Col-Tex Refinery

The Handbook of Texas says local bankers, businessmen and merchants organized the Consolidated Oil and Gas Company of Colorado in 1916 to develop the area's oil and gas, and by 1920 oil was part of the local economy. Oil activity in Mitchell, Scurry, Coke and Borden counties in the late 1940s lifted Colorado City's businesses to 176 by 1949, and the town had 6,774 people in 1955. After the refinery closed in 1969, new industries came in the early 1970s, among them a meat-packing operation and a mobile-home plant.

What the plaque says

In 1924, L. H. Prichard and J. Steve Anderson opened West Texas Refinery Company just west of Colorado City to process Mitchell County oil. Ownership soon changed to Standard Oil of California, which renamed the company Col-Tex Refining. From the 1930s to 1950s, the refinery operated at a full capacity of 12,000 barrels a day. The company was a major part of Colorado City life; it employed many local workers and residents timed their activities by the refinery whistle. In 1958, Cosden Petroleum Company acquired the refinery and sold it five years later to American Petrofina, which managed the refinery until ceasing operations in 1969. Their successor, Fina, commenced environmental cleanup of the refinery in 1992. 175 Years of Texas Independence * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heart of West Texas Museum — 0.7 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 5.5 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.
• Scurry County Museum — 20 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• National WASP WWII Museum — 24 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.

More markers nearby

• The Founding of Colorado City — 0.4 mi
• Mitchell County — 0.4 mi
• Texas & Pacific Railway — 0.5 mi
• Buffalo Trails — 0.7 mi