The boom and the pipe
1950s Alcoa-boom houses on Carrizo–Wilcox aquifer water
A railroad and lignite town that one plant remade almost overnight.
The town was born with the railroad. Lots went on sale in September 1873, International–Great Northern track arrived early in 1874, and the city incorporated in 1878. Lignite mines opened nearby in the 1890s and kept the area working for decades.
Then came aluminum. In the early 1950s Alcoa chose a site near the Sandow lignite mine, and the population jumped from about 2,300 in 1954 to 6,300 in 1958. Whole streets of houses went up in those years, plumbed the way builders worked then, with galvanized steel supply and cast-iron drains.
Smelting stopped in 2008 and the last of the plant closed in 2014, but the houses stayed. Seventy years on, galvanized pipe rusts shut from the inside, so pressure fades one fixture at a time. Cast-iron drains crack along the bottom, where water has run for decades, and the clay laterals outside let roots in at the joints.
The city pumps groundwater from Carrizo–Wilcox wells and treats it at plants on Mill Avenue and Texas Street. Under federal rules revised in October 2024, it inventoried more than 2,400 service connections for lead. Its water report advises longer flushing where a lead or galvanized service line needs replacing.
Local knowledge
US 79, FM 908 and the old smelter grounds
Roads, the city utility and the work that comes with mid-century houses.
US 79 is the main street and the road we take in from Taylor. FM 908 and FM 487 meet it in town, and Cameron, the county seat, lies 13 miles north. The city’s wells sit around town, including several near the airport, feeding about 51 miles of distribution main.
Former Alcoa buildings now house two large Bitcoin mining operations that reuse the transmission lines built for the smelters. The Sandow power plant that once supplied them closed in 2018. The 2020 census counted 5,323 residents, and much of the housing they live in dates from the smelter years.
Our calls here are the mid-century set. A galvanized line rusted down to a trickle at the kitchen sink. A cast-iron stack weeping inside a wall. A sewer lateral packed with post oak roots. A water heater sharing a closet with the original pipe.
