What to do with all the oil?

At first, it is stored in big shallow open pits dug into the earth, floated on a layer of water. Later, 20,000-barrel storage tanks built of Cypress hold the crude. Pipelines carry crude to the tanks, then from tanks to tankers, who bring it to refineries in Port Arthur and Beaumont.

The Humble Oil & Refining Company, founded in 1917 and run by future governor Ross Sterling, has a better idea: they will build a refinery just west of Goose Creek.

It is an ideal location, perched on the edge of the newly-completed Houston Ship Channel dug through Galveston Bay and the San Jacinto River. Ocean-going tankers can reach Houston and Galveston from there.

But Humble doesn't like the name "Goose Creek." It sounds too . . . unrefined. They name their settlement "Baytown."

Humble buys up land and existing pipelines. There is only one problem: They don't have money to build the refinery.

The solution: Humble sells a half-interest in the company to "the father of them all": Standard Oil of New Jersey. Flush with cash, it can proceed with its plans.

Construction begins in 1919, in the middle of a rice field. Workers drain the swampy ground and clear brush through 128 days of rain and a tornado.

The road from the refinery to the docks on the Ship Channel passes over quicksand. To make a solid bottom, workers throw logs and garbage into it.

By spring the following year, the refinery is open.

The towns of Pelly, Goose Creek, and Baytown have developed nearby, but there is an acute shortage of housing. Humble builds cottages on its property for its own workers. As the refinery separates crude into various grades of fuel and by-products, Humble constructs separate cottages and rowhouses for its white and minority workers.

And this is where Brownwood begins.

Wooden and steel tanks, looking north from center of Goose Creek oil field, at the height of the boom, ca. 1916. Photo courtesy Sterling Municipal Library, Baytown.

Steel for the refinery arrives, 1918. Photo courtesy Sterling Municipal Library, Baytown.

Steam-driven excavating machine digging ditches to drain rice field, Baytown refinery, 1919. Photo courtesy Sterling Municipal Library, Baytown.

Wooden dock No. 1 under construction on Houston Ship Channel, 1919. Photo courtesy Sterling Municipal Library, Baytown.