Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Sorted by date Results 101 - 125 of 454
The three Republican candidates for Precinct 2 constable touted their long experience in law enforcement as reasons voters should elect them in the March 4 primary races. The candidates, incumbent Jeremiah Gunter and challengers David C. Bailey and Harold Hass, are running for the Republican nomination. Because no Democrats are running for local offices, the winner of the primary will run unopposed in the November general election. Last week, the Orange County Republican...
Orange County Commissioners Court has declared February as Southeast Texas Workforce Month and the county's economic development director said there's reason to celebrate. Megan Romero Layne, the EDC director, told the court just this month, the county added 80 new healthcare jobs with the opening of Christus Hospital-Orange. The EDC in Orange County currenting has $12.5 billion in construction and planning projects, with another $73 billion in construction and planning for...
More than 20 years ago, Betty Harmon began putting into motion an idea from the late Carolyn Hogan for Orange to have a Mardi Gras celebration. "I never thought it would grow to this magnitude," Harmon said as the city gets ready for three days of events with the 20th anniversary of the first parade. The celebrations will start Thursday evening with a free concert at the Riverside Pavilion and culminate Saturday evening with the grand parade through downtown Orange. Before...
Orange County voters will get a chance Thursday to meet and hear the three candidates running for Precinct 2 constable. Then next week, the the four Republican candidates will be featured in a forum. The forums are sponsored by the Orange County Republican Party for three of the four local contested races. Because the Democratic Party has no local candidates, the winners of the Republican primary races will run unopposed in the November General Election. On Thursday, February...
Philanthropist Gisela Houseman and Dr. Marty Rutledge took the center of attention Tuesday afternoon as the helped cut the ribbon for Orange's first hospital in seven years. The two were crucial in getting the new, 24-hour hospital built and operating on what is now called the Gisela Houseman Medical Campus, which includes a professional building. Dr. Rutledge is an Orange native with a longtime general family medical practice here. The 55,000 square foot hospital is operated...
Mardi Gras on the Sabine has become more than one parade. Now, there's free live music, food trucks, kids games, a munchkin parade, of course the grand parade. Starting with a free rock concert Thursday evening and going through Saturday night, Orange is ready to celebrate. This year the events will include a tribute to Kevin Smith, recently named to the College Football Hall of Fame. Smith, a native of Orange and graduate of West Orange-Stark High School, was a football star...
Dolores Cantu got a job at the old Strand movie theater in the 1960s when she was 14 years old. At the time, she could only dream she would one day be on the big screen. She ended up on the big screen and TV screens for decades and has gone down in film history as the only woman who ever beat up John Travolta in a movie. It was the classic "Saturday Night Fever." Cantu, a 1968 graduate of the old West Orange High School, will be returning home to be featured at the Boomtown...
The city of Orange is beginning a new year cleaning house, or at least dilapidated houses and buildings. As the city continues to give out Economic Development Corporation grants for new businesses and construction, the city is also tearing down eyesores, including another section of Sabine Park Apartments, which were originally Gilmer Homes built in the early 1940s for World War II. City Planning Director Kelvin Knauf said a the city council a few years ago agreed to spend mo...
Orange County Commissioners Court Tuesday approved the plans for another RV park on Texas Highway 62 south of Interstate 10. The approval for Shadee RV near Dempsey Drive is the first park to come under the county's new regulations. With an influx of construction workers moving to the area because of new and expanding industrial plants, more RV parks are being developed around the county. Last year, Commissioners Court added some additional rules to assure the RV parks in...
Cedric Stout of Bridge City, one of the country's last survivors of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, died Wednesday at the age of 102. This past December, the U.S. Navy reported only 25 living survivors of the attack were left. The December 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii was described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "a day that will live in infamy" when he asked Congress for a declaration of war. Stout had his 20th birthday a month...
Bridges and overpasses closed Monday evening as freezing rain slicked roadways, leading to a number of vehicle crashes and schools being canceled for Tuesday. Most of Texas is suffering under a strong arctic front that hit Orange County on Monday with strong winds sending windchills into the teens. The low at the Orange County Airport reached 23 degrees overnight, with a low of 19 forecast for Tuesday night, according to the National Weather Service. And even though Thursday...
Everybody knew him as Stump, a nickname Stump Weatherford had in childhood. But for Lions Club International, he was also known "National Treasure." Butch Campbell recalls giving the "National Treasure" name to Weatherford a few years ago at the Lions Camp for youth with disabilities. "Everybody laughed at it, but they knew it was true," Campbell said. "He wasn't just a local treasure, he was a national treasure." L.E. "Stump" Weatherford died last week at the age of 77 after...
