Welcome to Baytown, Texas! Baytown shares a bay with the San Jacinto Monument, the famous location where General Sam Houston defeated General Santa Ana marking the end of the Texas Revolutionary War in 1836! However, Baytown has a long history stretching back thousands of years.
Today, Baytown is largely a community centered on industry, including oil, rubber and chemical plants. Home to petrochemical giants, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, Baytown serves an international community through the Port of Houston and Houston Ship Channel which reach 1,053 ports worldwide.
The Del Mont remains one of the oldest and well-maintained buildings in Baytown. The McKinstry Building (later known as the Del Mont Hotel) was built in 1930 by George Everett McKinstry, who at first intended it to be an office building. It was one of the first hotels in Baytown (then Goose Creek) with a small lobby with a terrazzo floor, an apartment downstairs for the owners, and 15 guest rooms upstairs with all but one sharing a bathroom. The Del Mont had several uses over the decades and is now renovated to provide Lofts for living spaces along with retail and commercial spaces, as it did in its beginnings.
Interesting Facts of the Del Mont Hotel:
• During the very early development of Texas Avenue, the McKinstry Building often served as temporary quarters for several members of the Jewish community moving to the area.
• The builder, George E. McKinstry and his wife made their home in the hotel until his death in July 1966. Mr. McKinstry's wife, Winnie Hazel, died the next May, 1967.
• In the 1950’s, the hotel was used as an office for Beltone Hearing Aid glasses and ear pieces.
• In March, 1968 hundreds of technicians, extras and the cast of the Hollywood movie ‘Hellfighters’ came to Baytown to set fires on an oil well in Goose Creek and another in Evergreen. While in Baytown for the filming of the movie, some of the cast stayed in the Del Mont Hotel.
• In May, 1971 the hotel suffered an explosion and fire. Charles Crosslin, a resident who was despondent over the breakup with his wife, intentionally lit a cigarette with a gas jet in his bathroom turned on. He was critically injured. The hotel had to close for repairs, although three commercial tenants on the ground floor remained.
• The hotel served as temporary housing for Humble Oil (ExxonMobil) turnaround employees and as temporary living quarters for area churches assisting families in financial distress.
• Hollywood returned to Baytown in the fall of 1989 when they were looking for a part of town that was in disrepair. Much to the chagrin of Baytonians, the film crew felt that the old downtown area of Texas Avenue was perfect for ‘Robocop 2’. The Baytown scene was a drive-by shot of Robocop driving his police car past a crowd of ‘street people’ with boarded storefronts. The old Del Mont Hotel can be seen in the background of that film.
• Among the notable guests who stayed at the Del Mont were Sam Rayburn (43rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, who was born in Tennessee but became a Texas resident at age five). His room was always referred to as “The Rayburn Room.”
• Another guest at the Del Mont Hotel was Lyndon B Johnson (prior to him becoming President of the United States).
• Oscar and Yvonne Chapa purchased the building in 2015; and it has been renovated into Lofts and retail spaces. While it is no longer a hotel, you can see the outward appearance is still very much unchanged. It still has the same façade, the same terrazzo flooring in the lobby, the same terrazzo doorstep and the same staircase exists. The old telephone shelf in the hallway has been repurposed and several of the doors and other fine features of the original hotel have been salvaged and reused.
• It is important to make note of buildings that defined the times in which they were established, from the Art Deco style, to the materials utilized, and to the people who were a part of the construction and ownership of those structures. Buildings that changed with the times and had a notable existence should always be remembered.
Let’s have some fun! To log this cache you will need to email both answers to tourism@baytown.org. Please do not post the answers in your log or pictures of the object in the questions on your log.
1) What color is the gate on the premises and what does the gate say? It is located not at the coordinates but close by.
2) Take a picture of the word or you pointing to the word, that can be seen on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance.
3) Bonus: Is this hotel located in the Down Town Nature, Art or History District? There is a HINT available for this Bonus!
Please leave the following text at the bottom of the page, so cache finders understand the Virtual Rewards 2.0 project.
Virtual Rewards 2.0 - 2019/2020
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between June 4, 2019 and June 4, 2020. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 2.0 on the Geocaching Blog.