Early Oil Tanker Service

The tanker behind this marker had a long career after 1901. Built as the SS Atlas at Chester, Pennsylvania, for Standard Oil of New Jersey, she was launched on November 17, 1898. On March 11, 1901, she carried Spindletop crude from Sabine Pass to the Standard Oil refinery in Philadelphia to be tested for lamp oil. She was renamed Las Choapas in 1941, seized at Tampico on December 8, 1941, and sunk by the German submarine U-129 east of Tecolutla, Veracruz, on June 27, 1942.

What the plaque says

Early Oil Tanker Service Part of the huge transportation complex that moves petroleum to world markets. Traffic in oil tankers and barges in Texas mushroomed two months after the state's first oil gusher, "Spindletop," roared in. On March 11, 1901, the first boat to transport the Spindletop product, "The Atlas," left Sabine Pass with about 3,000 barrels of crude oil. Port Arthur exported one of the earliest large shipments of oil about April or May, 1901, on the "Atlas" and two other vessels. The cargo was bound for the refineries of Standard Oil company of Philadelphia to be tested for "illuminating" purposes. Many persons then scoffed at the idea of using oil as a fuel. One year after Spindletop, Texas commerce, formerly based on "cattle and cotton," had been vastly changed by petroleum. More than half of all ships entering Sabine Pass and Port Arthur were connected with the oil industry. By April of 1902, shipments had already exceeded the 1,750,000 barrels exported in 1901. By 1902, steamers were burning Texas oil as fuel and the Guffey Petroleum Company had begun to build Texas' first tanker fleet-- five ships. Today the value to Texas' economy of crude oil alone totals more than three billion dollars yearly. (1968) Early travel, transportation, and communication series erected by the Moody Foundation.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 2.9 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Sabine Pass Battleground State Historic Site — 10 mi
  A waterfront park at the mouth of the Sabine where the earthwork of Fort Griffin stood, with a Dowling statue, a Union memorial, wartime magazines and a walkway for fishing.
• Sea Rim State Park — 11 mi
  Texas's far southeast corner: nearly two miles of Gulf shoreline backed by 4,000 acres of marsh, reached by boardwalk or paddle trail, rebuilt after Rita and Ike.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 14 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• The Port Arthur Refinery — 0.8 mi
• Rock Island Baptist Church — 2.0 mi
• St. Paul United Methodist Church — 2.1 mi
• Port Arthur-Beaumont Interurban Railway — 2.8 mi