The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

The Bridge City Chamber of Commerce is pleased to announce that it has named Cormier Museum as Business of the Month for February 2015. Stephen Patterson, Brian Ousley and Jesse Fremont accepted the award from Bridge City Chamber of Commerce Ambassador Dave Derosier at the February 10th Networking Coffee hosted by Jolie Moi. Along with the award, sponsored by Sabine River Ford, Cormier Museum received gifts from Mary Kelone, LMT, Tiger Rock Martial Arts and Five Point Credit Union.

Cormier Museum is the dream of an oilman who grew up poor – Paul Cormier. He wanted people to see how it really was in the “good old days.” Paul created, in a plain metal warehouse, a 1920’s village that contains places like a jail, a bank, a saloon, a boarding house, a post office, a dentist office, a school, a general store, and a soda fountain. This small town represents not only old Orangefield, but also many other small country towns all across the south. Each of the rooms contains materials from the late 1800’s to the 1960’s.

In the second building one room salutes Orangefield School built in 1928 and served first grade through graduation until 1955 when Orangefield Elementary was built.

Across from the school, the Orangefield Skating Rink was built in 1956.

This section includes part of the original wooden floor and cubbyholes filled with the original leather boot-type roller skates people rented.

The building also has display cases with hundreds of old pocket knives and straight razors.

Other rooms are dedicated to musical instruments, audio-visual machines, the office of Paul Cormier, and toys including thousands of model cars, trucks, airplanes, dolls and more.

It was said that as a boy, Paul Cormier only received one toy.

Later after his oil business became very successful he delighted in collecting model cars and trucks.

The back room houses several antique cars and one of the original oil work-over rigs purchased by Paul Cormier in the early years. In the spring of 2009, the Cormier family made a gift of the museum to the Orangefield ISD. The museum is open the 3rd Saturday of each month from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Admission is free and donations are appreciated. Tours are available and can be requested by calling 735-2285.