Beaumont in French means beautiful mountain

Beaumont in French means beautiful mountain. Anyone who has ever seen Beaumont wonders why it was so named because it is flat as a pancake and not particularly beautiful. At least it is not beautiful like a seashore or a lake or a mountain.

Beaumont is about 90 miles east of Houston, 120 miles east of Richmond shown by the star on the map below.

Beaumont, Texas

So..Beaumont. I guess Beaumont in 1946 was a relatively small town in the 80,000 range of population. Industry at this time included the shipyard on the Neches River, the Port of Beaumont and the Magnolia refinery. To the east of Beaumont was a swamp to the southwest and west were rice farms and to the north the piney woods formed the backbone of the logging industry.