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<br />- <br /> <br />City of La Porte Parh. &c Open Space Master Plan <br /> <br />summer homes in La Porte, and soon there were several Hotels to accommodate the <br />new visitors, including the Artesian and Sylvan Beach Hotel, which was sold later to <br />the Catholic Church in 1901. <br />The new city of La Porte was thriving on tourism and <br />Sylvan Beach Park was the center of attention. The <br />park had its first free fishing pier in 1895, and also <br />offered picnic facilities, swimming, and dancing in an <br />open-air pavilion. <br />In 1896, La Porte received its own passenger engine, <br />and from 1897 on, there were "Moonlight Excursions" <br />from Houston to the Sylvan Beach Hotel for 50~ each, <br />which were very popular and increased La Porte's <br /> <br /> <br />The Syfvan Beach Hotel <br /> <br />reputation as the "playground of the south". <br />In 1898, the famous Houston Yacht Club was established, <br />and the downtown area around "Five Points" started <br />flourishing. By 1904, Sylvan Beach had its own Railroad <br />Depot, and the tracks had been extended to Seabrook. Later, <br />cars mostly replaced the trains, and Sylvan Beach had a big <br />parking lot, comparable to the one today. La Porte had <br />telephone, mail delivery service and had drawn settfers from <br />all over, as far as Ohio, Kansas and Illinois, with the marketing <br />strategy of being a citrus, fruit and fig growing area. There <br />were strawberry plantations in Pasadena, fig orchards in <br />Friendswood and <br />a fig processing <br />plant in Alvin. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Telephone Switchboard <br />at the Depot Museum <br /> <br />In a special edition of the La Porte <br />Chronicle in 1911, pictures of the houses <br />of well-known (summer) residents, of <br />lemon and peach groves, banana <br />plantations and oil fields were supposed <br />. to attract even more population. <br /> <br />Parking at Sylvan Beach in the early 1900s <br /> <br />Also in 1911, Ross Sterling founded Humble Oil and Refinery (Exxon), which brought <br />many jobs to La Porte after the first big oil sbike on Goose Creek Field in 1916. <br />Sterling also gave Baytown its name; his house can still be seen in Morgans Point <br />today. <br />Despite a big fire in downtown La Porte in 1915 and a hurricane that washed away <br />90 yards of width from Sylvan Beach in that same year, the tourism in La Porte <br />continued to be very successful; in the 1920s, there were beauty contests, company <br />picnics and dances held here, people could even rent bathing suits to swim. Famous <br />orchestras and stars provided entertainment until World War II, when the tourism <br />industry began to change. <br /> <br />Chapter 2 - La Porte Today <br /> <br />PGge 2 <br />