The plants, plainly

You can't talk about Baytown without them, so let's talk about them.

Why they're here. The town exists because of oil. The Goose Creek field came in as a gusher field in the first years of the 1900s — the first offshore-style wells in Texas were drilled on pilings in Tabbs Bay — and Humble Oil, founded in 1917, broke ground on a refinery on the ship channel in 1919 and had it running by 1921 to process it. Humble became Exxon; the refinery became the ExxonMobil Baytown complex — a refinery, a chemical plant and an olefins plant on one fenceline, one of the largest refining and petrochemical sites in the United States. It is the reason a city of 85,000 has a skyline of stacks instead of towers, and the reason the town's three original settlements — Goose Creek, Pelly, and Baytown — became one city: Pelly annexed Baytown in 1945, Pelly and Goose Creek voted to consolidate in 1947, and the City of Baytown was established on January 24, 1948.

Who else is here. - Chevron Phillips Chemical, Cedar Bayou — on the east side off Highway 146; ethylene and the other building blocks that become plastics. One of the largest of its kind. - Covestro, Baytown — the former Bayer site on the ship channel; raw materials for polyurethane foam and polycarbonate. - Mont Belvieu — ten minutes up 146, not a plant but a hub. The salt domes under the town hold more natural gas liquids — propane, butane, ethane — than anywhere else in the country. Enterprise, Energy Transfer and others run the fractionators and storage; the pipes and white tanks you see from the highway are why propane has a national price. - The contractors — the firms that actually swing the wrenches during a turnaround. Thousands of badges, most of them not from here.

What you're looking at. The flame at the top of a tall stack is a flare. It's a safety system: when a unit upsets, gas is burned off rather than released. A big flare is loud, bright, sometimes smoky, and almost always not an emergency. A shelter-in-place is different: sirens, a text from the county alert system, and instructions to close windows and turn off the AC. The plants also test sirens on a schedule; the date and time are on the Living Here page so a test doesn't scare you.

What you're smelling. Sometimes nothing. Sometimes sulfur on a south wind, sometimes something sweeter from the chemical side. Releases are reported to the state, and the county posts air-quality readings from monitors around the fenceline; we link both from the "What was that?" page, and when the readings are bad, the site says so plainly.

Why it matters if you don't work there. The plants pay for the parks, the new library, a good slice of the school district's budget, and half the restaurants on Garth. They bring the turnaround crews — a few thousand contractors at a time who fill every RV park and extended-stay hotel for six to ten weeks and eat breakfast at four in the morning. If you've wondered why Baytown has eighteen hotels and a Cuban café that opens before dawn, that's why. They are also why the town is bilingual on the job site, why the ferry runs at 4:30 a.m., and why the Sunday-morning traffic is lighter than the Tuesday-morning traffic.

If you're one of the crews. There's a whole section for you: where to park a fifth wheel, where to badge, where to buy FR, what's open at four. Start at Coming for a turnaround.