Oil in Texas: The Gusher Age, 1895-1945 9780292798557

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IN TEXAS

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number three Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas Heritage Series

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IN TEXAS The Gusher Age, 1895–1945

D I A N A D AV I D S H I N T O N AND ROGER M. OLIEN

AUSTIN

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

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Publication of this work was made possible in part by support from Clifton and Shirley Caldwell and a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. copyright 䉷 2002 by the university of texas press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2002 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.

嘷 ⬁ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Olien, Diana Davids, 1943– Oil in Texas : the gusher age, 1895–1945 / Diana Davids Olien and Roger M. Olien. p. cm. — (Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas heritage series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 0-292-76056-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Petroleum industry and trade—Texas—History. 2. Petroleum engineering—Texas—History. 3. Oil wells—Texas— History. I. Olien, Roger M., date II.Title. III. Series. hd9567.t3 o447 2001 338.2⬘7282⬘09764 — dc21 2001027993

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CONTENTS vii

preface

1. The Road to Spindletop 1 2. The First Great Boom 24 3. After the Boom 53 4. Oily Water and Black Gold 75 5. The Rising Tide of Oil 107 6. Oil in Cow Country 138 7. The Colossus of Texas Booms 167 8. Survival and Growth 193 9. Texas Oil Goes to War 219 notes

239

glossary

277

bibliography index

297

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PREFACE As the new millennium begins, it is worth looking back over the twentieth century and considering how oil changed Texas. If cattle and cotton helped define the history of nineteenth-century Texas not only through the state’s economy but also through its life, institutions, and politics, then petroleum has had as much influence in twentieth-century Texas. Texas without oil? The notion is near inconceivable. One might as easily image Los Angeles without freeways, Manhattan without skyscrapers, or Washington, D.C., without politics. Oil is central to the economic and social identity of modern Texas. Within a half-century of the industry’s birth in Texas, the state’s vast petroleum reserves dwarfed those of most other producing states. In 1932, the giant East Texas field alone yielded more than the total annual production of most of the other states. Fettered by regulation, in 1940 Texas still produced twice as much oil as California, the next largest producing state and one where production was unlimited. Producing over one-third of the nation’s oil in 1940, Texas dominated the price of crude oil in national and international markets. Thus, once the Texas Railroad Commission became the industry’s regulatory agency, it assumed the dominant position in crude oil markets. By the end of the first half-century, the Railroad Commission’s influence over crude oil prices far exceeded that exercised today by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The major objective of this book is to explain how the massive growth of the petroleum industry in Texas came about. Beginning on the upper Gulf Coast, one region after another was opened to oil and gas production. Wildcatters did not succeed in finding oil in every part of the state, but that was not for lack of trying. By the end of the first half-

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century, which we have called ‘‘the gusher age,’’ petroleum had been discovered and was produced in 80 percent of the counties in Texas. The hallmark of the first fifty years is the driving force of exploration and discovery, the ‘‘upstream’’ sector of the industry. All of the other significant aspects of the industry—the operation of business circles, the increasing importance of science and technology, the creation and expansion of refining, manufacturing, service, and supply activities—spun off of the finding and production of crude oil. Similarly, the social and political impacts all followed from the expansion of field activity, and incidental problems stemming from exploration and production were dealt with through the political and regulatory processes. As we tell the story of oil in Texas, we have generally followed a regional approach because it would be confusing to try to describe events in all regions in a single year, or even in a single decade. It would also be misleading. Different regions experienced different developmental patterns and confronted different problems. What was true on the Gulf Coast did not pertain to North Texas or the Permian Basin. As we cover the regions, we have not tried to include every oil field or every oil town, but rather to discuss important or typical examples. Similarly, we introduce individual oilmen and firms, as industry leaders or as typical of their times and places, but have not talked about every important oilman or every significant firm. We have also provided more information about relatively neglected parts of the state, Southwest Texas, for example, to add to the store of general information on our topic. Generally speaking, our history of oil in Texas also follows a time line, organized by decades, within which we cover regional growth and development. Chapter 1 begins with Texas before oil and the preconditions of development, emphasizing the first commercially viable production at Corsicana. Chapter 2 moves to the Spindletop boom and the initial era of Gulf Coast exploration. Chapter 3 offers an overview of the aftermath of Spindletop and Gulf Coast development. Chapter 4 covers the opening of North Texas and the regional growth it fostered. Chapter 5 takes us to discoveries in Southwest and Central Texas, as well as to continued Gulf Coast exploration and the increased application of geoscience. Chapter 6 turns to the discovery of vast reserves in the Panhandle and Permian Basin, the impact of these discoveries on state institutions such as the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, and attempts to manage mounting overproduction of oil. Chapter 7 focuses on the great East Texas oil boom—the problems it caused, the fortunes made in it, and its impact on regulation. Chapter 8 describes viii

