Crosby, Texas - A Local Area Guide
A town that's been called four different things, and the railroad and river that built it
More about this in Crosby
Crosby sits about 22 miles east-northeast of downtown Houston, north of the historical Barrett Station community, in a stretch of eastern Harris County that's been shaped by a river, a railroad, and — more recently — an industrial plant. This page is a plain guide to how the town got here, written for anyone who wants the background before reading anything else on this site. For the full record, the Crosby, Texas page on Wikipedia is a good starting point.
A town that's been called four different things
Crosby's name has changed more times than most Texas towns. In 1823, early colonist Humphrey Jackson's encampment here was nicknamed Lick Skillet, supposedly because oxen-team drivers passing through would sip the sweet spring water and lick their skillets clean before moving on. In 1860, the growing settlement was renamed Gentry, honoring A. M. Gentry, president of the railroad company building the line from Houston to Liberty. The name changed once more in 1877 to Crosby, after former judge and railroad vice president Josiah Frasier Crosby. The town even took a fifth, temporary name for 19 days in December 1953, becoming "Hope, Texas" so residents could enter a contest run by comedian Bob Hope, before switching back to Crosby on New Year's Day.
Built by the railroad, grown by the river
Crosby owes its earliest growth to the same railroad that gave it two of its names. The line running from Houston to Liberty made the town a shipping and retail hub for lumber and agricultural products starting in the 1860s. Growth stayed modest for generations — the Great Depression cut the town's population roughly in half after it had reached about 600 by 1929 — before picking back up during and after World War II. In more recent decades, the San Jacinto River has done the growing: Newport, Crosby's largest master-planned community, has been adding homes along the river since the 1970s, with private access to Lake Houston as one of its draws.
An industrial neighbor and a hard week in 2017
Not all of Crosby's modern history is about houses. The Arkema chemical plant, which manufactures organic peroxides used in products like plastic cups and countertops, sits in Crosby and requires its temperature-sensitive chemicals to stay cold. During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, floodwaters knocked out the plant's power and its cooling systems failed, leading to two explosions and a fire on August 31 that sent more than 200 nearby residents out of their homes for a week.
A town still growing in stages
Crosby's population climbed from 1,713 residents at the 2000 census to 2,299 in 2010 and 3,417 by 2020 — steady growth, but not explosive, arriving in the same kind of stages that have marked the town since its earliest railroad days. The Crosby Volunteer Fire Department, an all-volunteer force formed in 1942, still protects a 102.8-square-mile district covering both Crosby and the neighboring Barrett Station community, a reminder that this remains a place where neighbors look out for each other's town, whatever it happens to be named. </content>