The town of Winnie stands on the 1835 James Hoggatt Grant from Mexico, where small tracts were still being homesteaded as late as the 1890s. It was named for Fox Winnie, a contractor and investor of Newton, Kansas, who with L.P. Featherstone built the Gulf and Interstate Railway through the area in 1895. An 1896 storm destroyed the G. and I.R. rail bed, and a train caught in Galveston waited three years before making its return run through Winnie to Beaumont. From 1896 to 1911, the Winnie Loan and Improvement Company sold acreage and town lots from offices in Galveston. The late 1800s economy, based on rice, cattle, fruit, and cotton, suffered from the snow of 1895, hurricanes in 1896, 1900, and later years, and a severe freeze in 1916. Early religious worship was held in homes and led by settlers such as the Reverend T.W. White, a Presbyterian, and churches were later built by Baptist, Church of Christ, First Assembly of God, Latter Day Saints, Methodist, and Roman Catholic congregations. The one-room early school developed into a system with several buildings. As the site of the Chambers County sub-courthouse, Winnie also benefits from payrolls of petroleum and chemical industries and from rice, beef, and catfish farming, and its major annual celebration is the Texas Rice Festival.