Humble: Where Humble Oil Was Born

The town of Humble took its name from a settler named Pleasant Smith Humble, who kept a store at a country crossroads north of Houston in the 1880s. Then in 1904 and 1905 the drills found oil, and this quiet farm-and-sawmill community exploded into one of the great early Texas boomtowns — and it lent its name to a company. Humble Oil, organized in 1911 by Ross Sterling and his partners, grew into one of the largest oil enterprises in the country and, decades later, became Exxon. This drive walks the streets of the town that started it all: the museum in the old business district, the Masonic lodge that met in Sterling's bank, the artesian well that watered the oil-field crews, the pioneer church, and the boomtown cemetery. It's a compact loop through the birthplace of a name that ended up on gas stations all over the world.