Jefferson Gas Light Company, chartered 1870 for public; and domestic service, used retorts -- 7 foot iron drums with small necks -- to make illuminating gas.(One retort stood on this site.) Loaded with pine knots and rich pine wood, a retort was heated; its gas was forced into mains by use of a pressure drum.

Street lights on hollow posts, 300 feet apart, were 10-candle glass globes, lighted by a man on a ladder. These and gaslights in houses gave Jefferson -- then largest inland port and second largest city in Texas -- the state's first gaslight system.

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