LAKEVIEW, TEXAS (Orange County). Lakeview is on the east bank of the Neches River just west of Farm Road 1131, ten miles north of Beaumont in extreme northwestern Orange County. The area was developed as a recreation site as early as 1901, when William Wiess built a hunting lodge at the Neches River location. By 1920 Lakeview had a music hall, a concrete swimming pool, a bowling alley, and artesian wells and drew visitors from throughout Southeast Texas. In 1923-24 the Miller-Vidor Lumber Company established a logging camp at Lakeview and set up a tram railroad line that extended into the heart of Orange County. According to local lore, a nudist colony was organized at the site in the 1950s. Although pollution and floodwaters threatened Lakeview during the 1970s, the area remained a popular recreational and residential community. In 1990 and again in 2000 the population was seventy-five.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Grace Ford, "History of Some Vidor Area Families Along the Neches River," Las Sabinas: The Official Quarterly Publication of the Orange County Historical Society 3 (Spring 1977).
