DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the marker at Port Arthur tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Beaumont-Port Arthur area was booming at the turn of the twentieth century, and you have to understand just how fast that boom arrived. January 10, 1901.
That's the date oil came roaring out of Spindletop, and from that moment on, nothing in Texas, or in the oil business anywhere, was ever quite the same. Less than three months later, on March 28, 1901, a group of men sat down and formed something called the Texas Fuel Company. Now, these weren't just any men.
You had J. S. Cullinan, a Pennsylvania oilman who'd already cut his teeth in the Corsicana fields.
You had Arnold Schlaet, manager of the oil business for the New York-based Lapham Brothers. And then, just to make sure the enterprise had a little Texas weight behind it, you had former Texas governor James S. Hogg and his partner, J.
W. Swayne. Four men.
One idea. And a world about to change. In February of 1902, the company purchased a small tract of land right here on this site.
By April of that same year, they reorganized themselves as the Texas Company. Now the clock is ticking. By April 1903, the Port Arthur Works opened for business, running two tar stills.
And then, November 13, 1903, the refinery's first crude still fired up. One thousand barrels per day, mostly fuel oil. That's how it started.
The next year, 1904, kerosene and gasoline joined the lineup. And then came the innovations. The thermal cracking process, perfected right here, was the kind of breakthrough that changes an industry.
What it did was increase the quantity of gasoline you could produce from a single barrel of crude oil. Think about that the next time you pull up to a pump. By the end of 1940, the Port Arthur Works had grown to something almost hard to picture.
About five thousand acres. Nearly four thousand employees, 3,897 to be precise. And in 1941 alone, the plant processed 35,214,000 barrels of crude.
That is not a typo. Then the world went to war. The Texas Company didn't sit that one out.
During World War II, they exchanged technologies with other oil and gas companies to perfect the new fluid catalytic cracking process, producing high-octane gasoline and feedstock for a brand-new synthetic rubber process. The war also drove up the requirements for all lubricating oils, and the Port Arthur Works answered that call too. In 1959, the Texas Company became Texaco, and the plant kept growing through the second half of the twentieth century as Texaco became one of the world's largest oil companies.
Now here's the thing that ought to stop you in your tracks. Spindletop touched off a boom that created a whole constellation of companies. A whole wild rush of enterprises, each one convinced it would outlast the others.
And of all of them, every single one, the Texas Company, the one that started on March 28, 1901, with four men and a vision, is the only one that survived. The only one. Sometimes the boom doesn't pick the biggest or the loudest.
Sometimes it picks the one that just keeps going.
What the marker says
The Beaumont-Port Arthur area was booming at the turn of the 20th century after the January 10, 1901, discovery of oil at Spindletop. The Texas Fuel Company was formed on March 28, 1901, by J. S. Cullinan, a Pennsylvania oilman and veteran of the Corsicana fields; Arnold Schlaet, manager of the oil business of the New York-based Lapham Brothers; and former Texas governor James S. Hogg and his partner, J. W. Swayne. The company purchased a small tract of land on this site in February 1902, and was reorganized as the Texas Company in April. The Port Arthur Works began operations with two tar stills in April 1903. The refinery's first crude still started on Nov.13, 1903, producing 1,000 barrels per day, primarily of fuel oil. Kerosene and gasoline were manufactured beginning in 1904. Such innovations as the thermal cracking process, which increased the quantity of gasoline produced from a barrel of crude oil, were perfected here. By the end of 1940, the Port Arthur Works had grown to about 5,000 acres and 3,897 employees. It processed 35,214,000 barrels of crude in 1941. The Texas Company participated in the World War II effort by exchanging technologies with other oil and gas companies to perfect the new fluid catalytic cracking process to produce high-octane gasoline and feedstock for the new synthetic rubber process. World War II also increased the requirements of all lubricating oils. The Texas Company became Texaco in 1959, and the Port Arthur plant grew throughout the second half of the 20th century as Texaco became one of the world's largest oil companies. It is the only surviving company of the many created during the Spindletop oil boom. (2000)