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what happened to the oil industry in other parts of the state while East Texas boomed and during the remainder of the 1930s. The final chapter is largely concerned with the impact of World War II on the Texas petroleum industry. There our story ends, for the time being, largely because the second half-century is a very different story indeed, and it deserves separate and detailed description. Closely allied to the growth of the oil industry is urban growth, both in established metropolitan centers and in new locations. Oil broadened the economic base of cities such as Houston, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls, and Beaumont and brought sharp increases in population. It also took small cattle towns like Amarillo, Midland, and Odessa and turned them into cities, as well as centers for regional oil industry management and service. In all of these towns and cities, oil broadened and diversified economies that had been based almost entirely on agriculture. Oil activity also prompted the creation of new towns, and it turned tiny county seats like Kermit in Winkler County into bustling centers with several thousand inhabitants. Paradoxically, oil also moved people into the countryside. It brought drillers and pumpers to remote leases; it brought company camps, large and small, to developing oil fields. Last but not least, as industry activity boomed from place to place, oil created a substantial transient population, workers and their families in motion from one oil field to the next. In short, during the first halfcentury of industry growth in Texas, oil determined where a tremendous number of Texans happened to be. One could work in the industry and live in a city or in the country, or be often on the road. The story of the petroleum industry’s first half-century in Texas must include its sequential spread over vast areas, but there is much more to the history than a sequence of gushers in unlikely places. Between the mid-1890s and 1945, Texas evolved from its predominantly agricultural roots into an industrial and managerial society. Petroleum was far and away the most important element in that profound change. Oil brought industrial employment on a grand scale to rural Texas. It offered an immediate and potently attractive alternative to life down on the farm or ranch, and thousands of Texans took that alternative. Many of them did not even have to drive to town to do so. Simply put, the oil industry created economic opportunities. These opportunities, however, were not distributed through the whole population. During the industry’s first half-century, the most direct beneficiaries were Anglo men. For benefits that reached women, African Americans, and Tejanos, one must generally look at the spin-off busiPREFACE

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nesses, commonly demanding few skills and paying much less than other positions in the industry. On this topic, in particular, there are still significant questions to be answered in future research: What effects did millions of dollars in royalty payments and lease rentals and bonuses have on farmers and ranchers? What did petrodollars do in banking and business circles in places such as Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas? What effect did petroleum fortunes have on philanthropy and charity? Each of these topics is worthy of a book in itself. We address some issues because they have emerged as significant in previous studies of the industry. Thus, we will refer frequently to the growth of major oil companies and the expansion of communities of independent oilmen in Texas. A survey of the first half-century of the industry in Texas provides ample opportunity to describe the working relationships between these two sectors and, thus, to determine if they were more likely to be cooperative or adversarial. We also address the scholarly argument advanced by some historians of the American West, Walter Prescott Webb an early leader among them, that the American West, including Texas, was an exploited province, in which Eastern capital plundered resources, leaving regions poorer and natural resources depleted. With respect to petroleum in Texas, this argument does not hold up. Rather, the reverse: by controlling politics, Texans were able to use outside capital on their own terms and to control the industry within the state. In fact, they exploited outside capitalists and ended up the richer for it. So much for the idea that the story of oil in Texas might be compared with one of colonization and exploitation by an outside power. We will have frequent occasion in the story of oil in Texas to delve into the topic of politics and regulation. Texas did not elect an oilman as governor until Ross Sterling won the general election in 1930, but long before that date, petroleum-related issues had significant political dimensions. Once the elected Texas Railroad Commission secured a regulatory role in the petroleum industry, it was inevitable that politics and regulation were never very far apart. Conflicts in business strategy often surfaced as political or regulatory issues—for example, in the controversies over town-lot drilling, pipeline outlets, use of casinghead gas, or more oil production than markets could absorb. The Texas Railroad Commission had to handle such questions not only as problems in industry operation but also as political disputes. As it managed them, it progressively defined its regulatory role; we will describe the most important stages in that evolution. x

