Thomas J. Sellers

Sellers had a post office from 1894, and the village lived under his name until the refinery rewrote it. The works began as an asphalt plant and added refinery units around 1920. In 1925 the postmistress, Lillie Schexnaydre, and the plant manager, Charles Melancon, built the name Norco from the initials of the New Orleans Refining Company. Shell took over in 1928, and the Post Office made the new name official in 1934. A separate Bethune High School for Black students opened in 1952 and closed with desegregation in 1967.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Destrehan Plantation — 4.7 mi
  A River Road house begun in 1787 where, in January 1811, a tribunal of five slaveholders tried people who had risen on the German Coast, and where an exhibit now tells the revolt.
• Whitney Plantation — 14 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 20 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 21 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.

More markers nearby

• Trepagnier Plantation — steps away
• Slave Revolt — steps away
• Prospect Plantation (1815-1920) — steps away
• More Gather to Fight For Freedom — 0.9 mi