VIDOR HISTORY
1964 VIDOR CITY DIRECTORY
BY POLK

"...In 1913, The Miller and Vidor Lumber Company purchased the assets of the Beaumont Sawmill Company which consisted basically of the T. H. Breece League in the western portion of Orange County. The Miller and Vidor Lumber Company built a rail system beginning at the southern most end near what is now the junction of Highway 105 and Old Highway 90 in Vidor. The logging trail line then extended in a northerly direction through that Portion of Vidor which is now Green Forest Sub-division, connected with Tram Road and then northward about ten miles. Because of ICC regulations, it was necessary for the Peach line, as the railroad was known, to maintain a station and sta[t]ionmaster. This they did at a site which is now Chesser Butane and Lumber Company in Vidor. This was Vidor's beginning. A logging community whose residents worked almost exclusively for the Miller and Vidor Lumber Company. In 1924, the Lumber Company up-rooted the logging camp and moved it northward to Lakeview, relocated the Peach Line and delivered the logs from the camp to the sawmill into Beaumont by way of the river from Lakeview.

"In 1929, E. G. Omohundro laid out the township of Vidor as the Miller-Vidor Sub-division. The township was surveyed out of the east end of the T. H. Breece League and a tract of land was conveyed to L. Singleton, H. J. Hebert, Robert Smith, Peter McDonald, John Morse, N. H. Merrill and Robert Sarver as trustees of the Vidor High School District. And so began Vidor and the Vidor Independent School District. In 1930 an additional tract of land was conveyed to District. This is the present site of the Vidor Elementary school between Orange Street and Old Highway 90.

"In 1936, the State of Texas acquired the right of way for what is now Interstate Highway 10. I suppose it might be said that Vidor Really had it's beginning in the depth of the great depression when families began searching for that plot of ground from which a family must be fed and an area where livestock could be raised for food. From this humble beginning, Vidor has grown to such an extent that on March 27, 1960, the city was incorporated as a General Law City under provisions of the General Law of the State of Texas."


submitted by Darwin E. Morris

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