Spindletop Center is a community mental health and intellectual and developmental disabilities center located in Southeast Texas. It provides a variety of behavioral health care services to people with mental illness, intellectual and developmental disabilities and chemical dependency.
Currently there are 39 community mental health and intellectual and developmental disabilities centers in Texas. The community center system was established after the passage of the Texas Mental Health and Intellectual and developmental disabilities Act of 1965. The purpose of community centers is to provide services to people with mental disabilities in an effort to allow them to live and work in the community.
Spindletop Center was formed September 1, 2000 when Beaumont State Center and Life Resource joined forces. The center provides services in Jefferson, Orange, Hardin and Chambers counties and serves approximately 8,000 consumers a year. The center employs more than 400 full-time staff and is governed by a nine-member board of trustees appointed by the county commissioners' courts in the four-county area.
The center is named after the Spindletop oil gusher that changed the world. In 1901 a 100-foot drilling derrick named Spindletop produced a roaring gusher of black crude oil, coating the surrounding landscape with a black, sticky, goo. The first major oil discovery in the United States, the Spindletop gusher marked the beginning of the American oil industry.
Just as the Spindletop oil discovery ushered in a new age for America and Southeast Texas, Spindletop Center ushered in a new age in providing mental health, intellectual and developmental disabilities, developmental disability and chemical dependency services in Southeast Texas.
Spindletop Center is one of only four community mental health intellectual and developmental disabilities centers in Texas accredited by the Joint Commission. The Center is licensed by the Texas Department of State Health Services, the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS, and the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS).