The city of Orange is starting the new year with a big drop in sales tax payments as Pinehurst, West Orange, and Vidor have healthy increases. Sometimes with the city of Orange's drops, the percentage changes could be with the Texas Comptroller's Office which collects all sales taxes from businesses. The office sends entities their shares after keeping the state's share. Often, the state office mistakenly sends sales taxes from Pinehurst and West Orange to the city of Orange...
Bridge City has a new city manager and he's guaranteed to stay at least two years. Last week, the Bridge City City Council voted unanimously to hire Christopher Baker, who grew up in the Mobile Bay, Alabama, area as the city manager. He has a master's degrees in business administration along with another master's in city and regional planning. "We're very pleased with our selection. We think he's a great fit for us," Mayor David Rutledge said. The city went nearly a year...
Former West Orange-Stark Mustang Kevin Smith, who went on to star for Texas A&M and the Dallas Cowboys was named Monday to the 2024 College Football Hall of Fame. The College Football Hall of Fame has a museum in Atlanta, Georgia. The inductees announced Monday include 19 players who earned first team All-American honors, along with three college coaches. They will be honored at an awards banquet set for Las Vegas in December this year. He is also in the Texas A&M 12th Man Hal...
Orange County will be celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King this week with an annual gala Saturday night at the Expo Center and a traditional march in downtown Orange on Monday. The Orange NAACP is once again sponsoring the march, as it did the first one here on January 20, 1986, when the day became a national holiday. This year, the march, which is open to the community, will begin at 10 a.m. at Salem United Methodist Church, 402 West John Avenue. The marchers will begin...
National company building $6 million in new houses in Orange More than $6 million in new houses in Orange's Reserve at Mallard Lake subdivision are in the construction phase, according to city building permits. In December, the city issued 25 permits to D.R. Horton, a national homebuilding and developing corporation based in Arlington, Texas. The new houses are being built in a newly-developed area off Allie Payne Road in the Little Cypress-Mauriceville school district. The pe...
Probably no one in Orange County today will remember the Ready Reserve Fleet, but many still know of the "mothball fleet."40 The U.S. Navy's "mothball fleet" along the Sabine River was a familiar landmark to those who lived here in the 1950s through 1970s. It was part of the federal government's post-World War II plan for the national defense to store navy vessels that were no longer needed. The nickname came from the common household chore of putting woolen clothes in...
Texas had 34 new laws go into effect, including a cost of living increase for teachers in the Retired Teachers Fund. The monthly raise will be between 2 to 6 percent and is the first cost of living awarded since 2013. The teacher pension COLA was one of three measures approved by voters in November after the Texas Legislature passed bills making the proposals law upon voter approval. Another change approved by voters will allow an estimated 67,000 small businesses to not have...
As campaigning is heating up in the March Republican primary election for county offices, filing will be starting for May elections to city councils and school boards. This year, Bridge City, Orange, and Pinehurst will have elections for mayor, with incumbents in the three seats. Besides the city council elections, four of the five public school districts in the county will have elections for boards of trustees. In addition, the Orange County Port and Navigation Board, along...
News in Orange from a century ago isn't much different from that going into 2024. Christian denominations were splitting and the government wanted to save by cutting back on employees. The daily newspaper, Orange Leader, of January 31, 1923, was reporting on local, national, and world affairs. One Associated Press story predicted "the year o the great realignment of the church forces in the United States" "spurred by the war between fundamentalists and modernists." One pastor...
More than 20 years ago, leaders in Orange had a vision to expand commercial business and the tax base along Interstate 10 at 16th Street. After years of negotiations with the state highway department and railroad companies, the dream is coming true as businesses have filled up land along a new interstate frontage road. The project also involved about $2.5 million in city investments with the money coming from the special half-cent per dollar economic development sales tax...
As 2023 comes to a close, most of the public entities with sales taxes have income staying above the inflation rate, but Bridge City and Pinehurst have had stagnant returns. The Texas Comptroller's Office has sent the cities, county, and one special district the sales taxes for sales in the month of October and has calculated the 12 months of sales taxes paid to the entities. Orange ended up with a whopping 28.9 percent end of the year increase from 2022, while Bridge City saw...
People in Mauriceville who have an opinion on noisy engine braking on big truck rigs will have a chance to tell Orange County Commissioners Court at 8:30 a.m. on January 9. Precinct 2 Commissioner Chris Sowell has recommended the county adopt a "no engine braking" zone at the intersection of Texas Highways 62 and 12. The court will hold a public hearing for the zone during that time before going into a workshop meeting at 9 a.m. The court had its last meeting of the year on...
The Bridge City Chamber of Commerce annual dinner has been set for January 29, and the deadline is approaching for nominees as "citizen of the year" and "business of the year." The nominating deadline is January 5 and submissions may be made by email, postage mail, or at the chamber office. The 2024 recipients of the two honors will be announced dinner. Tickets to the annual dinner, which will be at the Bridge City Community Center at 6 p.m. January 29, are $20 for each person...
