After first working as a darkroom assistant for Roy Stryker’s Office of War Information (OWI) during World War II, Esther Bubley was assigned to take pictures of the home front for propagandistic purposes. In 1943 Stryker resigned from the OWI and began work on a public–relations project for the Standard Oil Company. In this new role, Stryker sent Bubley and other photographers across the United States to document the booming oil industry and illustrate its positive impact on everyday life. In 1945 Bubley went on assignment to Tomball, Texas, a town nicknamed in the mid–1930s “Oiltown U.S.A., ” where she took this photograph.