I’m from Sugar Land, Texas. If that sounds familiar, Steven Spielberg made a movie involving it called The Sugarland Express. It was also the home to the Imperial Sugar Company, long-time leading refiner and supplier of cane sugar in America.

The refinery that the city was founded around is gone now, but it was so old that the township of Sugar Land predates the statehood of Texas. The age of the refinery is important to note, because there used to be two refineries in the southern Texas territory back in those days.

The Story goes that the owner of Imperial Sugar, Samuel May Williams, who was also an American politician, somehow pissed off Santa Anna. As in leader of the Mexican Army, “Remember the Alamo” Santa Anna. He vowed to bring his army and burn Imperial Sugar to the ground in retaliation for the offense. Along the way they got turned around and he accidentally sacked the competing refinery instead. Imperial Sugar owes its existence to one of the most feared figures in early American history having a bad sense of direction.