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The Railroad Commission’s regulatory role also touches on a final significant topic, that of the emerging recognition of environmental issues. Problems such as how to store gusher production and how to handle oil-field brine and ‘‘cut oil’’ were not new when the industry emerged in Texas, but in Texas they took on vast dimensions. For example, the problem of disposing of the huge quantities of brine produced in the gigantic East Texas field in the late 1930s far outstripped difficulties in other fields. The problems were not new, but as we shall see, technology and engineering could not readily resolve them. Nor could the Texas Railroad Commission. Indeed, in some instances, the most up-todate practices led to results that are unacceptable today. Our work has been made easier and more efficient by the generous assistance of numerous librarians and archivists, especially D. Ryan Smith, director of the Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont, Texas, and the staffs of the Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University; the DeGolyer Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas; the Houston Area Research Center; the East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore; the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Library and Hall of Fame, Midland; and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon. We also wish to acknowledge the extended support provided by the J. Conrad Dunagan Chair in Regional and Business History at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, and by grants from the AbellHanger Foundation, the Hunt Oil Company, and the Strake Foundation. Some of these funds were administered by the Communities Foundation of Texas, in its customarily efficient manner. Ernest Angelo, Jr., provided valuable advice early in our project. We also appreciate the critical reading that Leo G. Byerley, Robert M. Leibrock, and Nicholas C. Taylor have given the manuscript and the suggestions they have provided in their specific areas of expertise: geology, petroleum engineering, and law. Whatever errors remain are most certainly ours.

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THE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP Was there enough oil in Texas to bother with? As misconceived as this question seems today, it was uppermost in the mind of Joseph Stephen Cullinan as he stepped off a train in Corsicana in the fall of 1897. Local oilmen had erected looming wooden derricks to drill more than a hundred wells, some of them completed in less than two days. The small field yielded sufficient crude to warrant refining and marketing facilities, but its production was modest by the standards of the day, and local entrepreneurs had neither the capital nor the connections to process and sell their crude. They needed Cullinan’s help to develop their assets. But, would it be worth his time? Cullinan had good reason to be skeptical: there had been earlier finds in Texas and none of them had proved to be commercially important.1 Long before there was a Standard Oil or an American petroleum industry, crude oil had been found and used in Texas. The survivors of De Soto’s expedition went ashore somewhere between Sabine Pass and High Island in 1543 and caulked their boats’ seams with petroleum tar they found floating on the tide. Much later travelers on the Spanish Trail are said to have used crude oil gathered from oil seeps to lubricate wagon axles. Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo settlers knew of numerous springs where oil seeped into water or shallow holes dug in the earth, and they experimented with petroleum for therapeutic or medicinal purposes, much as Americans in other parts of the country bought bottled ‘‘rock oil’’ from patent medicine hucksters. By the time Frederick Law Olmsted traveled in Texas in 1854, some enterprising persons in Hardin County had established a rudimentary spa and were exploiting petroleum seeps at Sour Lake. Visitors drank acidic, sulfury spring water and bathed in pools on which Olmsted saw floating ‘‘a dense brown, transparent

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liquid.’’ 2 A settlement with a similar seep thirteen miles away came to be called Saratoga, after the more fashionable nineteenth-century New York spa. In all these instances, people simply made opportunistic use of natural phenomena. No one had set out to find oil in quantity. The Pennsylvania ‘‘oil rush’’ generated by Edwin L. Drake’s discovery in 1859, however, put a new light on the economic potential of land with oil seeps, and that probably led some ambitious Texans to prospect for petroleum. The earliest Texas wildcatter on record, Lynis T. Barrett of Melrose, leased a tract near Oil Springs, about fifteen miles southeast of Nacogdoches, in 1859. The Civil War interrupted Barrett’s enterprise, but when the Confederate veteran returned to Melrose in 1865, he and several associates organized the Melrose Petroleum Company and began to drill a well, using an augur eight feet long and eight inches wide. By September 12, 1866, they had reached 106 feet, and oil 2

