Orange, city, seat (1852) of Orange county, southeastern Texas, U.S. It lies at the Louisiana state line. Orange is a deepwater port on the Sabine River, which has been canalized to connect with the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. It is linked to Beaumont and Port Arthur by the tall Rainbow Bridge (1938), built to allow passage of the tallest ship of its time; with Beaumont and Port Arthur, Orange forms the “Golden Triangle” industrial complex.

Settled in 1836 as Green’s Bluff, it was known as Madison in 1852 but was renamed (1856) for an extensive orange grove along the river. An early rice, lumber, and shipbuilding centre, it boomed during World War I when shipyard construction became a major industry. After World War II the U.S. Navy maintained a naval station and “mothball fleet” there. Orange is located in a major natural-gas and oil-field area. Its key industries include steel fabrication, shipbuilding, and the manufacture of petrochemicals, synthetic rubber, paper products, and cement. A branch (1969) of Lamar University is in the city. The Stark Museum of Art houses a significant collection of western Americana, including works by Frederic Remington, Albert Bierstadt, and Charles Russell. Inc. 1881. Pop. (2000) 18,643; (2010) 18,595.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
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Sabine River, river in the southwestern United States, rising in northeastern Texas and flowing southeast and south, broadening near its mouth to form Sabine Lake, and continuing from Port Arthur through Sabine Pass, a dredged navigable channel, to the Gulf of Mexico after a course of 578 mi (930 km). It drains 10,400 sq mi (26,950 sq km), entirely in Texas and the Louisiana Coastal Plain. The Sabine has successively served as a boundary between the territories of France, Spain, the United States, and Mexico, and between Texas and Louisiana. The Sabine-Neches Waterway, a portion of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, provides 52 mi of deep waterway through Sabine Pass, along western Sabine Lake and the lower Neches River to Beaumont, Tex., and 44 mi of deep waterway to Orange, Tex., 10 mi north of the mouth of the Sabine. The river’s original name, Sabinas, the Spanish name for the red cedars growing on its banks, was changed by French-speaking people to its present form.