Port Arthur: Museum of the Gulf Coast

Port Arthur, Texas sits wedged between Sabine Lake and the Neches River. It’s halfway between Houston and the Louisiana border. And it produced more music per square mile than any Texas city has a right to. Janis Joplin grew up here. So did George Jones. So did J.P. Richardson — the Big Bopper, whose “Chantilly Lace” hit in 1958. And Johnny Winter, one of the most technically gifted blues guitarists of his generation. The Museum of the Gulf Coast Port Arthur puts all of them in one building.

The museum sits at 700 Procter Street. The oil industry built Port Arthur and then slowly diminished it. But the main building covers the full sweep of Southeast Texas history. The Karankawa. The Spanish colonizers. The oil boom. The labor movement. Most visitors come for the second floor. That’s where the Music Hall of Fame lives.

The Second Floor

The Joplin exhibit is the crown piece. Personal effects, photographs, concert memorabilia, handwritten letters, and a life-size replica of her psychedelically painted Porsche — it’s a serious collection, not a gift shop display. Alongside it, the hall honors George Jones with instruments and memorabilia from his half-century career. The Big Bopper’s story is here too: the hits, the 1959 plane crash that killed him alongside Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Tex Ritter. Johnny Winter. Dozens of other Gulf Coast artists who grew up breathing that heavy Southeast Texas air.

Admission is charged; children under 6 are free. The museum is free the first Sunday of each month. The building is open Monday through Saturday 9 AM–5 PM and Sunday 1–5 PM. For more on the Gulf Coast music culture that produced so many of these artists, see the Houston: Continental Zydeco Ballroom — the Creole dance hall that connected the same Gulf Coast communities to one of Texas music’s most distinctive sounds.