Figs were the life’s blood of Friendswood from 1910 to about 1956, and they were preserved and shipped from this fig preserving plant. Opened on this site in 1924 by Quaker Cecil Brown, son of the founder, it was neither the first nor the last local preserving plant, but it had the most impact on the community. Even during the Great Depression, it provided a market for farmers’ figs and some cash for families. Cecil Brown sold the plant to J.R. May in 1958 after 34 years in the fig business. Friendswood had one of the first fig preserving plants on the Gulf Coast, the J.C. Carpenter plant, which opened in 1910 near Clear Creek on present-day E. Castlewood, and it also had the last of the eighteen Gulf Coast plants, the J.R. May plant, which closed in 1968.