Weekend in Beaumont? Just up the river from the Gulf on the Neches River, this old Texas city is known for seafood, independent business opportunities, ingenuity that led to the oil boom in Texas, and the freewheeling spirit of millionaires and hobos. It can all be found under a big changeable Texas sky. Beaumont is also known to have some rough spots, but I didn’t let that stop me from visiting over a rainy weekend in June. I found much to be interested in. Maybe you too want to check it out.
Where Exactly is Beaumont, Texas?
Beaumont is about an hour and a half drive east of Houston, and was founded in the 1830s back in the days of the Republic of Texas. This was a battle site during the Civil War (the Confederates won against a much larger Union force, which came in ships into the bay).
This is Oil Country
Beaumont was the site of Spindletop, the original Texas oil gusher. Spindletop’s bounty (oil shot out of the ground at reported heights of 160 feet) changed the American economy. The country went from horse-based transit to the automobile in a few short years. Texas’ oil industry was born here, including Gulf Oil, Texaco and others.
What You’ll Need in Beaumont for the Weather
To visit this interesting historical town for the weekend you might want to remember to bring a raincoat or an umbrella. The weather is subtropical and we are only about 260 miles from perpetually raining New Orleans. Rain falls almost every day in the summer. Puddles form everywhere, so wear shoes that can get wet. Check the upcoming weather for the average temperature. It’s very likely you will need to think about keeping cool.
During my stay we used both raincoats and a golf umbrella, and my choice of Crocs sandals for footwear saved my less water-resistent shoes from endless puddles.
Seafood Restaurants in Beaumont
Beaumont is richly supplied with food for meat eaters and pescatarians (fish eaters) and everyone else as well. As you drive up to the city you will find the city is surrounded on the landward side by cattle ranches, producing a wide variety of beef products and on the other side by the Gulf with the proverbial ‘all the fish in the sea.’ Seafood restaurants in Beaumont include the Schooner, a local tradition dating from the 40’s, as well as Crazy Cajun Beaumont.
What to Do in Beaumont?
Once you’re done filling up on seafood there are numerous interesting recreational opportunities. Perhaps the most unusual is Gator Country, an alligator preserve where a one-time illegal alligator farm has been converted into a refuge. If you go to one of the scheduled feeding presentations you’ll meet local gators Big Al and his “ex-wife” Allie. The history of the place includes some amusing stories. The reptile room is quite well stocked and you may get to hold a snake or a baby alligator. Feeding the alligators hot dogs dangled off a piece of weed whacker twine is not to be missed.
You also may want to visit the Botanic Garden where there is a well put together conservatory (open only on weekdays, but you can see the outside of the Botanic Garden, with rose gardens and Japanese garden, from 7:00 to 7:00 on any day)
Crabbing on the Gulf
Crab fishing is popular with locals. I saw at least a dozen cars pulled over with locals crab fishing in the Gulf on Highway 73 between the Rainbow Bridge and Bridge City, and there are other spots too. You can learn how to try this yourself from this website. Apparently it’s not too difficult but since you would be keeping any crabs of greater than 5 inches in size, this would be an activity for someone who has a kitchen available.
Museum of the Gulf Coast
If you’re into music history, you can visit the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur and learn more about native daughter Janis Joplin who hailed from around here. Her iconic face with her pink round sunglasses can be seen at various spots around town. The museum has a hall of fame with 82 popular musicians from the Gulf Coast region, going back to early blues players.
Take a Swamp Tour
Finally you might not think of this but there’s the opportunity to go on an airboat swamp tour. That’s right, you can go on a real airboat and see wild life of various types. You’ll experience the gulf coast swamp which stretches for hundreds of square miles between here and New Orleans. Try Swamp and Riverboat tours in Orange, or you can book a tour at Gator Country.
Is Beaumont Dangerous?
I’ve got it on good authority that in Beaumont, you’ve got to be careful about neighborhoods after dark.
Research on the internet suggests that Beaumont has about twice the crime rate of the average of the rest of the country, but that crime is concentrated on the north and south end areas. These are the places you do not want to go after dark. Driving through past Christus St Elizabeth hospital in downtown on Sunday morning, I saw a man sitting disconsolately at the street corner, and on the way back he’d moved to the opposite street corner, and he had something in a bag, but nothing particularly ominous was going on at 10:00 a.m.
Why the High Crime Rate?
Some reasons: a large number of heavy industry jobs with their stresses and recreations. Then there’s a well-developed drug market and a lot of nightlife and liquor. Next, a lack of zoning and controls over housing, leading to housing shortages and also various types of low priced housing. And also, a homeless population drawn by, perhaps, the warm weather, transport via freight trains, and history.
It’s said that you must stay out of all coin operated car washes on the south and north ends of town in particular if the car washes are not operational. Word to the wise.
What is Beaumont Known For?
The most famous event Beaumont is known for is of course the spindletop gusher. The image of the long triangular wooden derrek spouting black oil into the sky has become iconic as a symbol for oil industry and oil exploration.
But after the gusher came the oil refineries and perhaps what Beaumont is known for at this point is being near to refineries such as which Motiva, which is actually in Port Arthur, but it’s all one big area full of oil refineries along the Neches. It’s an oil town, a refinery town, a industrial mecca.
What Makes a Weekend in Beaumont Special?
You know there’s some mystery when you have so much industry come up against so much biological energy, water and warmth. This is a semi tropical region and the place seethes with life, trees and stalky grass growing everywhere, puddles with algae, birds overhead, fish in the marshes. Even with the silver pipes of the refineries just around the corner. Perhaps the vitality is mostly from the water, water which symbolizes life, the men fishing for crabs by the roadside, the cattails beside the road. And then there’s that strange brooding feeling you get anywhere along the Gulf, the idea that nature is omnipresent, even all-penetrating. It made me think about life, about limits. It was a very different type of journey, a different type of thing to learn, than my things I learned on the California trip two years ago.
As a double rainbow rose over the city on Saturday afternoon, illuminating a row of trailers beside the highway, I felt a deep irony, wealth, and poverty, abundance, and hardship, beauty, and loss – it is a world of contrasts. I have to say when a Texas friend saw me on Tuesday after the trip and said “so how was Beaumont,” with a twisted inflection and a rolled eye, I said, “It was pretty cool, actually.” And it was.
