DAYTON-GOOSE CREEK RAILWAY. The Dayton-Goose Creek Railway Company was incorporated on July 24, 1917, by Ross S. Sterling, who was later governor of Texas. The capital was $25,000. The members of the first board of directors were William S. Farish, Edgar E. Townes,qqv Walter W. Fondren, Ross Sterling, and F. P. Sterling, all of Houston, and A. E. Kerr and C. A. Brown, both of Dayton. Ross Sterling owned most of the shares in the railroad. The Dayton-Goose Creek constructed twenty-five miles of track at a cost of $632,738. Construction began at Dayton in 1917 and the railroad opened to Goose Creek in Liberty County on May 1, 1918. The extension to Baytown was completed in August 1919. The line was constructed to connect the newly discovered Goose Creek oilfield and the Baytown refinery of Humble Oil and Refining Company (later Exxon Company, U.S.A.) with the Texas and New Orleans at Dayton. The line was profitable enough, primarily from moving petroleum products, to pay for itself in eight years. In 1926 it reported passenger earnings of $5,000 and freight earnings of $157,000. In 1926 Sterling sold the Dayton-Goose Creek to the Southern Pacific, which leased it to the Texas and New Orleans for operation. In 1934 the Dayton-Goose Creek, along with the other major Southern Pacific properties in Texas and Louisiana, was merged into the Texas and New Orleans. The Texas and New Orleans, in turn, was merged into the Southern Pacific in 1961, and the former Dayton-Goose Creek line is still operated as part of the Southern Pacific.
