With one known exception, the towns and cities that have been flooded out over more than a century — think Bridge City and Sabine Pass but also Port Arthur, Galveston, Orange, Beaumont and even Groves — have always rebuilt.
The one town that didn't was a 19th Century settlement of about 10 families called Aurora, located where Port Arthur now sits.
"They took apart their houses and they moved to Beaumont," Sarah Bellian, curator of the Museum of the Gulf Coast, said of the Aurora families. "They said, 'There's no way we can live here.'"
Save for sawmill towns that came and went, Aurora is the only known Southeast Texas town site that residents abandoned, Bellian and other local historians said.
Even there, however, the desertion was temporary, as railroad promoter Arthur Stilwell later swooped in and, by 1899, had built a port.
The historic Sabine River flooding that recently covered Deweyville has prompted introspection from the roughly 1,000 residents who live in the small southeast Newton County riverside community.
They have now seen the worst side of river life, and they know there's no guarantee it won't happen again next year. Nonetheless, many residents have pledged to rebuild rather than flee.
"I guess we all hope that it will never happen again," said Tommy Spears, who manages the Stuckey's meat market just outside of town. "You know it can, but you just can't believe it can."
A city lost to nature
Well before Port Arthur became an industrial hub powered by crude oil refineries, the people who tried to tame the area failed.
Two San Augustine men — one of them Col. Almonzan Huston, former quartermaster general in the Texas Army — founded Aurora in 1837, wrote the late local historian W.T. Block in "A History of Jefferson County, Texas: From Wilderness to Reconstruction."
Huston tried to sell lots but abandoned the project, Block wrote.
Nonetheless, the Sparks family was one of several to move there. Eventually a railroad passing was named Aurora in reference to the Huston realty venture.
The families who lived there were struck by illness, an isolation from health services, a wildlife tragedy and a devastating hurricane, according to historians.
"Death took its toll upon the settlement of Aurora," wrote William McKissick Timmerman Jr. in his 2001 book, "Early History of Port Arthur, Texas."
One man died from yellow fever, Timmerman wrote, and his 12-year-old daughter was eaten by an alligator. In 1890, diphtheria plagued residents who stayed following the 1885 Hurricane that leveled their homes.
By 1895, the town was abandoned.
"In effect, (Aurora) had become a ghost town as the forces of nature had once again prevailed against the human determination to settle the region," Timmerman wrote.
Southeast Texas rebuilt many times
Southeast Texas has a deep history of overcoming the forces of nature.
The list of cities and towns that have at one point been submerged is long: Beaumont, Orange, Port Arthur, Galveston, Bridge City, Sabine Pass, Groves and many more.
Between the 1830s when settlers arrived and the early 20th Century, their homes were frequently destroyed, Bellian said.
In Orange, where the Sabine River flooding two weeks ago closed Interstate 10 for three days and forced an evacuation downtown, the city was devastated in 1865 by heavy rains and wind.
Fourteen years after the 1886 Hurricane overwhelmed Aurora, the 1900 Hurricane struck Galveston - still the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. A hurricane 15 years later devastated Port Arthur.
"Stuff got wiped off the map with some regularity," Bellian said.
Some areas have built back better and developed flood protection and control systems that lessened their vulnerability.
A 16-foot seawall safeguarded Port Arthur from Hurricane Ike's 2008 surge, which instead inundated Bridge City.
Beaumont also sees protection from that seawall, as well as the south Jefferson County marsh. Inside the city, a series of detention ponds and rerouted drainage canals have made it more difficult for heavy rains to flood it as they did decades ago.
Meanwhile, Sabine Pass, with 360 residents living in 150 homes, is barely holding on after hurricanes Rita and Ike assaulted it 10 years ago.
Flood protection for the town itself, which is essentially the first storm buffer for much of Jefferson County, has not been seriously considered.
Yet, some people rebuilt homes there twice in a three-year span, just as residents rebuilt Bridge City after Ike and other Southeast Texas cities did after being swamped.
"I think in a lot of cases people come back because they don't know how not to," Bellian said. "It's where they're from. It's the lifestyle they're used to."
Deweyville determined to come back
Deweyville, hardest hit by the recent Sabine River flooding, faces almost a complete rebuilding if it's to survive.
Residents began gutting their homes early last week, and many resolved to come back.
This year's record flood — far worse than floods of memory in 1953 and 1989 — underscored the hazard of living in an unincorporated town that is both along the river and downstream from a dam that doesn't concern itself with flood control.
But amid the financial, mental and physical strains the flood introduced, people remain attracted to a close-knit town isolated from cities but within relatively short driving distances to Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange, Lake Charles and Houston.
"They're like me - they just don't want to be in" the cities, said Spears, the 63-year-old butcher. "Nobody tells me what I can spit out the back door or if I can have a chicken."
Nonetheless, rebuilding to keep alive a place where generations of families have never left will be a tough task.
Even before the flood, the town was slowly shrinking and aging.
The population has ticked downward, from 1,218 in 1990 to 1,091 as of 2014, the most recent Census data.
A majority of residents are older than 47, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median age in 2000 was 35.
Throughout Newton County, just 132 homes or businesses are covered by flood insurance, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency statistics. That would represent less than 3 percent of the county's occupied housing units.
Deweyville residents will have to piece their own funds together with low-interest home-building loans from the Small Business Association. FEMA grants, capped at $33,000, can be spent on temporary housing and on items of need, like appliances, but not homes.
It's not an impoverished town, though it's far from rich. Just 3 percent of Deweyville residents' income fell below the poverty line in 2013, according to Census data. Per-capita income is about $36,000.
Despite the daunting road ahead, within weeks of losing their homes and knowing it could happen again, most Deweyville residents are determined to return, according to Spears and 47-year-old John Sims, who lives in the heart of town.
Sims said he doesn't even see the population shifting toward higher elevated land on the town's outskirts.
"I believe they're going to stay where they're at and, more or less, take their chances, just like I am," Sims said.
Sims, who paid off his home and finished remodeling it shortly before the flood, lives on the same block as some of his family. He doesn't want to move.
"I don't want to start back over," Sims said. "I raised my kids here. My kids were raised right here in this house. This house means a lot to me."
©2016 the Beaumont Enterprise (Beaumont, Texas). Visit the Beaumont Enterprise (Beaumont, Texas) at www.beaumontenterprise.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
