Sweeny is an incorporated city in west-central Brazoria County, Texas, and the westernmost incorporated town in the county. It lies roughly sixty-five miles south of Houston and about twenty miles from the Gulf of Mexico, in the flat, coastal prairie country where the San Bernard River winds toward the sea. With a population of about 3,600, Sweeny combines a deep agricultural and industrial history with the feel of a small, family-oriented Texas town, and its official motto is "A City with Pride." The area's history reaches back to 1833, when John Sweeny Sr. arrived from Tennessee with his family and settled on the Breen league, where he developed a large sugar plantation on the San Bernard River. The town that later took his name was platted in 1911 by the Burton D. Hurd Industrial Land Company, which promoted ten-acre garden farms to prospective settlers. Within a few years Sweeny had a hotel, flour mill, cotton gin, gristmill, sawmill, and general stores, and by the 1920s it shipped cotton, vegetables, and even live-oak parts for ships. The defining economic shift came in the mid-twentieth century. A government carbon black plant was built near Sweeny in 1942, and in 1947 Phillips Petroleum purchased it and developed the site into a refinery and natural gas liquids center, naming the complex after the neighboring town. The Phillips 66 Sweeny Refinery, located near Old Ocean, remains a cornerstone of the local economy and a source of skilled employment. Today Sweeny is a quiet, largely owner-occupied community where the school district anchors civic life. Its position south of Houston and near the Gulf gives residents access to coastal recreation and to the region's industrial and medical employers, while the town itself keeps a small, neighborly scale.