VIDOR, TEXAS. Vidor is at the intersection of Interstate Highway 10 and Farm Road 105, six miles east of Beaumont in western Orange County. The site had heavy lumbering activities with the construction of the Texarkana and Fort Smith Railroad in 1898. Vidor was named after lumberman Charles Shelton Vidor, who acquired the Beaumont Sawmill Company and later established the Miller-Vidor Lumber Company. By 1909 the Vidor community had a post office. Four years later a company tram road was built. It was known locally as the Peach Line, and it opened thousands of acres of virgin timber to loggers. Almost all Vidor residents worked for the company. In 1924 the Miller-Vidor Lumber Company moved to Lakeview because local timber stands were depleted, but a small settlement remained, and the Miller-Vidor subdivision was laid out in 1929. Rice, cotton, and cattle were developed into important local industries. Though the population of Vidor was estimated at only fifty in 1920, it had grown to 706 by 1940 and to 2,136 by 1950. The weekly Vidorian newspaper began serving area residents in 1955. Voters defeated an attempt to incorporate their community in 1959, but they reversed their decision a year later by a 791 to 537 count. Vidor continued to attract large numbers of new residents as whites left the large urban centers in the 1960s and 1970s. By 1970 the population of Vidor was 9,738. Georgetown Texas Steel announced its plans to build a new $50 million plant at Vidor in 1974, thus encouraging further growth. By 1980 the population of Vidor had reached 12,117, and in 1990 its population was 10,935. In 2000 the community had 11,440 inhabitants and 729 businesses.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James E. Johnson, An Economic History of Orange County, Texas, Prior to 1940 (M.A. thesis, Lamar State College of Technology, 1966).
