The City of Katy

The Katy gas field's discovery well was drilled in 1934, and the Humble plant that extracted liquid hydrocarbons from the gas went into operation in 1943 under superintendent Joseph E. Clayton, reaching 13,000 barrels a day in January 1945. In World War II the size of the reserves and the nearness of Houston refineries made Katy the most important gas-condensate field in the country, and the town's population doubled, from 400 to 800 in 1943. C. L. Baird was the first mayor after the 1945 incorporation. Katy reached 9,866 people in 1988 and had 11,775 by 2000.

What the plaque says

The City of Katy Karankawa Indians hunted buffalo on this site as late as the 1820s. Present Fifth Street follows the course of the San Felipe Road, which was opened to Austin's colony in that decade. In 1836 Santa Anna used that road in his march toward San Jacinto. This site was in the 1839 land grant of Republic of Texas citizen James J. Crawford. In 1863 at their camp on San Felipe Road, 35 Confederate soldiers died and were buried in the locality. Cane Island, the original settlement, was known as a stagecoach stop. Developers platted Katy townsite after Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad ("The Katy Line") reached this point in 1895. The post office opened Jan. 23, 1896, in the postmaster's mercantile store. In 1897, William Eule grew a rice crop, initiating the locality's major industry. Eule's son Fred dug an irrigation well for the rice fields in 1899. The 1900 hurricane razed or damaged all improvements except two houses in Katy, but the town was soon rebuilt. Beginning in 1927, nearby petroleum developments enhanced the local economy. Incorporated n 1945, the town had 849 people in 1950 and 3800 by 1970. It is a tri-county municipality, lying in Fort Bend, Harris, and Waller counties. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 26 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 26 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 26 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 27 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Katy — steps away
• Pittsville — 7.6 mi
• Fulshear Cemetery — 7.9 mi
• _H7 Ranch — 8.2 mi