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bubbled up to the surface, making the well the first producer in Texas. But, as so many subsequent episodes in Texas petroleum history demonstrate, it is one thing to find oil and quite another to produce it in commercially profitable quantities. What Barrett needed was developmental testing, preferably on the part of experienced oilmen more amply supplied with capital. He went to Pennsylvania for help, and there he succeeded in tempting John F. Carll, who later wrote for the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, to try his luck in Texas. Drilling near Barrett’s well, Carll tried twice, finding some oil in his first test and none in his second, whereupon he returned to the more lucrative oil arena of Pennsylvania. That apparently ended Barrett’s aspirations.3 Thereafter, others tried their luck in the Oil Springs area and along Bayou Vistador but without enough success to make their oil finds of more than local interest. Between 1870 and 1890 several companies drilled wells, none deeper than roughly a hundred feet, and either bailed or pumped what oil they found. As many as one hundred wells may have been completed, but there were no gushers among them. Worse yet, from the point of view of attracting wider attention, the oil was high in sulfur and low in paraffin, which meant that it would not be desirable for refining into kerosene, the petroleum product then most in demand. The oil could serve as either lubricant or boiler fuel, and as such found application in lumbermills. By 1890 there was enough local demand to prompt construction of both a 14.5-mile pipeline from Oil Springs to the railroad at Nacogdoches and a small refinery near Bayou Vistador, but this activity had little impact outside its corner of East Texas. As nearly as anyone could see, Texas petroleum was of minor commercial value, though there had been many sightings of it.4 As a result of both random drilling and accidental encounters with petroleum in holes sunk for water, by the end of the nineteenth century oil and gas had been found at a great many places in the state. As William Battle Phillips, director of the Texas Mineral Survey, noted in 1901, ‘‘Time would fail us to enumerate all the localities at which small quantities of oil were obtained.’’ Sometimes, as in Washington County in 1879, a householder put the accidental discovery of gas to work for fuel and illumination. In southwestern Liberty County, at Dayton, where most householders’ water wells bubbled with gas, T. M. McGowan sank a six-inch pipe three feet deep in his backyard, put a funnel over the top of the pipe, attached another pipe from his house to the funnel, and used the gas for heating, cooking, and lighting. Texas first appeared in national statistics on oil production in 1889 when two wells originally THE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP

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drilled in 1886 in search for water on the Bexar County ranch of George Dullnig produced a yearly total of forty-eight barrels of heavy crude. Dullnig barreled and sold the crude as a lubricant, for the grand total of $7.08, and he used the gas from yet another well as fuel on his ranch.5 Most of the time petroleum thus encountered was put to no commercial use. For farmers, ranchers, and the residents of many a dusty small town in late-nineteenth-century Texas, water was far more valuable than dribbles of oil and puffs of natural gas. Finding oil when drilling for water was a grave disappointment and a waste of money. Nevertheless, the continual search for water eventually led to commercial oil production in Texas. In 1894, after several years of distressingly low cotton prices, Corsicana civic leaders recognized that as long as their economy relied on cotton and the majority of the farmers were tenants, prospects for local economic development were bleak. Businessmen, headed by lawyer James L. Autry, decided that Corsicana needed to attract industry. Were industry to locate in Corsicana, however, the city would have to increase the available supply of water. Autry and his associates organized the Corsicana Water Development Company in May 1894 and contracted with the American Well and Prospecting Company to drill three artesian wells inside city limits. The first site was on South Twelfth Street, about one block south of the Cotton Belt Railroad’s tracks. On June 9, 1894, at a depth between 1,025 and 1,035 feet, oil began to seep into the well shaft, an event neither expected nor desired. The drillers cased off the oil sand and continued to drill until they found water at 2,470 feet, but oil seeped upward outside the casing, soon saturating the earth around the well. Not long thereafter, the first of what would become a frequent event in the early Texas oil fields occurred: someone tossed a match carelessly and the spilled oil caught fire. After a second fire, the oil was drained through a ditch into an earthen tank.6 Though the Water Development Company had no use for the oil it found, two local businessmen, Ralph Beaton and H. G. Damon, decided to have the oil’s potential for refining tested by a laboratory in Oil City, Pennsylvania. When the chemist’s report was encouraging, they joined with Pennsylvanian John Davidson to form the Corsicana Oil Development Company and leased acreage around the water well. To go further, however, they needed capital and expertise, so little more happened until September 1895, when veteran wildcatter John H. Galey of Pennsylvania visited Corsicana. Galey agreed to drill five test wells for the Corsicana company in return for an undivided half interest in 4

