Midlothian: Cement Capital of Texas

Midlothian sits on top of the Austin Escarpment, a thick chalk ridge running northeast to southwest through Ellis County that holds what geologists estimate is a six-hundred-year potential limestone reserve. By local legend, the town got its name when a homesick Scottish railroad engineer said the rolling countryside reminded him of Midlothian in Scotland. The community incorporated in eighteen eighty-eight.

The limestone was largely ignored until nineteen fifty-nine, when Texas Industries opened the first cement plant here. By nineteen sixty-seven, as construction demand for Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport surged, that plant had grown into the largest cement facility in Texas. By the nineteen eighties, Midlothian was calling itself the Cement Capital of Texas and anchoring a heavy-industry cluster of Portland cement and steel production that still operates today.