Winnie, Texas: Named for the Daughter of the Confederacy

Winnie is a small community in eastern Chambers County, platted in eighteen ninety-five when the Gulf and Interstate Railway laid tracks through the coastal prairie. The town was named for Fox Winnie, a railroad contractor who helped build that line.

The real story of Winnie is rice. The heavy Gulf Coast clay and abundant water made this corner of Texas ideal for commercial rice cultivation, and by the early nineteen hundreds Winnie was at the center of a booming rice district. The annual Winnie Rice Festival, held every fall, still celebrates that agricultural identity. Today Winnie has about three thousand residents and sits where Interstate Ten meets State Highway one twenty-four, about twenty-five miles southwest of Beaumont.