City History

WEST ORANGE, TEXAS. West Orange is on Farm Road 1006 just southwest of Orange and thirty miles east of Beaumont in southeastern Orange County. The town plat for the West Orange addition to Orange was filed in 1902. A substantial residential community developed by virtue of the site's position between the industrial facilities at Orange, those to the south at Port Vernon, which were planned by 1903, and those to the north at Doc Brown Station, at the junction of the Texas and New Orleans and Orange and Northwestern railroads. Oil and brick production was centered at Port Vernon, and a rice warehouse, the Peden Iron and Steel Company, and the county dipping vat were located at Doc Brown Station. In 1954 West Orange was incorporated by a 381-90 vote. During the 1950s the population doubled, from 2,539 in 1950 to 5,080 in 1960. Like many areas of heavily industrialized Jefferson and Orange counties, however, West Orange declined during the two decades that followed. By 1980 the number of residents living there had dropped to 4,610. In 2000 the population was 4,111.

Robert Wooster