V I S I O N S
The refinery was located across 28th Street from Mount Olivet Cemetary in North Fort Worth, near I-35. Tarrant County Appraisal District survey records show this to be the Winston Refinery, built in the 1920s. I remember it working in the 1970s, but by the 1980s it was abandoned and neglected. Demolition and cleanup were underway when these photos were taken in 1994. The site was fenced, but it was simply a matter of slipping between gates to gain access. There were a substantial number of yellow garbage bags around the site, presumably containing asbestos. We did not disturb them.
Today the site appears to be mixed medium industrial use. Only one or two of the buildings remain.
The photographs were shot with a Minolta X-370 SLR on Kodak ISO 400 black & white film. These images were scanned from the original contact sheets, printed on medium contrast paper under leftover patio table glass (hence the scratches). They were scanned at 1200 DPI, then reduce to ~400 DPI for web publication. They are displayed at 75 DPI.
Comyn, Texas was a well established frontier town in 1917 when oil was discovered in nearby Ranger. The Humble pipeline company built a tank farm in Comyn and a pipeline to move the oil to a terminal near Houston. However, by the 1950s the oil boom was long over, and the dwinding population was insufficient to keep the local school open. Very little is left of Comyn today.
My photo is nearly identical to one in T. Lindsay Baker's excellent book, Ghost Towns of Texas, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.
