|
Beach City soiree marks 40th
anniversary
Published June 11, 2006 Beach City residents enjoyed a history lesson
Saturday at a celebration to mark the city’s 40th
anniversary.
City officials displayed old maps,
newspaper articles, letters and photos, and presenters
also discussed some of the city’s history, including
early residents Solomon Barrow and Sam Houston. The
presentations were videotaped and will be preserved at
the Baytown Historical Museum.
Beach City is a
small community on the western shoreline of Trinity Bay
in an area that was historically called West Bay. The
city’s population has grown to more than 1,600 residents
in the last 40 years.
Presenter Kevin Ladd of
Wallisville Heritage Park said Gen. Houston built his
summer home, Ravenmoor, in 1843 in Cedar Point on
Trinity Bay. The has since been lost to the bay, but a
historical marker is placed near the site on FM
2354.
“He said this was the place he always
wanted to come back to,” Ladd said. “He wanted to enjoy
the breezes, sit by the bay and forget
politics.”
Council member Rita Standridge said
preserving the city’s history was necessary for both old
and new residents.
“We decided to do this because
we have a lot of history here, and the people who gave
us that history are passing,” she said. “A lot of people
who are new to the area need to know its
history.”
Beach City’s first mayor, Eloice
Jordan, said that the city proves that good things come
in small packages.
“We may be small, but I’m glad
this little city has survived and progressed,” she
said.
Former mayor Rusty Senac said the city owes
its success to Jordan and other officials who pushed for
incorporation in 1966.
“We owe an awful lot to
Mrs. Jordan,” he said. “She and our early leaders set up
wonderful foundations that we were able to build
upon.”
The idea of incorporating a city from the
area first came as an idea in 1963 with the formation of
the Tri-City Beach Civic Association. The organization
grew to 137 members, with Jordan serving as president.
Jordan said that when the group found out in 1966 that
Baytown wanted to annex the area, they began to more
seriously discuss incorporation.
Jordan said she
and other members of the civic association requested to
be on the agenda for the next Baytown City Council
meeting and got attorney Eugene Jenson to speak on their
behalf.
“He got up there and told everyone to
get comfortable because he was about to give his
speech,” she said. “He told them to back off and let us
loose.”
Jordan said Council members advised the
association to incorporate before they could move
forward with plans for annexation. They met with County
Judge Oscar Nelson, and Chambers County Commissioners
Court authorized an election for April 5, 1966. Voters
overwhelmingly approved the creation of Beach City, and
city officials were elected the next
month.
Voters elected Jordan as the city’s first
mayor and W.D. Bush, William Daniels, J.D. Nicholson,
J.R. Holland and A.J. Crawley as Aldermen.
“The
county held our first election for us because we didn’t
have any authority at the time,” Jordan said. “I just
sort of fell into being mayor, I guess because I was
already president of the civic association or maybe
because no one else wanted the job. After that, we were
in business.”
Jordan said that because the city
had no funding at the time, the first Council meeting
presented a few problems.
“Our secretary Ruth
Hoover had to take the meeting in long hand because we
didn’t have a typewriter,” she said. “We didn’t have any
money, but we didn’t really need a lot. We got Ruth a
loaned typewriter for the next meeting.”
The city
later received $750 from a franchise agreement and
bought Hoover her own typewriter and agreed to give her
$15 a week to compensate her for her work.
Jordan
said the city faced other problems in its inception,
including faulty telephone service.
“The
telephone system out here at the time was atrocious,”
she said. “We had nothing but eight party lines, and
those rarely even worked. If it went out, it was two to
three weeks before they’d come out to fix
it.”
She said she refused to sign a franchise
agreement with the telephone company until they fixed
the lines.
“Those little pipsqueaks were
embarrassed that we were the only incorporated place in
the area not to sign a franchise agreement,” she said.
“Once we did get an upgrade on the phone system, we
signed their agreement.”
She said her philosophy
as mayor was to keep city government out of residents’
lives.
“Changing how people lived wasn’t the
point of incorporating,” she said. “We didn’t want
taxes. We wanted to be left alone.”
Former City
Council member Robert Barrow, a member of one of Beach
City’s pioneer families, said Jordan’s philosophy lives
on today.
“Beach City is a place where the City
Council believes the least government is the best
government,” he said. “That’s what the people want, and
that’s how we want to keep it.”
 Save  Mail  Print  Comment
|
