Half a century before the discovery of oil in Texas, the Old Hughes Furnace produced pig iron from the ores of East Texas. Manned by slave labor, this old blast furnace made pig iron for Confederate forces during the Civil War, after which it was abandoned for lack of a market for its product. Fifty years after Spindletop opened the early celebrated chapter of the petroleum business in Texas, the Old Hughes Furnace had its counterpart in Lone Star Steel Company's completely integrated mill, which was planned and built to supply the great Mid-Continent area with oil country tubular goods. The continuing prosperity, expansion, and stability of the oil business in Texas was traced in large measure to conservation and progress programs conceived and promoted by members of the Texas Railroad Commission, the governing body for the industry in the state. In recognition of outstanding contributions to the petroleum industry by Judge Olin Culberson, Hon. William J. Murray, and Gen. Ernest O. Thompson, chairman, the Old Hughes Furnace was recovered from its original site northeast of Hughes Springs, Texas, and restored on the grounds of Lone Star Steel Company as a symbol of the close relationship between two of the state's greatest industries, oil and steel.