Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 484
The city of West Orange is preparing for the 22nd Annual Holiday in the Park and a few vendor spaces are still available. The event this year will be Saturday, November 4, at Seal-Alford Plaza next to city hall on Western Avenue. This will be the second year the festival will have a classic car show so people can look at restored vintage cars. Holiday in the Park features lots of vendors selling food, home decor, arts and crafts, and gifts. A lot of the items can help people...
People living in the Orangefield area may be deciding whether to keep the non-profit Orangefield Water Supply Corporation or become a state water district. A town hall meeting was held Tuesday evening for discussion and a presentation on the differences. Water districts in the county are operated in West Orange, the Vidor area, and Mauriceville. Some rural areas are serviced by private water companies or individual wells. The state of Texas has separate rules and regulations...
Casie Graves was playing with her baby daughter Friday and was so enamored with the child that she posted a video of the little cutie for her friends to see. Sometime between the time of the video post and Saturday afternoon, Casie Graves was murdered and her body dumped along a road to an industrial site. Now, the Orange County Sheriff's Office is hoping the public can help find her killer, or killers. The sheriff's office was called at 5:20 Saturday afternoon when someone...
The local economy is growing, but not everyone has a high-paying job. Even families with two working parents are finding it harder to pay bills as food and gas prices go up along with utilities and insurance. Some people across the county are skipping meals. "There's a lot of people still struggling to pay their bills," said Melissa Isaacs, executive director of the Bridge City-Orangefield Ministerial Alliance. The Ministerial Alliance and other groups with food pantries acros...
In Texas, the high school homecoming football week is a memorable experience for the community, and this week, Bridge City High is having unforgettable events. It will end Friday night at Larry Ward Stadium-Moe Litton Field when the Cardinals take on Hamshire-Fannett. The team is now 2-2 for the season after a loss last week to Lumberton. The homecoming queen will be crowned during the ceremonies and new inductees will be presented for the Bridge City High School alumni hall...
Fifty-five minutes travel time between Orange and Bridge City. The growing pains are blooming and people are grumbling. Traffic between Orange and Bridge City has become a cluster mess in recent months as construction moves ahead at the new $8.5 billion Golden Triangle Polymers plant on Texas Highway 87. This week, all southbound traffic on Highway 87 will be closed during certain hours. Southbound lanes are the ones traveling from Orange to Bridge City. Beginning on Tuesday,...
Orange County Commissioners Court approved a lower property tax rate compared to last year, but because of an overall increase in property values, taxpayers may be paying an average of 17 percent more in their county property taxes. The court Tuesday approved the tax rate, along with a budget of $59 million. The budget is for the 2023-24 fiscal year, which starts on October 1. The tax rate will go with the new budget, though the due date for property taxes to be paid is the en...
A Sunday afternoon wildfire that started in a wooded area off Gist Road quickly spread through the dry and dying leaves leading to homes being evacuated. No lives or buildings were lost. By late Tuesday afternoon, the Texas Forest Service and Orange County Emergency Management reported the fire had burned 417 acres and was 75 percent contained. Jets and helicopters were used to dump water or fire retardants. Still, earlier on Tuesday, a resident living across the street from...
Kirk Roccaforte was Bridge City mayor on September 13, 2008. He and his emergency team from the city were quartered with other county first responders and officials at Mauriceville Elementary School in the north part of the county waiting for Hurricane Ike to come ashore. Though the worse part of the storm hit Galveston as a Category 2 hurricane, no one here could have predicted what happened in Orange County. Ike was the "perfect storm" that sent a storm surge straight from...
The 1940 high school football season here was supposed to be a great one with a fancy new stadium for Orange High, but it ended up a strange one. After two games, the coach was gone and so was the director of the famous girls drum and bugle corps. And all events came about because of the late H.J. Lutcher Stark, patron of Orange High School and the University of Texas. Stark, a native of Orange and an heir to the great Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company, was a local leader and...
Heat readings for the summer of 2023 have reached a record high, with the Orange County Airport gauges recording 32 days of 100 degrees or hotter for June through August. Two more 100 degree days have already happened in September. And as Orange County continues to sizzle with only scattered rain, smoke from marsh fires and grass fires fills the dry air. "People are scared, and rightly so," said Captain Joey Jacobs of the Orange County Sheriff's Office. He is licensed to pilot...
Veteran law enforcement officer Joey Jacobs will be running in the March Republican primary for constable of Precinct 4, which covers the Vidor area. He has worked in law enforcement for 27 years, including 24 with the Orange County Sheriff's Office, where he has earned his way from patrol deputy to captain of detectives, overseeing the Criminal Investigations Division. He grew up in Vidor, where he graduated from high school, and he now lives there with his wife and two...
Members of the Bridge City Police Department and the Bridge City Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department worked together to collect more than 4,000 items to donate to the Southeast Texas Food Bank, which helps local charity groups supply food items for needy individuals and families. The police department also gave the fire department a "Thin Blue Line" flag to display....
