You are here

Boling (Wharton County)

-A A +A

Boling was platted in 1900 on Caney Creek alongside the tracks of the Cane Belt Railroad. Boling metamorphosed into a real town when the Texas Gulf Sulphur Company acquired mineral rights to five thousand acres at the Boling Dome in 1922 and began sulfur extraction and processing there in 1929. Oil exploration began at the Boling Dome in 1925, as attested by the street names of Boling's Oil City Addition (Atlantic, Gulf, Humble, Marland, Sinclair, Texas).

The Texas Gulf Sulphur Company built its own new town, Newgulf, just east of FM 1301 and southeast of Boling in 1928. Texas Gulf Sulphur described the Boling Dome as the richest sulfur deposit in the world during the twentieth century. The corporation's presence is still monumentalized by a pair of smokestacks 360 feet high that served the powerhouse of its refinery. Today, Newgulf is an industrial ghost town.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,