I've tried to determine the approximate date at which cultivation of sugar cane stopped on the upper Texas coast, & Imperial began importing cane or raw sugar for refining. I've read that local cultivation stopped because of weather (drought, storms & flooding), loss of cheap labor (from the local prison farm) & agricultural pests/diseases. These causes suggest the last crop was harvested a few years before WWI began.
An issue of The Fort Bend Mirror published in 1956 included a photo taken in 1928 of the last sugar cane processed in Imperial's mill in 1928. When I first saw that picture, I assumed the last local cane crop was grown in 1928, but that's not necessarily true. They may have imported the cane in the picture from outside the area, probably Louisiana.
Imperial began importing raw sugar from Cuba, Louisiana, & Mexico (I think) about the time the local harvests began declining. (As I said above, this must have been a few years before WWI.) I talked with an old timer yesterday, & he said when he moved to Sugar Land as a boy in 1939, Imperial refined raw sugar (the output of a sugar mill) shipped by rail from Galveston in 200-lb. burlap sacks. He said the stuff looked like damp dirt. I remember the same train loads of raw sugar arriving from Galveston all through my youth.
Here's a photo of the Galveston docks around the time of WWI. Notice the sack on the lower-left foreground. (You can see some men a little further down the dock heaving sacks from the ship onto a handcart sitting on the dock.) Those are the type of sacks delivered by railroad to Sugar Land for processing at Imperial's refinery.