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the company’s leases. In assigning half of that interest to his partner, James M. Guffey, Galey brought in another veteran prospector, one who would play a decisive role in the first decade of Texas oil.7 By industry standards, the five wells were modest. The first, coming in on October 15, 1895, produced only 2.5 barrels of oil per day (bopd). Four of the five wells produced oil—but only between 2 to 25 bopd, not enough to encourage more drilling by the Pennsylvanians or to attract investors to put capital into the Corsicana Oil Development Company. By October 1897, Guffey, Galey, and Davidson had all sold their interests in the venture. Thereafter, the company was dissolved, and Beaton and several other Corsicana businessmen formed the Southern Oil Company to pursue additional work. Though there had been no Corsicana oil bonanza, as a result of random drilling all around the Corsicana area, the small field had forty-three producing wells by the end of 1897 and had yielded almost 66,000 barrels during the year. Compared with the oil fields of Ohio and Kansas, this was not impressive, but it was a great deal more oil than had ever before been produced in Texas.8 It was also a great deal more oil than Corsicana producers knew what to do with. By the end of 1897, existing storage facilities were full, and producers started to run oil on the ground, a reflection not only of shortage of storage but of low prices and the prevailing fear of choking back wells.9 The basic problem was lack of industry infrastructure: Corsicana producers had oil, but they did not have pipelines, refineries, or marketing systems. Their crude oil could yield a high percentage of illuminating oil, but there was no refinery within affordable distance. To sell the crude for fuel oil required shipment out of Corsicana; there were railroads, but they had an inadequate supply of tank cars. Even if one could move the crude out of Corsicana, the market for fuel oil in Texas was still small; most fuel users still consumed coal or cordwood. In short, by the end of 1897, the efforts of Corsicana producers to develop the field on their own, without outside capital, had reached virtual impasse. The crucial breakthrough came when Corsicana mayor James Whiteselle invited J. S. Cullinan, managing partner of the Petroleum Iron Works in Washington, Pennsylvania, to view the field. After his visit, Cullinan interested Standard Oil directors Calvin N. Payne and Henry C. Folger, Jr., in investing through him in Corsicana development. He bought production, built gathering lines and storage tanks, and constructed a refinery, which began operation in January 1899. Cullinan worked aggressively on marketing. He urged area railroads to convert THE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP

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J. S. Cullinan, far left, and associates in Corsicana. API photo. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

to fuel oil; he persuaded the Corsicana City Council to coat unpaved streets with oil to keep down dust, which led Fort Worth, Waco, and other towns to experiment with oiling streets; and he pushed the development of Corsicana natural gas as fuel for local consumers. Most important, he reached an agreement with the regional Standard Oil marketing affiliate, Waters-Pierce Company of St. Louis, to handle the refinery’s output. That agreement not only solved his marketing problem but also enabled Cullinan’s refinery to operate at its full 1,000 bopd capacity.10 With Cullinan buying, selling, and refining Corsicana oil, local drilling and production soared. In the month of December 1898, alone, production exceeded that of the whole previous year. Production peaked in 1900, when yearly output of the field reached 829,559 barrels as the field was defined in an area about five miles long and two miles wide on the eastern side of town. Smaller pools, like the Mildred, Burke, and Combest fields, were discovered nearby. Typically, drillers hit oil at 1,000 to 1,100 feet, and wells on average cost only $1,000 to complete, a 6

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bargain. On the down side, average well production by 1900 was only 8 bopd, with very few wells making as much as 39 bopd; production was relatively steady but modest. These were conditions, however, in which small contractors and producers thrived; in fact, in 1900, of eighty well owners in the field, fifty-one owned only one or two wells. Corsicana provided abundant opportunities for small-scale capitalists to gain experience in exploration. Town-lot drilling meant many small tracts were available for lease, and oil at shallow depths brought quick well completions. How readily one could enter the industry at Corsicana can be seen in the example of local lease trader Claude Witherspoon, who began contract drilling with ten 1,000-foot wells, each for $400. With the profit from that contract, he bought his own rig for $2,000 and drilled for others and for himself.11 The small operator who kept costs down and did much of his own work found attractive opportunities at Corsicana. In terms of immediate impact on the petroleum industry, Corsicana oil was modest indeed compared with later Texas oil fields. In the longer term, it was tremendously important, for it showed that petroleum development could be profitable in the state, something that earlier exploitation of oil seeps and accidental discoveries had not demonstrated. While its development was not dramatic enough to command industry attention, it drew veterans like J. S. Cullinan, John H. Galey,

A long view of the Corsicana field in 1898. Permian Historical Society Collection, University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

