I found this photo in the January 26th, 1956 edition of The Fort Bend Mirror. I hope we can find the original photo, so we can scan it at high resolution. The white building in the background is the old sugar mill which stood on the refinery site until 1948, when it was razed. (Imperial used the building for other purposes between 1928 & 1948.) It stood on the west bank of Oyster Creek across from the Main Street bridge.
Just to be clear on one this: a sugar mill and a sugar refinery are two different things. The former produces raw sugar from a source like sugar cane or beets. A refinery refines raw sugar into end products for consumption in food & beverages. I never knew there was such a thing as a sugar factory until Leon Anhaiser explained it to me recently. He said a sugar factory is another name for a sugar mill.
