Lion Oil, based in El Dorado, refines and produces oil, gasoline and other oil-based products. Its products include not only fuels and asphalt but also industrial solvents and oil-based roofing products.

When the oil boom began in southern Arkansas in 1920, Col. Thomas Harry Barton, a Texas native, went to El Dorado and began investing in the emerging industry, organizing the El Dorado Natural Gas Co. In 1922, he took over a small refinery in El Dorado that became the Lion Oil and Refining Co.

Initially, the refinery produced 2,000 barrels per day and employed 25 people. Reportedly, Barton decided to call the company "Lion Oil" because of his fondness for wordplay; the name of the company is a palindrome, spelled the same forward and backward. The next year, the company was incorporated

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