Office of the Supervisor of Shipbuilding and Consolidated Steel Corporation
Orange, Orange County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Orange's location at a bend in the Sabine River, adjacent to the immense virgin pine forests of southeast Texas, made it an ideal site for shipbuilding. However, by 1930 all of the easily obtainable timber was exhausted, and the associated sawmills closed. The Depression of the 1930s also weighed heavily on the population of Orange. In July 1940, Congressman Martin Dies and Vice-President John Nance Garner attached an amendment to a large general appropriations bill to build twenty-four surf-landing crafts and twelve destroyers in Orange. The Office of Supervisor of Shipbuilding, USN, Orange, Texas, was established at this time, with CDR E.B. Perry as the first supervisor. The supervisor was responsible for directing the construction of the thirty-six crafts, and also the establishment of a shipyard in Orange to support the endeavor. The facility was built on sixty-five acres at a bend in the Sabine River. Levingston Shipbuilding's tugboat and barge shipyard occupied a small portion of the west side, and the remainder was occupied by Consolidated Steel Corporation's steel fabricating plant, where the Office of the Supervisor was also located. On May 14, 1941, construction began at Consolidated Steel on the Destroyers USS Aulick and USS Charles Ausburne, the first two warships constructed on the gulf coast for the U.S. government. In total, thirty-nine destroyers and 100 destroyer escorts were built at the Consolidated Steel Corporation yard during World War II. After the war, the Naval facility prepared ships for storage in the Naval Reserve Fleet as the United States Naval Inactive Ship Naintenance Facility. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Orange's position at a bend in the Sabine River beside vast pine forests made it a natural shipbuilding town, but by 1930 the timber was exhausted, the sawmills closed, and the Depression bore down. In 1940 Texas lawmakers secured a federal appropriation to build landing craft and destroyers there, establishing the Navy's Office of Supervisor of Shipbuilding and a sprawling yard operated largely by Consolidated Steel. Beginning in 1941 the yard launched the first warships built on the Gulf Coast for the U.S. government, ultimately producing 39 destroyers and 100 destroyer escorts during World War II.
Why it matters
Orange's wartime shipyards show how World War II mobilization revived a depressed timber town into a major arsenal of democracy, reshaping the industrial map of the Gulf Coast.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Orange sits at a bend in the Sabine River in the far southeastern corner of Texas, and geography made its fortune more than once. In its first heyday the town lived off timber—the immense virgin pine forests at its back and the river at its front made it a natural place to cut, mill, and ship wood.
That boom didn't last. By 1930 the easily reached timber was exhausted and the sawmills closed, and then the Great Depression settled over the population like a second weight. A town built on one resource watched that resource run out at the worst possible economic moment.
What came next was the great pivot of the era. As the 1930s ended and war spread across Europe and the Pacific, the United States began a vast military buildup. The same riverbank that had once floated logs was about to build warships.
People & events
The turn came in July 1940. Congressman Martin Dies and Vice-President John Nance Garner—both Texans with clout in Washington—attached an amendment to a large appropriations bill to build two dozen surf-landing craft and a dozen destroyers at Orange. With it came the Office of Supervisor of Shipbuilding, U.S. Navy, Orange, Texas, with Commander E.B. Perry as the first supervisor, charged with directing construction and standing up a shipyard to do it.
The facility rose on sixty-five acres at the river's bend. Levingston Shipbuilding occupied a small portion on the west side, while Consolidated Steel Corporation's steel-fabricating plant took the rest and housed the supervisor's office. On May 14, 1941, work began at Consolidated Steel on two destroyers, the USS Aulick and USS Charles Ausburne—the first warships built on the Gulf Coast for the U.S. government.
From there the output was staggering for a once-idle timber town: in all, thirty-nine destroyers and one hundred destroyer escorts came out of the Consolidated Steel yard during World War II. When the war ended, the Navy facility turned to preparing ships for storage in the reserve fleet.
Its place in the American story
Orange is a textbook case of what wartime mobilization did to America. The phrase 'arsenal of democracy' is often illustrated by huge coastal cities, but the real story is also this: a small, Depression-flattened town whose sawmills had gone silent became a builder of warships almost overnight.
The detail that the Aulick and Charles Ausburne were the first warships built on the Gulf Coast for the federal government marks Orange as a starting point for an industry that would reshape the whole region. Federal dollars, driven by war, redrew the industrial map of the Gulf Coast and pulled workers into places that had been emptying out.
And the destroyers and destroyer escorts built here fed directly into the naval war, especially the long, grinding battle to protect convoys and hunt submarines. Ships from a bend in the Sabine River sailed into a global conflict—an ordinary American town's contribution to an extraordinary effort.
If you visit
Stand where the river bends and picture the transformation. This stretch of the Sabine went from floating pine logs to launching destroyers, and knowing that layered past changes how the working landscape of Orange looks.
Orange today still carries its shipbuilding and industrial character, so let the marker frame what you're seeing: the water, the room to build, the geography that made a Navy planner in 1940 point at this exact spot. The numbers alone—dozens of destroyers, a hundred escorts—are worth pausing over.
Make it a stop on a southeast Texas route that traces the region's industrial and wartime history. It's the kind of place that rewards a traveler willing to look past a quiet riverbank and imagine the noise, the welding, and the launches that once filled it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Martin Dies
- · John Nance Garner
Related events
- · World War II
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Levingston Shipbuilding Company and Edward T. Malloy
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Irish immigrant brothers bought an existing Orange shipyard in 1859 and built wooden ships for decades, a trade their descendants carried into the steel age. Under Edward T. Malloy, who joined in 1939 and later bought control, Levingston Shipbuilding boomed during World War II, delivering 160 tugs, tankers, and rescue vessels to the Army and Navy between 1941 and 1945. After the war it reinvented itself as a world leader in offshore drilling rigs before closing in 1985.
U. S. S. Aulick
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In September 1940 a federal contract sent Consolidated Steel to build twelve Fletcher-class destroyers at Orange, lifting the city out of the deep decline that followed the closing of its sawmills. The keels of the Aulick and the Charles Ausburne were laid in 1941, and on Texas Independence Day in 1942 the Aulick — the first naval destroyer built in Texas — was launched before a crowd of thousands, part of more than four hundred wartime vessels completed on the riverfront.
Riverside Addition: World War II Housing in Orange
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When the U.S. Navy placed shipbuilding orders in Orange on the eve of World War II, a sleepy Sabine River town of 7,400 swelled past 60,000 as Depression-weary workers chased steady wages at the Levingston, Consolidated Western, and Weaver yards. To house them, the federal government threw up the Riverside Addition in 1942 — thousands of prefabricated 'demountable' duplexes, three schools, and shops, all within walking distance of the yards to conserve rationed fuel and tires. Billed as the largest federal housing project ever undertaken, it was always meant to be temporary, and after the war the units were sold, moved, or torn down, with the last gone by the 1980s.
Weaver Shipbuilding
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