Port Neches

Port Neches, once known as Grigsby's (or Grigsby) Bluff, is located in eastern Jefferson County on Farm roads 365 and 366 and State Highway 347, ten miles southeast of Beaumont. The area was formerly the site of an Atakapa Indian village, relics of which were excavated in 1841. Thomas F. McKinney located his land claim there during the 1830s and went so far as to survey a townsite to be called Georgia. His plans, however, never materialized, and he sold two-thirds of his league to Joseph Grigsby in 1837. Grigsby and his family, who established a plantation and boat landing on a bluff overlooking the Neches River, were the earliest Anglo settlers of the area. In the antebellum era Grigsby's Bluff was an important landing for Neches River traffic. John T. Johnson and Samuel Remley established a gristmill and steam sawmill there in 1856; in 1859 they employed six men and cut one million feet of "planks and scantlings." In 1862 Confederate troops hastily constructed Fort Grigsby to block a possible Union thrust up the Neches River, where they successfully repulsed Union forces in October 1862. The fort was abandoned in January 1863. George F. Block erected a shingle mill in 1866. The post office, originally opened in 1859 and closed during the Civil War , was reopened in 1877 and closed again in 1893. About fifty people lived at Grigsby's Bluff in 1880.