When wildcatters struck oil in Jim Wells County in the 1920s, politicians in Alice, Texas saw opportunity beyond the oil patch. The town, which legend has it was named after the daughter of Richard King, the founder of King Ranch, adopted the slogan, "The Hub City of South Texas" due to its proximity to San Antonio to the north, the port of Corpus Christi to the east, and Laredo and the Mexican border to the south. The branding worked. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Alice was a distribution hub for supplies and construction materials throughout south Texas. Drilling and service companies set up oil rig yards in town, and employed locals.

But oil booms are always followed by busts. And Alice is a legacy oil town in every sense. When oil left in the 1980s, population and tax revenue dwindled. The fracking revolution brought industry back to town for a spell, but that boom proved short-lived, too. These days, residents reminisce about the old days when oil and gas employed just about everybody in town and contributed substantially to the local economy. And while those are just fond memories, there's an honest hope that even if oil and gas is no longer the bread and butter of this town's economy, Alice's location might be enough to spur different innovators in the energy sector to set up shop here.

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When you think of socialites taking in a performance featuring Ray Charles or James Brown, all the while rubbing elbows with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, the first U.S. city that comes to mind is probably New York, or maybe Los Angeles.

But what if I told you in its heyday, those things and more were happening in a town of some 55,000 people less than 10 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. For a time, Port Arthur was the place to be, and be seen. And the backdrop to all the energy and goings on in this southeast Texas town was petroleum.

Times have changed, and residents will be the first to tell you that Port Arthur isn't what it used to be, but there's hope that the next generation of the energy industry might bring this Texas town out of the doldrums.

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The two cities that make up ground zero for oil and gas production in the United States, Midland and Odessa, have been competing for recognition and prestige for as long as a lot of folks in town can remember.
These days that cross-town rivalry has bled over into a competition for emerging industry, a developing workforce, and a boat load of tax dollars. But as Marilu Hastings at the Mitchell Foundation puts it, because we're going to need a lot more energy than we're currently producing, we're not in the position to pick winners and losers in the energy industry. We need it all.

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