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and James M. Guffey, who would play leading roles in Texas exploration and development in the following decade, and it brought the state’s potential to the attention of men in the nation’s industry leader, the Standard Oil Company. For these reasons, Corsicana is the effective birthplace of the Texas oil industry. In a number of other important respects, what happened at Corsicana was a harbinger of things to come. While Corsicana did not experience a level of activity or excitement at all comparable with Texas’s first major oil boom at Beaumont in the next century, it did have what amounted to a ‘‘mini-boom.’’ Many persons from out-of-state oil fields came to Corsicana; hotels and boardinghouses filled up, housing grew tight, saloons proliferated, and local merchants prospered. Town-lot drilling brought the state’s first forest of derricks, and wells were drilled in vegetable gardens and backyards. That meant living with noise and grime, and occasional oil spills. One Corsicana resident recalled seeing oil flow off the roofs of houses. In the end, local leaders were somewhat disappointed that Cullinan’s small refinery employed only a few dozen people, as opposed to hundreds, but development did create many other employment opportunities.12 Corsicana also marked the entry of significant numbers of Texans into the oil industry. Farm boys, mechanics, and water-well drillers learned oil field skills at Corsicana, and when the big Gulf Coast discoveries came in, these Texans entered the itinerant work force, joining the Pennsylvanians and Midwesterners already in it. The Hamill brothers, who brought in the great discovery in 1901, began drilling at Corsicana. Similarly, once Corsicana businessmen and property owners like James Autry, James A. Garrity, and William J. McKie learned the business, they became the first generation of Texas oilmen. Water-well driller Walter B. Sharp, for example, drilled unsuccessfully for oil at Beaumont before the Spindletop discovery, prospered as a contractor at Corsicana, and later emerged as president of the Texas Company affiliate, Producers Oil Company, and as a director of both the Texas Company and the Moonshine Oil Company after Spindletop came in. Walter W. Fondren began drilling at Corsicana and went on to become one of the founders of Humble Oil.13 Texans initially needed the expertise of experienced industry personnel, but at all levels they were quick to profit from what outsiders taught them. In terms of industry technology, Corsicana also foreshadowed future development when rotary drilling proved a quicker, more efficient way to drill than the cable tool rig. In 1895 M. C. and C. E. Baker arrived 8

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in Corsicana. They had been using a hydraulic rotary system to put down water wells in South Dakota. To facilitate drilling they pumped mud-laden fluid into the well bore to remove cuttings. When their equipment was used in Corsicana, wells that had taken weeks to drill reached pay in a matter of three to five days, an enormous savings in time and money. The Baker brothers got together with N. G. Johnson, E. H. Akin, and Charles Rittersbacker, the American Well and Prospecting partners who had settled in Corsicana and had a machine shop, and undertook production of rotary drilling equipment. Their American Well and Prospecting machine shop inaugurated the oil tool manufacturing industry in Texas.14 From Corsicana, rotary drilling came to be used almost exclusively on the Texas Gulf Coast. Corsicana development introduced familiar oil field problems as well as benefits to Texas. As in oil fields elsewhere, operators spilled crude and stored it in tanks that leaked. When drilling through aquifers to find oil, the operators were not meticulous about casing off waterbearing formations. Worse yet, if they got dry holes, they usually salvaged casing to use elsewhere and abandoned the holes unplugged. No one worried about aquifer damage, but water that could migrate from abandoned wells to ruin producing wells alarmed operators, and by early 1899 many Corsicana wells, especially on the edges of the field, produced more and more brine with their oil. J. S. Cullinan and a number of other Corsicana oilmen pushed Robert E. Prince, their state representative, to secure Texas’s first oil field regulation, House Bill No. 542, on February 14, 1899. The measure, which became law on March 29, required operators to case off upper oil- or water-bearing formations before drilling into oil pay; prohibited abandoning wells without plugging them with rock, earth, or cement; provided penalties for an operator or owner who did an inadequate plugging job; prohibited gas (but not oil) producers from letting gas flow without use for more than ten days; and restricted flaring gas in the field. Certainly this was a step toward responsible oil field operations, but its significance should not be exaggerated. The measure provided no monitoring or enforcement agency, leaving it to individuals to bring suit against offenders, and its focus was on avoiding damage to production rather than on concern for conservation or the environment.15 Though the Corsicana development began significant activity in Texas, it was still modest by national standards, producing less than 2 percent of U.S. crude oil in its peak year, 1900. With a daily average of 2,275 bopd, it was of minor importance in the industry, compared with THE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP

