What is Baytown known for?

The refinery, the bridge, the birds, and a free ferry. In that order if you ask Houston; in the reverse if you ask Baytown.

The refinery

The ExxonMobil Baytown complex — refinery, chemical plant, olefins plant on one fenceline — has been here since Humble Oil built it in 1920 and is one of the largest in the country. It's the skyline, the tax base, the jobs, and the reason the town exists. Every other thing on this list is downstream of it, including the town's name on a thousand tanker trucks.

The Fred Hartman Bridge

Eight lanes and two diamond towers over the ship channel, opened in 1995, the longest cable-stayed bridge in Texas when it was built, named for the newspaper publisher who pushed for it, and the thing you see from Houston on a clear day. Drive it at dusk.

The Nature Center

Five hundred acres on a peninsula that used to be a neighborhood, until Hurricane Alicia took it in 1983. Now 317 species of bird and the best morning in Harris County that Houston doesn't know about. Birding Week in November brings the people who do.

The Lynchburg Ferry

Free, county-run, crossing the ship channel where a ferry has crossed since Nathaniel Lynch's in the 1820s. A few minutes — under three by the county historical commission's count, seven to ten in wind and traffic by the Chronicle's — and the San Jacinto Monument on the other side — where Texas won its independence in eighteen minutes in 1836.

The Cuban Cafe at 4 a.m.

Because the plants change shift before dawn, Baytown eats breakfast earlier than any town its size, and the pressed Cuban on Decker Drive at four in the morning is the town's signature meal. Doughnut Wheel opens at 3:30 for the same reason.

Goose Creek

The oil field that started it all in the first years of the 1900s — with some of the first over-water wells in Texas, on pilings in Tabbs Bay — and the name on the school district, the creek, and the park with the fishing pier. Before 1948 there were three towns here — Goose Creek, Pelly, Baytown — and they merged into one.

Grito Fest

The Mexican Independence Day festival downtown, the biggest night of the year, five or six thousand people on Texas Avenue and a headliner on the stage.

Turnarounds

The thing the town is known for among people who work in the industry: thousands of contractors arriving for six weeks, filling every hotel and RV park, eating at four in the morning, and moving on to Port Arthur. Baytown runs on that tide, and the eighteen hotels are the proof.

Mont Belvieu's salt domes

Not Baytown, but ten minutes away and the reason the region matters to the whole country's energy market: more natural gas liquids stored underground than anywhere else in the United States.

What it's not known for, and should be

Crawfish season at Black Bayou. The view from the Hyatt terrace with the plants lighting up. The library. Yepez Vineyard on a Sunday. Texas Avenue coming back. Give it five years.

En español

Baytown es conocido por la refinería de ExxonMobil (desde 1921, una de las más grandes del país), el puente Fred Hartman (1995, el atirantado más largo de Texas cuando se construyó), el Centro de Naturaleza (500 acres, 317 especies de aves, donde estaba el vecindario que el huracán Alicia se llevó en 1983), el ferry gratuito de Lynchburg, el Cuban Cafe a las cuatro de la mañana, el campo petrolero de Goose Creek (con algunos de los primeros pozos sobre el agua en Texas), el Grito Fest, los turnarounds de las plantas, y los domos de sal de Mont Belvieu.