Roxana, Illinois

History

In 1918, Shell Oil Company opened its Wood River Refinery in what was then called "Wood River Field", an area south of the city of Wood River. As houses began being built close to the refinery, the population there grew to the point that, in 1921, this unincorporated area became the incorporated village of Roxana.

The origin of the village's name is unknown. Local lore is that the name "Roxana" was chosen to honor a "Queen Roxanne" of the Netherlands, inasmuch as the village owed its very existence to Netherlands-state-owned Royal Dutch Shell. But there had never been a Queen Roxanne of the Netherlands. The Dutch monarch at the time was Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. However, Royal Dutch/Shell Group also founded Roxana Petroleum Company in 1912 in Oklahoma to explore for and produce crude oil.

Subsequently, Shell built refineries near New Orleans in 1916, at Wood River in 1918, and parallel with US Route 20 across Hammond and East Chicago in Lake County, Indiana, in 1926. The Hammond-East Chicago refinery was linked directly by pipeline to Wood River and resulted in the residential neighborhood of Roxana (East Chicago) adjacent to it.

Originally constructed on 336 acres (1.36 km2), the Wood River Refinery now covers approximately 2,200 acres (8.9 km2). Phillips 66 acquired it, the largest in its system, in the early 2000s.

From the History section of Roxana, Illinois on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.