24/7 Biohazard Cleanup Near Guffey Fannett, TX

Fannett is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in western Jefferson County, about 15 miles southwest of Beaumont at the junction of State Highway 124 and Farm Road 365, and part of the Beaumont-Port Arthur metropolitan area.

The community is named for B. J. Fannett, an early landowner who, with Joe Dugal, opened a general store on the Gulf and Interstate Railway in the mid-1890s; the two men secured a post office for Fannett in 1899.

Japanese immigrant farmers brought intensive rice farming to the Fannett area in the early 1900s, and extensive irrigation and drainage networks were built to serve the rice fields and ranches.

A local road long called Jap Road - a name dating to the era of the Japanese rice farmers, including Yoshio Mayumi - became the center of a naming controversy in 1993 and again in 2004, and it was ultimately renamed Boondocks Road.

Oil reshaped Fannett's economy: the Fannett oilfield was discovered just south of the community in 1927, and the Gilbert Ranch oilfield followed to the northwest in 1958.

The Census Bureau first counted Fannett as a census-designated place in 2010; the 2020 census recorded 2,363 residents in 871 households across roughly 10 square miles of low coastal plain at an elevation of only about 20 feet.

Although the wider CDP counts more than 2,300 people today, the historic village itself was estimated at only about 100 residents in the mid-1980s and 105 in 2000.

Fannett students attend the Hamshire-Fannett Independent School District, formed in 1961 when the old Fannett district consolidated with neighboring Hamshire, and the district is assigned to the Galveston College service area.

Fannett is home to the Clifton Steamboat Museum, which features a large exhibit honoring Lieutenant Commander Harry Brinkley Bass, the naval officer for whom the destroyer USS Brinkley Bass was named.