Sugar Land

The area along Oyster Creek in East Fort Bend County was settled in the 1820's by one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300", entrepreneur Samuel May Williams who named the area Oakland Plantation because of the wide variety of oak trees that were present. Samuel sold the plantation to his brother Nathaniel in 1838 and together they operated it producing cotton, corn &, most notably, sugarcane. In 1843 they built a sugar mill which produced refined sugar & blackstrap molasses. The Williams family sold the plantation to Benjamin Terry & William Kyle who renamed it Sugar Land. Benjamin Terry was the organizer of the 8th Texas Cavalry (aka Terry's Texas Rangers) during the Civil War & B.F. Terry High School is named in his honor. The plantation would change ownership to Col. Edward Cunningham in 1879 who developed the town around the sugar refining plant and again in 1905 to Isaac H. Kempner who operated it as Sugar Land Industries. In 1924 Sugar Land Industries would incorporate as Imperial Sugar Co. and by 1938 the company was annually producing over 400 million pounds of sugar. Sadly, the fluctuating price of raw sugar & increased competition resulted in Imperial's failure to make interest payments on a $250 million loan. On January 16, 2001 they filed Chapter 11 & in 2003 the Sugar Land plant shut down operations. On June 21, 2012 Imperial Sugar Co. became a wholly owned subsidiary of Louis Dreyfus Commodities Sugar Holdings LLC and all shares of Imperial Sugar common stock ceased to exist. The sugar plant itself is now a historical landmark with a museum inside. Throughout it all the town of Sugar Land continued to thrive changing from a company town to a largely residential area with most of its inhabitants working in neighboring Houston. Through most of the 1990's Sugar Land was the fastest growing city in the United States. Population has grown to 84,511 and numerous low-rise office buildings, banks & restaurants can be seen along US Highway 59 & State Highway 6. The most recent addition is Constellation Field, home of the Sugar Land Skeeters. If I were to move from Rosenberg, I would probably move to Sugar Land.