Winnie, Texas

Everything Winnie is known for

2 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Winnie

Songs About Winnie

Third Coast
Teezo Touchdown
75%
"I got plenty out in Winnie, I'ma playa"
the ballad of lavern and captain flint
guy clark
10%

Artists From Winnie

T
Teague Brothers Band
country Pop: 55

Rivers & Roads in Song near Winnie

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Winnie.

Interstate 10 32 songs US Route 90 8 songs Trinity River 10 songs Sabine River 13 songs

Musical Heritage

The Barbershop That Became a Recording Studio RoadyGoat

One of Winnie's biggest cultural marks came out of a barbershop. Huey P. Meaux moved here from Louisiana with his Cajun sharecropper family at age 12, served in the Army, then came back and opened a barbershop in town while working nights as a radio disc jockey. In 1959, inside that shop, he produced Jivin' Gene Bourgeois's swamp-pop recording Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. From that small-town start, Meaux went on to work with Barbara Lynn, Dale and Grace, Roy Head, Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet, helped revive Freddy Fender's career, and became a key producer linking Cajun music, rhythm and blues, Tex-Mex and rock across the Gulf Coast. His record is not all music, though, and the story shouldn't pretend otherwise. Meaux later pleaded guilty to serious crimes, including sexual assault of a child, child pornography possession, drug possession and bond jumping, and served prison time. He returned to Winnie afterward and died here in 2011. A modest farm town helped launch records heard nationwide, carried by a deeply troubling man. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

RoadyGoat →

History of Winnie

The Town Founded by a Railroad That Waited Three Years for Its Train RoadyGoat

Winnie owes its very existence to the Gulf and Interstate Railway. In 1895, railroad officials E. Dee Normandie and L. P. Featherstone filed the town plat after pushing the line through this stretch of flat coastal prairie, and both the settlement and the railway took their name from Fox Winnie, a Kansas contractor and investor who helped build the route. A post office opened that same year. Then the Gulf Coast reminded everyone who really controlled transportation. According to the railway histories best supported by the Texas State Historical Association, the catastrophic damage came from the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which trapped a Galveston-bound train and left the line so wrecked that it could not be repaired for the train's return run through Winnie toward Beaumont until September 1903. Three years. The town's historical marker actually credits an 1896 storm, but the better-documented account points to 1900. Either way, the railroad that created Winnie kept it isolated through its own long, storm-broken silences. (Source: Handbook of Texas; Texas Historical Commission marker.)

RoadyGoat →

Seeding a Rice Crop From an Airplane RoadyGoat

Behind the Winnie Area Chamber of Commerce on LeBlanc Street sits an agricultural museum that reportedly preserves the very airplane used to plant Texas's first aerially seeded rice crop, a claim that comes from the chamber and the museum itself and is best repeated with that attribution rather than as settled statewide fact. Either way, the engineering behind it is real and clever. A hopper mounted inside the aircraft holds the rice seed, and a powered gate and spreading mechanism release it at a calibrated rate while the pilot flies straight, parallel passes across the field. Getting an even crop depends on a balancing act: aircraft speed and altitude, wind direction, the weight and flow rate of the seed, the spacing between passes, field moisture, and precise timing before flooding or rain. The advantage is huge over these wide, saturated fields, where an airplane can cover wet or difficult ground far faster than ground equipment and without bogging down or compacting soaked soil. Winnie's pumps and canals first made large-scale rice possible; aircraft then let farmers plant it fast. The relocated 1905 railway depot stands right beside the museum. (Source: Winnie Area Chamber of Commerce; Agricultural Historical Museum.)

