The fence and the town

Baytown did not simply grow beside industry; much of modern Baytown grew from it. The fence shaped streets, institutions, families and the city that followed.

Most refinery towns grew up next to a refinery. Baytown was built by one. The streets, the utilities, the first houses, the college, the consolidation that made a city out of three — the fence came first and the town was laid out around it on purpose. Here is that hundred-year story, from the state's historians, and what it explains about the place now.

Before the fence

A ferry. Nathaniel Lynch's crossing on the San Jacinto in 1822 is the oldest thing here still running; the Lynchburg Ferry is its direct descendant. Then William Scott's land grant on the bay in 1824, rice and cattle, and a place people called Bay Town before it was anything. Then, in 1908, oil beside Tabbs Bay.

The field

The Goose Creek field came in for real in 1916, and the Handbook of Texas records two things about it that matter: it was the first offshore drilling in Texas — wells on piers out in the bay — and for a time the third-largest producing field in the country. Two boomtowns sprang up around it, Goose Creek and Pelly, rough enough that a well explosion moved one of them inland and a 1917 strike in the field left the operators nervous about labor for a decade.

The refinery

In 1917 Ross Sterling and his partners organized the Humble Oil and Refining Company — a small Texas outfit that would one day be Exxon — and bought 2,200 acres on the Ship Channel for a refinery. Construction began in the fall of 1919, first as a lubricants plant. In 1919 Humble also sold half of itself to Standard Oil of New Jersey, and the relationship that made Baytown a company town of the largest oil company on earth began. The Handbook says Humble started building the community deliberately in 1923 — streets, utilities, financing for employee housing — in part to keep the peace after the strike. The old company houses with the deep porches near the plant are that decision, still standing.

The war

Between 1941 and 1945 the Baytown plant made high-octane aviation gasoline, toluene for explosives, butadiene for synthetic rubber, and butyl rubber — and the Baytown Ordnance Works produced nearly half the nation's wartime toluene. That's the historians' number. Read it again: nearly half of the explosive base for a world war came from this fence. The chemical plant's butyl unit is a direct descendant of that year; the town's sense that its work matters to the country is not a slogan. It's a memory.

The company got what it paid for, which was a workforce that stayed.

The town got something the company didn't plan, which was a place.

The city

Three towns — Goose Creek, Pelly, and unincorporated Baytown — shared the fence and fought each other for decades. In December 1945 Pelly annexed Baytown to keep Goose Creek from doing it; in 1947 the voters of both agreed to consolidate; and on January 24, 1948, the city of Baytown was established, taking the name of the smallest of the three. Twenty-one thousand people then. Sixty-seven thousand by 1990, and more than eighty thousand now.

The college

Lee College opened in 1934 with 177 students, in the middle of the Depression, in a town whose employer needed trained hands. It's been the plants' pipeline for ninety years — process technology, welding, instrumentation, nursing — and it's the plan here, not the fallback. A company town that builds a college is a company town deciding to become a town.

The porches

Look at the old company streets near the plant and you're looking at a labor policy. After the 1917 strike in the field, Humble decided — the Handbook says so plainly — that the way to keep the peace was to build the town: financed housing, streets, water, light. The houses that came out of that decision have deep porches, because the Gulf Coast had no air conditioning and the porch was where a family lived from May to October, and because a porch faces the street, and a street of porches is a neighborhood that knows itself. The company got what it paid for, which was a workforce that stayed. The town got something the company didn't plan, which was a place. A hundred years on, the porches are the oldest architecture in Baytown that isn't a plant, and they were built by the plant.

The Ordnance Works, once more

Read the historians' line slowly: nearly half of the nation's wartime toluene came from Baytown. Toluene is the T in TNT. Between 1941 and 1945, the explosive that landed on Normandy and the Pacific islands was, about half of it, made by the parents and grandparents of people who still live here — along with the aviation gasoline the bombers burned and the synthetic rubber the trucks rolled on when the natural supply was cut off. No monument in town says that in one sentence. This page does. It's one root of a feeling a lot of plant families here carry and rarely name: that the work matters to the country, and that the country once knew it.

Where to see it

The Lynchburg ferry, first, because it's older than all of it and still runs. The porches, second — walk the old streets on the plant side of town at dusk. The county's historical markers for the Goose Creek field and the towns of Pelly and Goose Creek, on the state's marker database. The Baytown Historical Museum, 220 W Defee St, for the photographs — call ahead for hours; local listings disagree with each other closely enough that this page won't print a schedule it can't stand behind. And the fence itself from the Hartman Bridge at dusk, which is the only place you can see the 1919 decision whole.

