Sam Monroe, president of the Port Arthur Historical Society, called the ride along Highway 87, also known as The Beach Road, as an enjoyable and pretty drive.

“It would hug the coast with the sea to one side of you. Tourists would come to Sabine Pass and Port Arthur from Galveston to the Museum of the Gulf Coast. We were on the (Lamar State College – Port Arthur) college campus back then. They would eat at the restaurants that were then in Sabine Pass.

The roadway, however has been closed for more than 25 years due to damages from hurricanes.

“It was closed from Hurricane Allen in 1980 and then reopened. It was closed again from Alicia in 1983 and reopened in 1985. It closed permanently after another storm (Allison and Jerry) in 1989.

About reopening the highway, Monroe added that the federal government has not objected to rebuilding the road. Their main objection was it crossing the wetlands but it would actually serve as a barrier to saltwater intrusion to the wetlands.

County Judge Jeff Branick said nearly two years ago a high-ranking official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it would not be adverse for them to license an easement across the wildlife refuge. The point, however, is a non-issue, Branick explained, because there is no funding for the project.

The path of Highway 87 follows the path of an old railroad track active during the time of the Civil War and it has a longer history than that.

“The beach was a natural roadway for ancients,” Monroe said. “There’s a certain two-mile stretch by the old Breeze Inn that has more Clovis artifacts, or Paleoindian artifacts, found anywhere else in North America or South America.”

“There’s a certain kind of arrowhead there made of animal bones that has been carbon dated 12,000 years ago.”

Clovis gets its name from the Paleoindian Clovis point in New Mexico. The museum has three Clovis points in its collection.

Monroe said during the Ice Age the seafront was 150 miles farther out and there was game to hunt there: mammoths, mastodons, gray bison and sloths. Much of the area is now underwater and the artifacts have moved with the water’s action.

There’s also a mammoth bone housed in the museum.

The text for The Beach Road 2007 historical marker in Sabine Pass is as follows:

The Beach Road is the coastal section of the Texas Highway 87 system.

Stretching along the Gulf of Mexico from Sabine Pass through Chambers County to Port Bolivar in Galveston County, it follows a historic route that proved vital to the early development of Jefferson County.

Native Americans, early settlers, traders, cattlemen and Republic of Texas mail carriers all used the road. During the Civil War, Confederate forces used the route, which was generally known as the “Road from Galveston.”

By 1920, local residents found it difficult to travel on the unmaintained Beach Road. In 1923, commissioner W.A. Vaughan worked to improve the route using shell deposits from along the coast. Soon traffic to McFaddin Beach and westward to Port Bolivar increased dramatically, leading to a business boom in the area as firms built facilities for visitors.

A larger effort by the state in the late 1920s called for a paved road with a ferry connection to Galveston. The project moved slowly, but in 1931, the Texas Highway Commission named the new roadway as part of State Highway 87.

In the 1940s, during World War II, the highway contributed to coastal defense preparedness. The U.S. Immigration Service set up a barricaded checkpoint for through traffic and the Coast Guard patrolled it during that time.

Over the years, hurricanes battered the highway and eroded the nearby coastline, resulting in tidal zone encroachment. Destruction caused by two storms in 1989 forced its closure, though sections of the route remain in use for local traffic.

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