Mont Belvieu: The Town on a Salt Dome

Mont Belvieu sits on top of one of the most important pieces of underground real estate in America — a giant salt dome, called Barbers Hill, whose hollowed-out caverns store a huge share of the nation's natural gas liquids. The same geology that made this a quiet farming settlement in the 1800s turned it into a petrochemical hub in the twentieth century, when drillers found the Barbers Hill oil field and later realized the salt itself could be washed out to make perfect storage tanks deep underground. This short drive visits the pioneer cemeteries and churches of the old settlement and the marker for the oil field that changed everything. Keep to the public roads; the industrial plants ringing town are working facilities, and the real story here is literally beneath your wheels.