Texas Gulf Sulphur Company-Newgulf
Wharton, Wharton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Gulf Sulphur Company began in Matagorda County in 1909, and in 1918 changed its name to Texas Gulf Sulphur Company. A plant was built at the Big Hill Dome, and the first sulphur was produced in 1919. A company town was created and named Gulf, Texas. New reserves of sulphur were acquired in Wharton County. When the Texas Gulf Sulphur Company began operations on the Boling Dome in 1928, a new company town was established named Newgulf. The town contained businesses, more than 350 homes, a school, library, hospital, movie house, golf course and county club. Baptist, Methodist, Catholic and Presbyterian churches built sanctuaries. Newgulf Post Office began service in October 1928 and ended service in March 1994. Texas Gulf Sulphur Company produced in excess of 80.8 million long tons of Sulphur from the Boling Dome, to make it the largest sulphur production mine in the world, Texas Gulf was acquired by a French petrochemical corporation in 1981. Sulphur production ceased in 1993, and the town of Newgulf was dismantled; it was among the last company towns to exist in Texas. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Texas Gulf Sulphur Company, renamed from the Gulf Sulphur Company in 1918, first produced sulphur in 1919 and soon expanded into Wharton County's Boling Dome. In 1928 it opened a new company town, Newgulf, complete with hundreds of homes, a hospital, school, library, movie house, golf course, and four churches. Over the decades the Boling Dome yielded more than 80 million long tons of sulphur—the largest such mine in the world—until production ceased in 1993 and the town was dismantled.
Why it matters
Newgulf embodies the company-town era of American industry, where a single corporation built and then erased an entire community around a mineral bonanza.
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Themes & tags
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