has long struggled with perception, but Dr. Sam Monroe (President of the Port Arthur Historical Society and former President of Lamar State College Port Arthur; he’s an expert. Maybe even THE expert.) says that’s a dated view.
“Port Arthur is a growing city, but nobody knows it,” he says. “The words ‘Mid County’ refer to what is Port Arthur’s growth area.”
While surrounding cities either flatlined or lost population, Port Arthur showed an overall increase despite several hurricane-triggered migrations. People can say what they want, but the numbers don’t lie. A city doesn’t grow unless it is attractive to new residents, and Port Arthur is growing.
Much of that growth is in the aforementioned Mid County area, whose moniker was an attempt to sidestep negative perceptions of the city rather than deal with them. That’s unfortunate, because 15,000 people live there and some really great businesses have moved in (there’s a ramen shop I’m particularly fond of), but Port Arthur has gotten little of the credit.
The popular image of most cities is defined by either their best feature or their worst (for example, New York, Orlando, Detroit; what did you see when you read their names?), and what was once Port Arthur’s best is now its worst. In the 1950s and 60s, the downtown area was where everybody who was anybody was hanging out. The Winters brothers jammed there, Janis Joplin strummed out folk tunes (no one knew she could sing the blues ‘til she left town), and Jimmy Johnson talked football with his buddies cruising up and down the drag. The golden age didn’t last (they never do) and downtown Port Arthur fell victim to shifting logistic and economic tides over the next few decades, with road improvements moving traffic away from the shoreline and a number of industry changes, such as the devastating layoffs by Motiva in 1986, slowly siphoning the life from the area. There’s a lot of historic architecture that’s lain vacant for years, and the optics of it dominate perceptions of the city.
There has long been a fervent desire to see downtown Port Arthur brought back to its glory days, but without fixing the traffic problem and creating jobs in the area (this is one of those chicken/egg situations), long-term revitalization is just a pleasant dream. That said, there’s been some promising movement in that direction recently. Off Ramp covered the restoration of the First National Bank building in the Fall/Winter 2015 edition. Motiva is in the process of restoring four historic buildings downtown to house over 800 jobs (Yes, the same company that dealt downtown such a blow in ‘86. Remember that two-edged sword?). The refinery is moving positions that are not essential to the day-to-day operation of the plant off-site.
In an era when corporate community outreach is always pandering, tone-deaf, or just complete nonsense, Motiva’s decision to restore four historic buildings is a rare 200 IQ move that has not only generated some goodwill among residents, it’s a nifty tax write off to boot. The restored World Trade Building, Federal Building, Merchants Bank, and the A.E. Scott Furniture Building will be placed on the historic register.
The ceiling of the First National Bank, original and restored.
Archaeologically, Port Arthur sits on an anthropological fault line where ancient cultures blurred before separating. According to Dr. Monroe, Port Arthur still occupies that transitional space today. It is an incredibly diverse city, more so than any other major city in Southeast Texas. The cultural fusion that occurs there has been on the cutting edge of at least two entirely unique musical styles, Swamp Pop and Zydeco. The city has also given rise to artists, musicians, and designers like Robert Rauschenberg, Janis Joplin, and Leah Rhodes.
“We’re proud of the history of the city, and the ancient history of the area,” Monroe says. “But our personalities that have been produced by this Gulf Coast region, I think, are our most significant attribute.”
The Museum of the Gulf Coast has hundreds of exhibits chronicling the achievements of the people of the Gulf Coast over the last century, and has extensive collections of artifacts discovered in the area. Plan a visit at MuseumoftheGulfCoast.org
The city of Port Arthur has events scheduled throughout the year to celebrate. Don’t miss the Cultural Festival on October 14, 2023, and visit PortArthur125.com for other events!
