Boling

Before the sulphur boom, Boling was farm country held in large tracts, remnants of the plantation era along Caney Creek. The Handbook of Texas notes that in 1907 the community had a school for Black children with four teachers and 104 pupils, in a place with a store, a blacksmith shop and fewer than a dozen families. Most of those children descended from enslaved people whose families stayed on as tenants, sharecroppers or wage hands. The dome of 1925 changed the town's streets and payroll, but these families were here first, working land that once belonged to plantations.

What the plaque says

Boling This area was called Floyd's Lane prior to the advent of the New York, Texas & Mexican Railway in 1900. Named for the Bolling family of Virginia, the town name was misspelled when citizens applied for a U. S. Post Office. The economy was based on farming and the railroad until sulphur, oil, and gas were discovered on the Boling dome in 1925. Boling became a boom town; the population grew from 20 in 1920 to 450 in 1930. Many streets and subdivisions were named for the companies that flocked here. Mineral production was the dominant industry in the area for 70 years. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 20 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 22 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 26 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.

More markers nearby

• Grove Hill Missionary Baptist Church — 6.2 mi
• Snake Creek Cemetery and Church — 6.8 mi
• Albert Clinton Horton — 8.7 mi
• Shearith Israel Synagogue — 9.4 mi