Sour Lake Lake, Texas

A circular lake north of the town of Sour Lake formed by subsidence, as part of the extractive industries around the Sour Lake Salt Dome, an underground salt formation west of Beaumont, that has been heavily worked. A sulphur spring lake resort was established near here in the mid-1800s, and oil has been extracted even before the first gusher, in 1902. This was the birthplace of Texaco, and some call it the oldest continuously producing oil field in the world. There are several surface operations here still, including an olefins plant operated by Flint Hills, and storage operations by Motiva. The oil field was mostly depleted by the 1950s, and the Sour Lake sinkhole lake, growing slowly, formed in the middle of the old oil field.