Early Texas Natural Gas Pipelines

Before natural gas, Corsicana lit its lamps with manufactured water gas at about five dollars per thousand cubic feet. A Navarro County history of the industry says natural gas from fields around Roane and Chatfield undercut it at roughly fifty cents. W. H. Staley's Corsicana Natural Gas and Fuel Company got there first, but his system faded as local fields ran down. J. S. Cullinan's better-financed Corsicana Petroleum Company laid lines to other fields, and its gas business later joined the Lone Star Gas system. Households bought conversion kits for their cast-iron stoves.

What the plaque says

Early Texas Natural Gas Pipelines First public use of natural gas began in Texas in 1902, from transmission lines on this street, serving local homes and businesses. These early lines were forerunners of mains that now transport Texas gas to three-fourths of the United States and Mexico. Other natural gas industry pioneer achievements in Navarro County were the first use of meters, in 1905 at Chatfield (12 mi. NE), and first use of gas in pumping oil wells in the Corsicana field, 1906. Developers of Navarro fields expanded to Clay County, and in 1907 were supplying natural gas to Henrietta and Wichita Falls; Fort Worth and Dallas were furnished service in 1909-1910. By 1918 new fields supplied Laredo, San Antonio, Waco. Today Texas is spanned by over 83,000 miles of gas pipelines. A 1918 discovery opened the Amarillo field, soon recognized as the world's foremost gas field -- and point of beginning, during the 1920s, of the first interstate natural gas pipelines. Texas now has 27 pipeline companies exporting gas. Annual production rate is nearly eight trillion cubic feet. A number of wells deliver more than 20 million cubic feet per day. Texas has 42.3 per cent of proven United States natural gas reserves. Incise in base: Early Travel, Communication and Transportation Series, erected by The Moody Foundation (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 0.2 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• The First National Bank of Corsicana — steps away
• Site of Merchants Opera House — steps away
• Corsicana City Jail of 1908 — steps away
• Samuel Wistar Johnson, M. D. — steps away