Winnie, at
the junction of State Highway 124 and Interstate Highway 10,
twenty-five miles southwest of Beaumont in eastern Chambers
County, was named for Fox Winnie, a contractor on the Gulf
and Inter-state Railway.
The town plat was filed
in 1895 by E. Dee Normandie and L. P. Featherstone, president
and secretary, respectively, of the G&I, after the line's completion.
A post office was secured the same year.
The Hankamer-Stowell
Canal Company started construction of ditches in 1899 and
helped to open the Winnie-Stowell area to farming. F. W.
Schwettman of Winnie was one of the principal organizers
of the company.
The Winnie and Loan Improvement
Company took charge of developing interest in Winnie, attempting
to sell small lots to perspective settlers. Growth proved
slow, however, and the company was dissolved in 1911. A devastating
hurricane and severe declines in post-World War I rice prices
impaired local agriculture, which depended heavily on the
rice and cattle industries. Efforts to develop fruits and
vegetables in the region also proved unsuccessful. The exception
to this was the fig industry, which was successful in the
Winnie-Stowell area during the early 1900s. Several fig-processing
plants were built in the area, but the industry died out
around 1920.
Poor drainage, a lack
of roads, and the somewhat undependable service of the G&I
line kept the community largely isolated during the 1920s,
when the population stood at 200. In 1926 the arrival of a
German seismographic crew in search of oil in the Winnie-Stowell
area foreshadowed change. The Stowell oilfield was discovered
north and east of Winnie in 1941. Prominent oilman Glenn H.
McCarthyqv developed
the area fields and established a large gas plant east
of town.
By the early 1960s Winnie
had over 1,100 residents. The population grew rapidly with
new oil and gas explorations and the construction of Interstate
Highway 10. By 1980 the population was estimated at 2,500.
Although the oil glut
of the mid-1980s severely hurt the region's economy, Winnie
remained the largest community in Chambers County; the county
maintained a variety of offices there.
In 1931 the East Chambers
County Consolidated School District was organized, when
the Winnie and Stowell schools were consolidated. The school
district is one of only three in Chambers County.
The Winnie
depot was given to the East Chambers Agricultural
and Historical Society.
Winnie was also the home
of the Gulf Coast News and
the Winnie Chronicle,
and, with neighboring Stowell, has cohosted
the annual Texas Rice Festival since 1970.
In 1990 the population of Winnie was 2,238.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jewel Horace Harry, A History of Chambers County
(M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1940; rpt., Dallas: Taylor,
1981). Herbert Roedenbeck, Manuscripts Collection, Sam Houston
Regional Library, Liberty, Texas.
Robert Wooster
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "WINNIE,
TX," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/WW/hfw3.html |
