Beauxart Gardens

Beauxart Gardens, originally a federal subsistence homestead colony, is between U.S. Highway 69/96/287 and Farm Road 823 six miles southeast of Beaumont in eastern Jefferson County. Once the site of intensive rice farming by residents of Nederland and Viterbo, the area was developed by the federal government during the Great Depressionqv and named for its location between Beaumont and Port Arthur. The town plat was filed in 1934 and approved by the Resettlement Administration the following year. Fifty families were located on the 205-acre tract. The houses, of three to six rooms, also included 3� acres for each family to cultivate for its own use. Inhabitants worked part-time at nearby refineries and spent the remainder of their working hours on the government truck farm at Beauxart Gardens. A voting precinct was established at Beauxart Gardens on August 10, 1942. The community now lies slightly west of the Jefferson County airport.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Beaumont Enterprise, May 31, 1936. WPA Federal Writers' Project, Port Arthur (Houston: Anson Jones, 1939).

Robert Wooster

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/hrb15.html (accessed March 3, 2008).

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

 

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