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the newer Appalachian fields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and even with the declining Lima-Indiana field in Ohio. Most experienced oilmen believed that there was commercially useful oil in Texas, but the major action was obviously elsewhere.16 In 1900, it hardly seemed likely that the new industry would have a widespread impact in Texas. Whether in the cotton farms of East Texas or the ranches extending over vast grasslands in West Texas, most people either worked in agriculture directly or their fortunes were tied to it. Politics was still dominated by local elites that found ways of exploiting national issues such as monopoly and antitrust, but antifencing measures were more likely to generate real heat in the legislature than were the national controversies. Before the first derrick rose, the economy of Texas was sufficiently well developed to offer a firm foundation for the emergence of the petroleum industry in the state. Between 1870 and 1900, Texas largely recovered from the economic losses brought by the Civil War. During the final decades of the nineteenth century, it experienced more beneficial economic change than the other states of the former Confederacy. The key to these developments was the rapid expansion of the railroads in the state, especially between 1875 and 1900, when the miles of track jumped from 1,650 to over 10,000 17 as Jay Gould and the other great system builders attempted to complete lines between major population centers. Thus, the Southern Pacific, to connect its west coast lines to New Orleans, built across arid West Texas to San Antonio and thence eastward to Houston, Beaumont, and Louisiana, while the Texas & Pacific built westward from the piney woods of East Texas. Within the state, in the meantime, promoters of port development in Houston, Galveston, and Beaumont completed lines that linked northern and central Texas with the Gulf Coast.18 Railroad construction gave a massive boost to the growing lumber industry. In rural East Texas, concentrations of lumber mills developed to process the abundant yellow pine. In 1880 alone, railroads ordered 500,000 cross ties, in addition to larger stock for bridge construction. The mills also provided freight for the lines, shipping one billion board feet during 1900. Beaumont, in particular, grew rapidly with the expansion of the industry, as its population nearly tripled between 1890 and 1900, when three of the largest lumber mills in the South began operations in town.19 Railroads further stimulated the Texas economy when they lo-

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cated operational centers in the state, including service installations in most major cities, among them Houston and Beaumont on the Gulf Coast. The railroads spun off manufacturing, particularly railroad car construction in Houston and Beaumont and machinery and foundry shops in those cities as well as in Fort Worth, San Antonio, and others. In sum, the railroads added important components to the nascent industrial capacity of Texas. The principal impact of railroad construction, however, was in the boost the completed lines, as an indirect effect of the complicated finances of railroad operations, gave to the expansion of agriculture in the state. Like railroads elsewhere, Texas lines were capital intensive and saddled with high fixed costs that varied little with the volume of operations. Moreover, railroad builders invested and constructed their lines on speculation; they laid lines and bought rolling stock in advance of the existence of sizable markets. When markets did not grow as fast as builders hoped, the railroads were strapped for income. Competition between roads did not help matters. By the early 1880s, competing roads had resorted to two strategies for staying solvent. They imitated Midwestern railroads and entered into rate pools, and they began aggressive marketing of the public lands they had received from the Texas legislature. The latter move had the short-term benefit of raising capital from land sales. In the longer term, railroads hoped that thousands of new farmers along their lines would generate freight business. Accordingly, railroads operated ‘‘immigrant trains’’ from relatively populated sections of Texas to the sparsely settled plains. Thousands of farm families piled their household furnishings, tools, and livestock into boxcars and headed to new homes. Some wet years in the 1880s and 1890s made it seem like the West Texas desert could bloom readily. Settlements named Eden and Garden City reflected the aspirations of both land promoters and their customers. Ohio land promoters labeled a dusty spot on the Texas and Pacific Railroad ‘‘Odessa’’ because they touted it as the American counterpart to the great Russian wheat-exporting port.20 As rails provided outlets to markets, acreage under cultivation expanded and production soared. Between 1870 and 1897, the cotton crop increased six-fold and the wheat crop forty-fold, with most of these market-bound crops moving over the railroads. By 1900, Texas farmers produced more than one-quarter of the whole U.S. cotton crop, a proportion they sustained thereafter.21 In 1900, there were 352,190 farms in Texas, 81.4 percent of them operated by whites and 18.6 percent by Af-

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Off-loading cotton in Galveston, ca. 1900. Houston Area Research Center, Houston Public Library.

