Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Sour Lake, TX

Sour Lake is a city in south-central Hardin County, Texas, on State Highways 105 and 326, about 18 miles southwest of Kountze, the county seat, and just south of the Big Thicket National Preserve.

Sour Lake took its name from its sulfurous mineral spring water, and as Sour Lake Springs it was a popular 19th-century health resort whose waters were bottled and sold in Houston and Galveston.

Early oil drilling attempts were made around Sour Lake as early as 1866 by Peter Willis and in 1895 by the Savage brothers, decades before the field became famous.

Oil discoveries in July 1902 turned Sour Lake into a classic Texas boomtown - its population sometimes numbered 10,000, peak production reached 50,000 barrels a day, and as many as 52 saloons operated at the height of the rush.

The boom was so frenzied that half of the Sour Lake field's 150 wells had been abandoned by 1903 because of over-drilling, according to the Texas State Historical Association.

Sour Lake is the birthplace of Texaco - the Texas Company was founded there in 1902 by Joseph S. Cullinan and Arnold Schlaet, and its Fee No. 3 well struck in January 1903 flowed 5,000 barrels of oil a day.

The Sour Lake oilfield produced about 90 million barrels of oil in total up to 1948.

By 1914 the settled-down town had 2,800 people, four churches, a bank, and its own newspaper, the Oil City Visitor, and was served by two railroads.

The 2010 census counted 1,813 residents in 723 households in Sour Lake, and the 2020 census counted 1,773 residents.