Touring the Port of Orange office By Dawn Burleigh / Dawn Burleigh
Across the street from soccer fields sits a unique and attractive building. Many are unware it was once home to the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company and now houses the Port of Orange and Commissioners. The Port of Orange became a deep-water port, open to the Gulf of Mexico and the world's oceans in 1916 when a 25-foot channel through Sabine Lake, past Sabine Pass, and out to the Gulf of Mexico was completed, according to its official website.. The channel was the result of the efforts of canny and able sawmill operators who knew how to get money and government help for their project. The harbor at Orange had always been attractive to shipping. Located on the Sabine River 12 miles above that watercourse's outlet to Sabine Lake, the harbor not only received barges of cotton from ports in East Texas but also timber. The timber was floated downriver from East Texas forests, made into
lumber at Orange, and then shipped to Sabine Pass. There the cargoes were transshipped to New Orleans, Galveston, and other ports along the Gulf. The Orange harbor itself was blocked from serving ocean going vessels directly, however, by a shoal 'in the channel at Sabine Pass. Due to the shoal, only six or seven feet of water were present at low tide. Vessels drawing no more than four or five feet frequently dragged bottom in passing over this obstruction. Lumber interests at Orange tried to solve this problem by loading large vessels outside the Sabine Pass bar, but heavy demurrage charges were run up when rough weather made it difficult to get the barges alongside the vessels to be loaded. About 1885, the sawmill men at Orange Henry J. Lutcher, Samuel T. Swinford, the Bancrofts, and Judge D. R. Wingate were joined by John H. Kirby, a Tyler, Texas, sawmill owner, in consideration of a mutual venture to develop a harbor
The large lawn leading to the Port of Orange was once the home to the mills for Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company.
16 | April 2021 m
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