What it explains

• Why the town is proud and wary at once. The fence built the streets, the college, four generations of livings, and it also held the town's air, its labor peace and its future in one set of hands. Both are true, and residents hold both without strain; newcomers sometimes can't.
• Why the rotation is the social structure. Since 1923, the company's clock has been the town's clock. The family of the plant is the old arrangement carried into modern family life.
• Why the plants are plural. Humble was first; Cedar Bayou came in 1963 and the Bayer-then-Covestro site in 1971, and Mont Belvieu's salt dome turned the north end into the country's natural-gas-liquids hub. The town that was one company's became an industrial region's, which is why "the plants" is what people say.
• Why the ferry still runs. Because the oldest thing here is older than the refinery, and the town keeps it running on purpose. A place that knows what came before its employer is a place that can outlast one.

Why it matters that you know

Because the towers over the rooftops at the end of the block aren't a backdrop; they're the reason the block exists. And because a town built by a company has spent a hundred years slowly becoming its own — the college, the city charter, the ferry, this guide — and that's the story worth telling a newcomer: not that Baytown is a refinery town, but that a refinery town made itself a town.

Read it plainly

• The industrial history is civic history.
• Company housing became ordinary neighborhoods.
• Utilities came before many institutions.
• The college belongs in this story.
• So does municipal consolidation.
• The town eventually exceeded one employer.
• New plants changed the balance.
• Old infrastructure still shapes movement.
• Local memory explains local caution.
• Pride and scrutiny can coexist.
• That is not a contradiction.

Sources

Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas: "Baytown, TX"; "Goose Creek, TX"; "Pelly, TX"; "Goose Creek Oilfield"; "Exxon Company, U.S.A." (Humble Oil and Refining Company; wartime production; the Baytown Ordnance Works); "Sterling, Ross Shaw." Lee College, history page (1934 founding, 177 students). Chevron Phillips Chemical and Covestro site histories (1963, 1970–71). U.S. Census (population).

En español

La cerca y el pueblo: la mayoría de los pueblos refineros crecieron junto a una refinería; Baytown fue construido por una. Antes de la cerca: el ferry de Nathaniel Lynch en 1822 — el más antiguo de aquí y todavía funciona —, la merced de William Scott en la bahía en 1824, arroz y ganado, y en 1908 petróleo junto a Tabbs Bay. El campo: Goose Creek en 1916 — el primer pozo costa afuera de Texas, sobre muelles en la bahía, y por un tiempo el tercer campo más productivo del país; dos pueblos de auge, Goose Creek y Pelly; una huelga en 1917. La refinería: en 1917 Ross Sterling y sus socios organizaron Humble Oil and Refining — que un día sería Exxon — y compraron 2,200 acres en el Canal; la construcción empezó en el otoño de 1919; Humble vendió la mitad a Standard Oil de Nueva Jersey ese mismo año; desde 1923 la empresa construyó la comunidad a propósito — calles, servicios, financiamiento de casas — en parte para mantener la paz laboral; las casas de porche profundo cerca de la planta son esa decisión. La guerra: gasolina de aviación, tolueno para explosivos, butadieno y hule butilo; la Baytown Ordnance Works produjo casi la mitad del tolueno de guerra del país, según los historiadores. La ciudad: tres pueblos que compartían la cerca y pelearon por décadas; Pelly anexó a Baytown en 1945; los votantes consolidaron en 1947; el 24 de enero de 1948 nació la ciudad de Baytown, con el nombre del más pequeño de los tres. El colegio: Lee College abrió en 1934 con 177 alumnos y ha sido la tubería de las plantas por noventa años. Lo que explica: por qué el pueblo es orgulloso y cauteloso a la vez; por qué la rotación es la estructura social; por qué "las plantas" es plural (Cedar Bayou 1963, Bayer-Covestro 1971, el domo de sal de Mont Belvieu); por qué el ferry sigue. No que Baytown sea un pueblo refinero, sino que un pueblo refinero se hizo pueblo.

Los porches. Las calles viejas de la compañía cerca de la planta son una política laboral: después de la huelga de 1917, Humble decidió que la manera de mantener la paz era construir el pueblo — casas financiadas, calles, agua, luz; las casas tienen porches profundos porque no había aire acondicionado y el porche era donde una familia vivía de mayo a octubre, y porque un porche da a la calle, y una calle de porches es un barrio que se conoce; la compañía obtuvo una fuerza laboral que se quedó; el pueblo obtuvo algo que la compañía no planeó: un lugar. La Ordnance Works, otra vez. Casi la mitad del tolueno de guerra del país salió de Baytown; el tolueno es la T del TNT; entre 1941 y 1945, el explosivo que cayó en Normandía y en las islas del Pacífico lo hicieron, cerca de la mitad, los padres y abuelos de gente que todavía vive aquí; ningún monumento del pueblo lo dice en una oración; esta página sí. Dónde verlo. El ferry de Lynchburg primero, porque es más viejo que todo y sigue; los porches, al atardecer; los marcadores históricos del campo de Goose Creek y de los pueblos de Pelly y Goose Creek; el museo histórico de Baytown para las fotografías; y la cerca misma desde el puente Hartman al atardecer, el único lugar donde se ve entera la decisión de 1919.