MONROE CITY, TEXAS. Monroe City is at the junction of Farm Road 1724 and State Highway 124, thirty-nine miles southwest of Beaumont in central Chambers County. The town, named for Monroe White, a prominent local citizen, was established in the wake of the discovery of the Anahuac oilfield in 1935. Companies with major interests in the Anahuac field included the Humble Oil and Refining Company (later Exxon Company, U.S.A.), followed by Sun Oil and Gulf Oil. By the end of 1935, H. S. Sterling had established a store at the oilfield camp, and the next year the Monroe City post office was opened. Some sources place the community population at 300 by 1939. By 1940 Monroe City had a lumberyard, several stores, housing for oilfield workers, and a Brown and Root company camp. As the boom subsided, the population declined to 120 during the late 1940s and to ninety by 1970. It was still reported at ninety through 2000. A plaque from the Texas State Historical Survey Committee (later the Texas Historical Commissionqv) marks the field, which had produced well over 270 million barrels of crude oil by 1985.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jewel Horace Harry, A History of Chambers County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1940; rpt., Dallas: Taylor, 1981).

Robert Wooster