Bonnie and Rob's Travel Journal: Beaumont, Texas

Today we are exploring Beaumont, an East Texas city of 120,000. It's only about an hour inland from High Island and will provide a base for us for a few days while we explore the areas around. We chose Beaumont for its good variety of hotels, restaurants, and night life possibilities. Little did we know that our travel experience would include the world's best oil gusher, the world's biggest fire hydrant, and the "world's best birding" (sic).

[The Latin adverb sic inserted after a quoted word or passage indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated exactly as found in the source text, complete with any erroneous, archaic, or otherwise nonstandard spelling. Wikipedia]

In other words, their convention and visitors bureau makes the claim about the world's best birding. We shall see.

We like this hotel - big rooms, wide hallways, a touch of faded elegance. It has a pleasant patio pool area with comfortable shaded sitting areas, and is pleasingly priced as well.

MCM Elegante Hotel

Spindletop

Any tourist's first stop in Beaumont has to be Spindletop, famous for being the first place oil had been found in large quantities Texas. In its first ten days of production it produced 1,000,000 barrels, incredible amounts in 1901. Subsequent drilling established Texas and the United States as world leaders in oil production. Until that time oil was only used for lubrication and lighting, but with new quantities available it could now be burned as fuel. In a few years the world became dependent on this new power source. We know how this story ends 119 years later.

Oil is discovered in large quantities at Beaumont in 1901

World's Biggest Fire Hydrant

Who thought this was a good idea? Well, Walt Disney, actually. The 24' high, 4500 lb Dalmation Hydrant was donated to the city by Disney in 1999 on the re-release of "101 Dalmations". The hydrant is the front piece for the Fire Museum of Texas and is able to squirt 1500 gallons of water per minute from a fountain in its top. Sadly, we missed that sight.

Several other venues dispute the "World's Biggest" title nowadays, most notably Columbia, South Carolina (40' tall) and a Canadian entry in Elm Creek, Manitoba (29.5' tall). Clearly, when the conversion is done from American feet to Canadian metric feet, ours is bigger. I'm actually surprised that Canadians don't make more of this unnatural marvel. Must be our natural modesty.

Cattail Marsh Wetlands

This and other areas nearby like it are the reason we came to Beaumont. Access to a variety of habitats is quick, with the short walks and good footing which I still need. Check the link under the picture for more about Cattail Marsh.