Boudreaux House

Hamshire, TX

Built in 1859 of Louisiana cypress on land patented to William H. Smith, who died at the Alamo, the Hamshire House is a fine example of the ranch dwellings of early Southeast Texas. It was raised for Emil Broussard, and here grew up J. E. Broussard, who went on to build the first rice mill in Texas — a crop that would transform the coastal prairie. The widowed Azema Broussard later married Lovan Hamshire, and the couple donated the land for the area's first Catholic church.

Beaumont, TX

Beaumont was laid out in 1835 on a site known as Tevis's Bluff by Henry Millard, who named the new town in honor of his wife, Mary Dewleigh Borlace Warren Beaumont. Founded on the eve of the Texas Revolution, the town was incorporated in 1838 during the days of the Republic of Texas. It would later grow into a major Gulf Coast city.

China, TX

Named for one of the Atakapan-speaking peoples it once linked, the Opelousas Trail ran from La Bahia — later Goliad — to the Mississippi in Louisiana, a route worn by Native trade for centuries before Spanish soldiers and French traders followed it. After 1820, settlers streamed in from Louisiana and the South, and cattlemen like Martin de Leon and James Taylor White drove great herds along it to market in New Orleans. In 1836 Texas families fled down the path in the "Runaway Scrape," and later the captured Santa Anna was led along it as a prisoner of war; the Confederate Army used the road, and parts of it became U.S. Highway 90.

Winnie, TX

Winnie grew up on an 1835 Mexican land grant that stayed sparsely homesteaded until the railroad arrived. It took its name from Fox Winnie, a Kansas contractor who helped build the Gulf & Interstate Railway through the area in 1895, and a Galveston-based improvement company sold town lots to draw settlers. The young community weathered a punishing run of storms, freezes, and a hurricane that stranded its train in Galveston for three years, before rice, cattle, and later petroleum gave it firmer footing.