Texas Gulf Sulphur Company-Newgulf

Newgulf's best-known technical work was not mining. In 1941 Texas Gulf Sulphur and other companies, at the government's request, developed a way to turn hydrogen sulfide from sour natural gas into free sulfur. Sour gas was toxic and commercially unusable, and producers burned it. The Handbook of Texas says the company's gas-purification plant at Newgulf pioneered large-scale sulfur recovery from such gas, a method the company later took to Canada. The town itself got its name from a contest open to employees only, won by Marie Ertz, who worked in the Houston office.

What the plaque says

Texas Gulf Sulphur Company-Newgulf The Gulf Sulphur Company began in Matagorda County in 1909, and in 1918 changed its name to Texas Gulf Sulphur Company. A plant was built at the Big Hill Dome, and the first sulphur was produced in 1919. A company town was created and named Gulf, Texas. New reserves of sulphur were acquired in Wharton County. When the Texas Gulf Sulphur Company began operations on the Boling Dome in 1928, a new company town was established named Newgulf. The town contained businesses, more than 350 homes, a school, library, hospital, movie house, golf course and county club. Baptist, Methodist, Catholic and Presbyterian churches built sanctuaries. Newgulf Post Office began service in October 1928 and ended service in March 1994. Texas Gulf Sulphur Company produced in excess of 80.8 million long tons of Sulphur from the Boling Dome, to make it the largest sulphur production mine in the world, Texas Gulf was acquired by a French petrochemical corporation in 1981. Sulphur production ceased in 1993, and the town of Newgulf was dismantled; it was among the last company towns to exist in Texas. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 30 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.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 36 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

• Shearith Israel Synagogue — 1.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Wharton — 1.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Wharton — 2.0 mi
• Wharton Training School — 2.2 mi