La Belle, also known as LaBelle, is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Taylor Bayou Taylor Bayou is a bayou in Jefferson County, Texas. It is formed by the confluence of the North Fork and the South Fork. Mayhaw Bayou flows into the South Fork. The headwaters of these streams are in western Jefferson County. La Belle, Texas, La B ...

and FM 365, approximately twelve miles south of Beaumont, in central Jefferson County,

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, United States. It is part of the Beaumont– Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History

Although officially recognized settlers had lived in the

area since the 1830s, a post office was not established at the community known as Lower Taylor's Bayou until 1888. In that year new postmaster J. E. Broussard named the post office La Belle in honor of his fiancée, Mary Bell Bordages. The area's first school was probably started by Leo (Peg Leg) Craigen, near what later became the Port Arthur Country Club. Located in the fertile but flood-prone prairies of the upper

Texas Gulf Coast Texas Gulf Coast is an intertidal zone which borders the Coast, coastal region of South Texas, Southeast Texas, and the Texas Coastal Bend. The Texas coastal geography boundaries the Gulf of Mexico encompassing a geographical distance relative be ...

, La Belle was the site of one of several pumping stations designed to control flooding and drainage along Taylor Bayou. Because of its somewhat isolated location, the LaBelle post office was discontinued in 1914. Local schools were consolidated with those of the town of Fannett in 1923. Fourteen years later, however, the discovery of large quantities of oil and natural gas at the La Belle oilfield, five miles south of the community, sparked new interest in the area. Scattered residences, the pumping station, and oilfields and gas lines to the south marked the La Belle community on maps during the mid-1970s. In 1961, the Fannett Independent School District was combined with that of neighboring Hamshire, forming the

Hamshire-Fannett Independent School District Hamshire-Fannett Independent School District is a public school district based in unincorporated Jefferson County, Texas, United States. The district serves the city of Taylor Landing, as well as the unincorporated communities of Hamshire, ...

which currently serves area students.

References

Handbook of Texas Online, LaBelle, TX
Unincorporated communities in Jefferson County, Texas Unincorporated communities in Texas Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan area {{JeffersonCountyTX-geo-stub