Nederland, Texas

Nederland sits in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Texas, and its name is no accident. The town was founded in eighteen ninety-seven by Arthur Stilwell, who was building the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railway, later the Kansas City Southern, to the Gulf and received crucial financing from Dutch investors in Holland. In gratitude, he named several towns along the route for his backers' homeland.

Dutch families did arrive, drawn partly by the flat coastal terrain that resembled home. The more prominent early settlers bore names like Rienstra, Doornbos, and Van Oostrom, and their descendants still live in the area. Rice farming sustained the early community until the depression of nineteen oh seven and overproduction collapsed that market.

Meanwhile the oil boom that began when the Spindletop gusher erupted on January tenth, nineteen oh one, not far to the north, helped restore the town's fortunes. Nederland's next century was written in oil. Refineries and petrochemical plants rose around the town, and the Dutch agricultural colony quietly became part of one of the most concentrated chemical and refining corridors in North America.