GRIFFING PARK, TEXAS. Griffing Park was on the Kansas City Southern Railway between State highways 73 and 87 seventeen miles southeast of Beaumont in eastern Jefferson County. The residential townsite was laid out by the Griffing brothers in 1913 on the site of a 320-acre experimental farm established at Arthur E. Stilwell's behest in 1896. By the early 1940s the population had reached 1,344, and in 1960 the federal census reported 2,267 residents. Newer residential developments nearby and the decline in the general economy of Jefferson County, however, had cut Griffing Park's population to 1,802 by 1980. In 1929 Port Arthur began what proved to be a lengthy effort to annex Griffing Park. In an effort to block the move, Griffing Park voters incorporated their community by an 87–2 tally on November 13, 1929. Despite the vote, a temporary injunction blocking annexation was dismissed on November 26. The next day Port Arthur annexed the residential communities of Griffing Park, Edgemore, Del Mar, and Lakeview. Yet Griffing Park obtained another injunction in May 1930, thus preventing annexation until 1983, when the community merged, kicking and screaming, with its larger neighbor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: WPA Federal Writers' Project, Port Arthur (Houston: Anson Jones, 1940).
