Texas Sugar Refining Company
Texas City, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Texas City Transportation Company established the Texas Sugar Refining Company in 1910 to increase its profits by locating a sugar refinery at the Texas City port. A ten-acre tract on this site was chosen as early as 1910, but negotiations proceeded slowly. The refinery complex was designed by Eastwick Engineering. The Kirby Lumber Company of Houston supplied all lumber for the five million dollar project. Comprised of nine large buildings, the refinery employed three hundred and fifty people and produced one million pounds of "Diamond Star" granulated and powdered sugar daily. In 1926, the company signed a three-year contract with the American Sugar Company to refine and package sugar under the American Sugar label. Two years later, the Chicago Title & Trust Company filed suit against the Texas Sugar Refining Company for a three million dollar outstanding mortgage balance. This debt led the company into bankruptcy. The refinery was sold at public auction for two million dollars. In January 1929 the Texas Sugar Refining Company reorganized as the Texas Sugar Refining Corporation and returned to refining and marketing its own "Diamond Star" sugar. The corporation closed its operations in April 1932. The Texas Sugar Refining Company played a significant role in the early industrial development of Texas City and provided competition for the nearby Imperial Sugar Company. The refinery facilities were later acquired by the Monsanto Chemical Company and were virtually destroyed in the 1947 Texas City dock explosions. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1910 to boost profits at the young port of Texas City, the Texas Sugar Refining Company grew into a nine-building, five-million-dollar complex employing hundreds and turning out a million pounds of "Diamond Star" sugar a day. It rode boom and bust — contracting to package sugar under the American Sugar label, sliding into bankruptcy over a mortgage default, reorganizing, and finally closing in 1932. Its buildings, later held by Monsanto, were among those destroyed in the catastrophic 1947 Texas City disaster.
Why it matters
The refinery marks the early industrialization of the Gulf Coast, where deep-water ports turned raw commodities into the factory towns of modern Texas.
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Related events
- · 1947 Texas City disaster
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Davison Home
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Frank and Florence Davison built this sturdy cypress Victorian between 1895 and 1897 in the young town then called Shoal Point, and it became the birthplace of the first child born in Texas City. A pioneer civic leader, Frank Davison opened the town's first store, installed its first telephone, and served as commissioner, postmaster, school trustee, and bank director. The house weathered many storms, suffering most in the 1947 disaster.
Texas City Dike
Texas City, TX
When Texas City's early boosters cut a ship channel straight across Galveston Bay's natural water line — against engineers' advice — currents kept silting it up. The answer was the Texas City Dike, authorized in the 1913 Rivers and Harbors Act and completed in 1915 under the Army Corps of Engineers to deflect the bay's waters and keep the channel clear. Extended to 5.4 miles by 1934, the dike protected a busy shipping lane and later became a beloved local spot for fishing, boating, and bait shops.
The Texas City Disaster
Texas City, TX
On the morning of April 16, 1947, a fire aboard the cargo ship Grandcamp, loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer bound for a recovering postwar Europe, drew crowds of spectators to the Texas City docks. At 9:12 a.m. the ship detonated with a force felt for miles, and a second explosion the next day destroyed still more. More than 550 people died, including 27 firemen, and thousands were injured by flying concrete, steel, and glass. The Red Cross led an immediate relief effort, and the tragedy drove sweeping reforms in industrial safety and emergency medicine.
First Texas City Refinery, The
Texas City, TX
Texas City's first oil refinery opened in 1908, built by the Texas City Refining Company with contractor J. C. Black and more than a hundred craftsmen who assembled its eleven stills, tanks, and boiler house. Crude arrived by rail and finished products left by pipeline for tankers at the Texas City docks, and the plant's output fed the nation's defense through both world wars — wartime demand nearly tripled the city's population. Repeatedly rebuilt and modernized, the refinery grew from 1,500 barrels a day in 1908 to 130,000 by the 1990s.