Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Nederland, TX

Nederland is a city in Jefferson County in Southeast Texas, part of the Golden Triangle industrial region with Beaumont and Port Arthur.

Nederland was settled by Dutch immigrants in 1897 and named for their homeland - Nederland is the Dutch word for the Netherlands - after the Port Arthur Land Company, joined by Dutch businessmen, recruited settlers from an overcrowded Holland with worn-out soil.

The first Hollander in Nederland, George (Gatze) Rienstra, arrived in the spring of 1897, and his deed for 80 acres, signed July 17, 1897, was the first land purchase in the new town.

To house the arriving immigrants, the Port Arthur Land Company built the three-story, 33-room Orange Hotel in 1897, and between about 1898 and 1905 the young town was virtually bilingual in Dutch and English.

The Dutch colony first made its living from farming and ranching, with rice growing becoming a mainstay, before the local economy was transformed by the 1901 Lucas gusher at Spindletop, about seven miles north, and by refinery construction at nearby Smith's Bluff in the 1920s.

Nederland counted 18,856 residents in the 2020 census, up from 17,547 in 2010.

Nederland has about 7,471 households, and about 72.7 percent of its homes are owner-occupied, with a median home value of about $208,300.

Tex Ritter Park on Boston Avenue is home to the Dutch Windmill Museum, a 40-foot replica Dutch windmill built in 1969 that houses artifacts from the town's Dutch settlers, and to La Maison des Acadiennes, a replica Acadian house honoring the French settlers who followed.

Boston Avenue's street signs carry both the modern name and the original Dutch street name, Heeren Straat.

Country music and Western film star Tex Ritter attended high school in Nederland, and the Windmill Museum displays his memorabilia alongside a patch from the 1952 Olympic gold medal won by Nederland native and high jump champion Buddy Davis.