Amelia, formerly a separate community, is at the junction of Farm Road 364 and U.S. Highway 90 in western Beaumont, northern Jefferson County. The Amelia post office was established in 1885 on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. A section house built by the Southern Pacific system was located at Amelia. Soon after the construction of the Beaumont, Sour Lake and Western Railway in 1903, a depot in Amelia was named Elizabeth, in honor of Elizabeth McClain, daughter of a nearby resident.

The Amelia oilfield, established in 1936, had 114 producing wells by 1939. The Sun Oil Company established a geophysical lab at Amelia in 1948, and moderate amounts of crude oil continued to be recovered there through the mid-1980s. The Amelia schools were consolidated with Beaumont's South Park Independent School District in 1949. Amelia voters incorporated their town in August 1955 by a vote of 146 to 108. Less than three months later, however, they voted 129 to 79 to abolish the corporation. The city of Beaumont annexed Amelia in 1957. In the mid-1980s the Amelia area, once known as Corn Street, was a center for rice growers; a rice warehouse was located there, as was an agricultural extension station operated by Texas A&M University since 1911.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: WPA Federal Writers' Project, Beaumont (Houston: Anson Jones, 1939).

Robert Wooster
 

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/AA/hra34.html (accessed March 3, 2008).

(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")