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War production expanded Dow, area population
Published September 28, 2009
When Dow Chemical Co. began to build its first plant in Brazoria County in 1939-40, and for several years afterward, it triggered a population explosion much like the one that occurred in California during gold rush days some 90 years earlier.
Learning of the need for construction workers, prospective employees descended from all parts of the country by bus and train, by car, battered truck and even “riding their thumbs.”
In those barely post-Depression days, good-paying jobs were hard to find, and Dow’s move to Brazoria County offered them.
The local economy was primarily based on agriculture and fishing. The county’s first sizeable industry, the Freeport Sulphur Co., faced waning deposits of sulphur. The company had reduced the number of employees, and projections were for even more layoffs.
Even after the first influx of men looking for work, the country’s entry into World War II brought considerable expansion to Dow’s local operation.
Time constraints and the need to complete construction work on Dow’s Plant B, for example, brought an estimated 10,000 workers. Considering the population in Freeport before Dow’s arrival was 3,000 to 3,500, the effect was terrific.
The people who came to build the plants or to work in them needed a place to live, but virtually nothing was available.
Some commuted from Houston over washboard roads, but gasoline and tires already were in short supply, and soon were rationed. New cars were not available, and existing vehicles would have to last until after the end of World War II.
Other newcomers, who were either already working on the Dow construction project or hoped to do so, were sleeping in cars, under bridges, in barns and tents, in the spare bedrooms, on living room floors and porches of longtime residents, as well as just about anywhere else they could find a spot.
One man persuaded a Freeport resident to sell his chickens and let him rent the chicken house.
Shacks and tents were erected along the banks of the Brazos River, near where Hopper Field is now located.
Men lacking better facilities for personal hygiene shaved in plant locker rooms, and most ate their meals in the plant’s mess hall.
All this took place during several particularly wet years in Brazoria County’s history. It seemed as though it rained every day.
The area played host to some of the world’s most bloodthirsty mosquitoes, which attacked in swarms so thick it was sometimes hard to breathe without inhaling them. This was a particularly serious problem for those who were living al fresco.
At “Midway” halfway between Velasco and Dow’s Plant A, some small shotgun houses were converted into “hotels” with cots for sleeping.
An eight-hour stint on a cot cost $1.50. When one user rose to go to work, another took his place on the cot.
This was just the workers. At first, few of them attempted to bring their families to the area.
Seeing the critical need to provide some kind of housing, Dow officials made arrangements with trailer parks to accommodate workers who had their own “house trailers” they could move to the site.
When the first new trailer park opened, more than 100 trailers filled with people lined up for hours in a torrential rain, waiting for the signal to move in.
By the next day, that park was filled to capacity — 128 trailers. The number was doubled 10 days later.
And 10 days after that, a new, private trailer park opened and was filled with 400 government-owned trailers that were available for rent. Some of these remained years later just west of Highway 288.
Pat Stoltenberg remembers seeing great numbers of “Army-colored” trailers being moved to that destination, and realizing they formed a small city inhabited by Dow’s construction and plant workers.
Desperate to solve the ever-growing problem of housing for the men engaged in building a plant vital to the country’s war effort, Dow’s Dr. A.P. Beutel went to Washington to seek money for construction of housing and barracks.
He asked for $12 million to $15 million to provide adequate housing, but federal officials refused to grant that amount, agreeing to provide only $3.5 million. These funds were used to build Camp Chemical.
This area, intended only as a temporary solution, had family units, which were 16 by 16 feet in size, had a hot plate, a breakfast table and a portable oven.
Barracks were provided for single workers, with beds lined up as they would be in a military setting.
Prefabricated construction allowed this town for 10,000 people to be completed in just six weeks.
The four walls came with windows and a doorway. The roof and floor were each in a single piece. Everything arrived at the site ready to be put together.
When the construction began, three or four carpenters worked at each corner of a unit, and two were stationed in between, to nail the pieces together. They could complete one cabin every 10 minutes, according to a story in the Houston Post.
At first the weekly rent charged for the “houses” was $10, including utilities. As other housing became available, the rent dropped to $7 weekly for a family or two men.
Each worker who rented a cot in the barracks paid $5, with that fee including linen service.
A barracks also was provided for women, with the Post noting their weekly rental fee covered “maid service.”
Next week: Camp Chemical was temporary home to many.
Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission.
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