Engineers Turned Wet Prairie Into Rice Country RoadyGoat

The flat fields stretching out around you didn't become rice country by accident; they were engineered into it. Starting in 1899, the Hankamer-Stowell Canal Company, later known as the Farmers Canal Company, began cutting irrigation ditches across this nearly level coastal prairie, with Winnie's own F. W. Schwettman as one of the principal organizers. Pumps and canals pulled water out of Turtle Bay and pushed it across the land, letting farmers flood carefully graded fields instead of gambling on unpredictable Gulf rainfall. The first local rice crop went in around 1900, before the canal network was even fully finished. Rice quickly became one of the main reasons people settled around Winnie and neighboring Stowell, drawing farmers, machinery dealers, dryers, warehouses and seasonal labor into a place that had been cattle range and open prairie. Far fewer families make their living directly from the crop today, but rice still sits at the center of local identity, and the proof is in the geometry of these wide, deliberately level fields. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

RoadyGoat →

Meaux, Huey P.

1950

Huey P. Meaux, music producer, promoter, and studio owner, was born on March 10, 1929, in Louisiana. Nicknamed the “Crazy Cajun,” Meaux pioneered “swamp pop” of the Gulf Coast. An owner of Houston’s influential SugarHill Studios , Meaux is perhaps best-remembered in music for his role in creating the Sir Douglas Quintet and reviving Freddy Fender ’s career. Meaux was the son of Stanislaus “Pappy Te-Tan” Meaux. His parents were Cajun sharecroppers who worked in the cotton and rice fields around Kaplan near Lafayette, Louisiana. When Huey was twelve, the family moved to Winnie, Texas, near Port Arthur. He grew up in an atmosphere of hard field work during the week, punctuated by lively Saturday night dances. His father, also an accordionist, headed a band for which Huey played drums when he was a teenager. By the 1950s, after serving in the United States Army, Meaux opened a barbershop in Winnie. At nights he worked as a disc jockey for KPAC radio in Port Arthur. In this capacity he got to know other deejays and musicians in the business, such as Moon Mullican , J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson , and George Jones . Meaux was riding in a car with Richardson to Houston’s Gold Star Studios when the Bopper penned his hit “Chantilly Lace.” Meaux also learned the ins and outs of the music business from Bill Hall, a local record producer and manager of the Bopper. In 1959 Meaux produced his first hit—Jivin’ Gene Bourgeois’s swamp-pop classic, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”—in his own barbershop. Meaux was on his way to pioneering the Gulf Coast “swamp pop” sound. In 1962 he produced Barbara Lynn’s “You’ll Lose a Good Thing,” which hit Number 8 on the charts. He also produced regional hits, such as Joe Barry’s “I’m a Fool to Care,” while working with other artists, including Lightnin’ Hopkins and Archie Bell. He found success with acts such as Sunny and the Sunliners (“Talk to Me”), Roy Head and the Traits (“Treat Her Right”), and Dale & Grace (Dale Houston and Grace Broussard), whose song “I’m Leaving It Up to You” reached Number 1 on Billboard in October 1963. Meaux’s uncanny instinct for sniffing out hits led singer Roy Head to describe the producer as a “metal detector in the business.” When the British Invasion landed in Texas in the early 1960s, Meaux, by this time based out of Houston, dissected the sound of the Beatles and other groups. In response he persuaded Doug Sahm and his group of Tex-Mex musicians from San Antonio’s West Side to pretend to be British, and the Crazy Cajun dubbed them the Sir Douglas Quintet. In 1965 the group’s “She’s About a Mover” became a hit. Later, when the Sir Douglas Quintet appeared on television with its Hispanic members, the truth was revealed. Meaux made use of the diverse array of ethnic music and musicians in Texas and the Gulf Coast to seek out stand-out sounds for the recording industry . According to writer Joe Nick Patoski, “For two generations of Gulf Coast rock and rollers—or any musicians from Baton Rouge to San Antonio—he was the pipeline to the big time.” Despite Meaux’s successes in the music business, the hedonistic Cajun also had the shady reputation of shortchanging his artists as well as womanizing. Around the end of the 1960s, he was prosecuted for violation of the Mann Act (for driving a prostitute across state lines) and was sentenced to the state penitentiary. By late 1971 Meaux was out of prison and purchased the former Gold Star Studios at a bankruptcy auction. He now owned the Houston studio where he had produced many of his artists through his years of turning out hits, and he renamed the facility SugarHill Studios and set about remaking it as his own. Meaux also entertained listeners on his Friday night radio show on KPFT-FM in Houston. He regained success in 1974 with Freddy Fender’s comeback. Meaux released Fender’s “Before the Last Teardrop Falls” on his Crazy Cajun label. The song became a Number 1 country single and a pop crossover success along with his follow-up “W