The new Orange Recreation Center has set its September schedule that includes a youth 3-on-3 co-ed basketball tournament at the end of the month. The center on Orange Avenue at the site of the old natatorium, is open Tuesdays through Saturdays. Because of high school football season, the center will be closing early, at 5 p.m., on Fridays for the games. In the mornings from 8:30 to 10:30 on Tuesdays through Saturdays, senior citizen walking is scheduled. Senior citizens,...
Orange County continues on the path for more industrial growth as two projects have been approved for possible tax abatements from the state and local entities. Orange County Commissioners Court Tuesday approved a resolution approving a Reinvestment Zone a 435.4 acres outside of Bridge City. County Economic Development Director Megan Layne said the area is known as Humble Island. Its a tract of land that on the banks of the Neches River that sticks out near the Veterans Memori...
Texas has 774 new state laws starting on September 1 that will affect different aspects from criminal laws to regulations for businesses that get state licensing. The Texas Legislature meets in odd-numbered years and passes a myriad of laws and regulations that usually begin on the first day of September after the legislative session. The newest laws and regulations were set by the 88th Texas Legislature that met earlier this year. Orange County's State Representative Dade Phe...
Orange County plus the cities of Orange, West Orange, and Vidor are showing increases in sales tax collections for the month of June, according to information from the Texas Comptroller's Office. The city of Orange was listed with a whopping nearly 80 percent increase in sales taxes with $1.11 million collected for sales during the month, compared to $632,405 in collected in 2022. That puts the city up 27.14 percent for the year to date with $6.41 million compared to $5.04 mil...
Orange County came close Sunday for adding a wildfire to its growing list of recent disaster history. Forty acres of dense woods burned for hours Sunday afternoon in the Little Cypress area west of Highway 87 North as Orange County reached its record temperature of 106 degrees. Little Cypress Fire Chief Matt Manshack said for the first couple of hours, firefighters feared the fire could spread to the Country Squire subdivision. The Texas Forest Service was already on...
Joe Kazmar was born and raised in New York state and became a successful businessman in Orange. But though he made his mark in the car business, he will be long remembered for his sports knowledge. Kazmar died last week at the age of 81 after an illness. He moved to Orange in the late 1960s when he took a job as a sportswriter at the Orange Leader, when the newspaper was a daily and the offices were on Front Street in downtown, across the street from the shipyards. Like many a...
Orangefield school district voters in November will decide on a $43 million bond issue for more classrooms at all three campuses, a new high school library and cafeteria, plus improvements at the elementary and junior high campuses. Board members say the projects improve school safety. The school board Monday night unanimously called for the bond issue decision to be held on November 7, general election day. The district said the amount will be $42.9 million. The bonds, if...
Maplecrest Baptist Church in Vidor will host a "Faith, Family, Freedom" conference featuring two speakers prominent in the Conservative Christian movement against homosexual and transgender rights, and promotion of laws to prohibit abortion. The conference will begin the evening of Friday, August 18, and then with all-day sessions on Saturday. The speakers will be Abraham Hamiliton III, a lawyer who serves as general counsel and public policy analyst for the American Family...
Heritage House Museum on Sunday, August 20, will have a special opening of a new exhibit entitled "Team Spirit" about local high school sports. The come-and-go opening is from 2 to 5 p.m. and will feature Joel Robins. Robins was an all-around Stark High athlete in the 1960s, starting as Tiger quarterback and getting a baseball scholarship to Texas A&M. After retiring as a chemical engineer, he began researching Orange sports history, tracking down the first Orange High teams...
Daniel McLemore knows he found his work home at LSCO. He only has to spend 15 minutes now to travel from his residence in Orangefield. As a veteran of marketing and advertising, he's not accustomed to being so close to his family. For years, he's had to travel 30 to 35 miles to his office. McLemore, an Orangefield resident, is the new LSCO director of marketing and communications. Before he lived in Orangefield, he lived in Bridge City. He and his wife, Chelsea, have a...
Brown leaves are falling off of trees and the grass is dry and brown. But now in Bridge City, residents are being asked to restrict their watering. The National Weather Service's gauges at the Orange County Airport on Tuesday afternoon reached 105, which could set a record for heat. The county remains under an excessive heat warning by the weather service. The service warns that "very dry conditions and accumulated heat increase the potential for heat-related illnesses and...
Bridge City First Baptist Church is inviting the public to a gospel singing concert by The Hoppers, known as America's Favorite Gospel Group. The concert will begin at the church at 6 p.m. Saturday, August 19. Doors will open at 5 p.m. The church is at 200 West Roundbunch Road and the phone number is 409-735-3581. The Hoppers family singers began in 1955 in Madison, North Carolina, a rural farming community. Through the years, the changing family singers have performed in the...
