GROVES, TEXAS – Groves is on State highways 73, 87, and 347, north of Port Arthur and eleven miles southeast of Beaumont in eastern Jefferson County. It was laid out by the Griffing brothers of Port Arthur in 1916, on part of a tract conveyed by John Warne Gates to the Griffing’s five years earlier.
The subdivision, originally called Pecan Grove, was referred to as simply The Groves when it was taken over before 1921 by the Port Arthur Land and Development Company.
Groves secured a post office in 1929 and eventually became a heavily industrialized town on the Kansas City Southern Railway near the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. The Atlantic refining plant began operations in Groves in 1936.
During the 1980s the area’s industries included shipbuilding, refineries, and petrochemical plants. The population of Groves grew from an estimated 1,300 around 1950 to 17,304 by 1960.
After failed efforts in 1950 and 1951, Groves incorporated in 1952 by a 1,079 to 262 vote. During the mid-1980s the Groves population remained at just over 17,000.
Though at that time Groves had some 174 businesses, the city suffered severe economic setbacks in the wake of falling oil prices in the early 1980s, as did most of industrialized southeast Texas. In 1990 the city’s population was reported as 16,513. The population dropped to 15,733 in 2000.
Robert Wooster
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “,” http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/heg4.html (accessed March 14, 2009).