Tsha Handbook →

Winnie

1835

Site is on 1835 James Hoggatt grant from Mexico. As late as 1890s, small tracts were homesteaded here. Named for Fox Winnie (1843-1927), a contractor and investor of Newton, Kans., who with L. P. Featherstone in 1895 built Gulf & Interstate Railway through the area. An 1896 storm destroyed G. & I. R. rail bed. The train, caught in Galveston, waited three years to make return run through Winnie to Beaumont. Winnie Loan & Improvement Company sold acreage and town lots from its offices in Galveston, 1896-1911. Late 1800s economy, based on raising of rice, cattle, fruit, and cotton, suffered from 1895 snow, hurricanes in 1896, 1900, and later, and a severe freeze in 1916. Pioneer religious worship, held in homes, was led by such settlers as the Rev. T. W. White, a Presbyterian. Churches were built by Baptist, Church of christ, First Assembly of God, Latter Day Saints, Methodist, and Roman Catholic congregations. The one-room early school evolved into a system with several buildings. Site of Chambers County sub-courthouse, Winnie benefits from payrolls of petroleum and chemical industries, and rice, beef, and catfish farming. Great annual celebration is the Texas Rice Festival.

Historical Marker →

Winnie, TX

1895

Winnie, at the junction of State Highway 124 and Interstate Highway 10, twenty-five miles southwest of Beaumont in eastern Chambers County, was named for Fox Winnie, a contractor on the Gulf and Inter-state Railway. The town plat was filed in 1895 by E. Dee Normandie and L. P. Featherstone, president and secretary, respectively, of the G&I, after the line's completion. A post office was secured the same year. The Hankamer-Stowell Canal Company started construction of ditches in 1899 and helped to open the Winnie-Stowell area to farming. F. W. Schwettman of Winnie was one of the principal organizers of the company. The Winnie and Loan Improvement Company took charge of developing interest in Winnie, attempting to sell small lots to perspective settlers. Growth proved slow, however, and the company was dissolved in 1911. A devastating hurricane and severe declines in post-World War I rice prices impaired local agriculture, which depended heavily on the rice and cattle industries. Efforts to develop fruits and vegetables in the region also proved unsuccessful. The exception to this was the fig industry, which was successful in the Winnie-Stowell area during the early 1900s. Several fig-processing plants were built in the area, but the industry died out around 1920. Poor drainage, a lack of roads, and the somewhat undependable service of the G&I line kept the community largely isolated during the 1920s, when the population stood at 200. In 1926 the arrival of a German seismographic crew in search of oil in the Winnie-Stowell area foreshadowed change. The Stowell oilfield was discovered north and east of Winnie in 1941. Prominent oilman Glenn H. McCarthy developed the area fields and established a large gas plant east of town. By the early 1960s Winnie had over 1,100 residents. The population grew rapidly with new oil and gas explorations and the construction of Interstate Highway 10. By 1980 the population was estimated at 2,500. Although the oil glut of the mid-1980s severely hurt the region's economy, Winnie remained the largest community in Chambers County; the county maintained a variety of offices there. In 1931 the East Chambers County Consolidated School District was organized, when the Winnie and Stowell schools were consolidated. The school district is one of only three in Chambers County. The Winnie depot was given to the East Chambers Agricultural and Historical Society. Winnie was also the home of the Gulf Coast News and the Winnie Chronicle , and, with neighboring Stowell, has cohosted the annual Texas Rice Festival since 1970. In 1990 the population of Winnie was 2,238. The population reached 2,914 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook →

Winnie-Stowell

1895

Winnie and Stowell are two communities in northeastern Chambers County that were founded in the mid-1890s on the Gulf & Interstate Railway. The towns share a common economic history and cultural heritage and often are referred to simply as Winnie-Stowell. The town of Winnie was organized by the Winnie Loan and Improvement Co., a corporation based in Galveston that promoted settlement in the townsite. A school and bank were in operation by 1910, and Winnie became the retail center for the surrounding area. Early settlers in Stowell included the W. W. Gregory and Spencer families and F. W. Schwettman. In 1899 Schwettman helped build the Farmers Canal, which served the area's irrigation needs. The canal proved very successful until a 1915 storm ruined it and most of the surrounding rice fields. during the 20th century irrigation systems improved, which allowed for the successful commercial development of orange, fig, and rice production in the area. In 1931 the school systems of Winnie and Stowell were combined into one district. This system, along with the establishment of Winnie-Stowell Park in 1957, has provided the two towns with shared interests that have brought them together over the years.

Historical Marker →

Stowell, TX

1894

Stowell is at the intersection of State Highway 124 and Farm Road 65, twenty-six miles southwest of Beaumont in eastern Chambers County. It was named for railroad engineer H. C. Stowell and organized in the mid-1890s as a townsite on the newly built Gulf and Interstate Railway. Its first settlers included W. W. Gregory and his family, who established a homestead in 1894. The post office was opened in 1900, by which time Stowell had become the largest community in the county, with a population of 176. The Farmers Canal Company established its headquarters at Stowell, further encouraging local development. Growing a variety of fruits as well as the rice staple, area farmers, many of whom were recent immigrants, did well until a series of disasters-the 1915 hurricane, a severe freeze, low prices, and the encroachment of salt water into canals and waterways-caused severe hardships. By 1920 the population in Stowell had fallen to forty-six. Slow recovery began soon thereafter, with the arrival of a German seismographic team in 1926, a precursor of the region's future oil boom. The Stowell oilfield was discovered in 1941, with noted wildcatter Glenn McCarthy taking an active role in the rush that followed and establishing a large gas plant east of Stowell's larger neighbor, Winnie. Agricultural stability was provided when the Devers Canal Company assumed most of the operations of the defunct Farmers Canal Company. Subsequent oil and gas explorations fostered additional growth. By the late 1970s Stowell had a population of 1,500. Along with Winnie, Stowell is the site of the Texas Rice Festival, held annually since 1970. In 1990 Stowell had a population of 1,419. The population was 1,572 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook →

The Mayumi Legacy

1905

The modern Texas rice industry was shaped in part by the Mayumi brothers, who arrived here from Japan in the early twentieth century. Rice had been grown in limited quantities in Jefferson County since the 1840s, but production remained relatively low for decades. Many believed that with improved agricultural practices the crop could become successful in the region. In 1902, Japanese consul general Sadatsuchi Uchinda attended a Beaumont meeting of the Rice Growers Association of America, who offered an open invitation to Japanese rice farmers. Yoshio Mayumi, a banker and landowner from Mie prefecture on the main island of Honshu, visited this area in 1904 and returned the following year to purchase more than 1,700 acres near Taylor Bayou. Mayumi brought fifteen workers from his hometown, and the farming community included a three-story house for Mayumi's family, another building for the workmen and a community dance hall. Although Yoshio's only crop was rice, he also owned and raised livestock, including hogs and cattle, and to help with farm work, mules and horses. The agricultural experiment showed early promise, but several factors led to its eventual decline. Yoshio returned to Japan in 1915 and left the operation to the management of his brother Yasuo. Economic difficulties and repressive immigration laws led the Mayumi family to sell the land in 1924. The Mayumi legacy, centered on a family fondly remembered for its many contributions to the rural community, is important because it presaged the success of the Texas rice industry, which is today and economic mainstay of the upper Texas Gulf coast. (2006)

Historical Marker → · 9.8 mi away

Things to Do in Winnie

historical 23.3 mi away
Spindletop

On January 10 1901 a well south of Beaumont blew its crown block clean off the derrick and started gushing oil a hundred and fifty feet in the air at nine…

Everything Near Winnie

188 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Winnie on the Map
All music from Texas → · Browse more cities