rican Americans. The farms employed about 645,000 men and women and generated slightly more than one-quarter of a billion dollars in gross income.22 Farming was, however, none too solid a foundation for the further economic development of Texas. Unfortunately, at the same time that the number of farmers increased, prices were at best volatile, and they often went through steep declines; cotton prices fell by half and wheat by one-third.23 Falling margins and increasing land prices undermined the family farm in Texas, making it harder for the small farm to pay its way. Thus, increasing numbers of Texas farmers rented the land they worked, paying cash rents, as was the case with most African American tenants, or shares of crops, as was more common for Anglo farmers. Within the state, the extent of tenantry varied considerably, ranging from one-quarter of the farmers in Harris and Jefferson counties to more than two-thirds in Navarro County, site of the Corsicana oil discovery, but by 1900, half of Texas farmers were tenants.24 Local merchants provided operating capital for sharecroppers and renters, commonly by securing liens on forthcoming crops. In the end, after rents were paid, shares delivered, and liens honored, net income for many Texas farmers was scant to nonexistent. The railroads could provide essential transportation services for farmers, but they could not making farming profitable.25 Beyond the challenges of nature, the uncertainties of interna12

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tional markets, and the shortage of liquid capital in Texas, as Robert A. Calvert has observed, farmers were also held back by powerful limitations in their culture, notably illiteracy and conservatism. Few tenants could read scientific agricultural literature of the sort promoted by the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and even those who could afford modern techniques were reluctant to enhance production with fertilizers or protect crops with chemicals.26 In short, as a group Texas farmers were behind the vanguard of agricultural progress. After the Civil War, agribusiness also expanded in Southwest Texas and in the Texas Panhandle. Demand for beef by northern packing houses stimulated expansion of ranching in the near West, including Texas. Ranchers, vaqueros, and speculators drove herds from Southwest Texas to rail centers in Missouri and Kansas to cash in on the new demand. By the 1880s, ranchers had staked out large spreads and leased or otherwise used large expanses of public lands in the Panhandle, contending with growing numbers of farmers as rail facilities reached the area. Like the cotton and wheat farmers, the cattlemen faced the uncertainties of nature, which during the 1880s included crippling droughts and blizzards. Cattlemen also had to deal with the instability of markets, caused by overexpansion of beef production. The most efficient and best-financed cattlemen made money and held their spreads, while land companies and less successful ranchers sold tracts to farmers, who raised grain and, later, cotton on the dry lands.27 As railroads led to the growth of farming and ranching, so farmers encouraged the growth of allied industries to process their crops. In 1900, for example, there were 3,222 cotton gins employing 4,300 workers. Compresses were located in shipping and trading centers, principally Galveston, Houston, and Dallas. Galveston, the leading cotton port in the United States, handled 40,000 to 50,000 bales per day at maximum capacity. Cottonseed oil and cotton cake plants, 103 in number in 1900, employed 2,478 workers and ranked second as an industry in Texas. Cotton was still king, in the countryside and in the growing cities of Texas.28 Much of the growth of manufacturing and transportation was generated by small but aggressive groups of Texas entrepreneurs. Community leaders in Galveston and Houston, in particular, promoted port and railroad development to draw and accommodate the cotton trade. Earlier in the postwar period, a group of Galveston merchants led by George Sealy formed the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad to draw traffic from Houston. They invested heavily to build a short-line railroad exTHE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP

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tending 60 miles from town and then raised an additional $7.5 million to complete the line, which totaled 536 miles. Houston merchants obtained federal funds to make Buffalo Bayou more navigable and organized the Bayou City Compress Company and Houston Cotton Exchange to enhance their competitive position relative to Galveston. In both towns, the organization of the cotton trade required higher levels of business acumen and greater abilities to organize cooperative business relationships than had existed before the Civil War. Cotton and urban rivalry stimulated the development of increasingly vital business communities, and entrepreneurs in agribusiness and in lumber formed business networks that included private and national bankers as well as Texas political leaders.29 Expansion of agribusiness and lumber sustained record population growth to 1900 and beyond. Texas grew at about twice the national rate, reaching slightly more than three million inhabitants by 1900. The halfdozen largest cities—San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Galveston, Fort Worth, and Austin—grew, but none was very large. San Antonio, the most populous, had only 53,000 inhabitants. The state was, thus, still overwhelmingly rural, and economic life was organized around small farm-market towns and villages.30 Along with the great size of the state, rural population growth fostered sectionalism and localism in politics. The authors of the Texas constitution, devised in 1876 and still in effect today, reinforced localism by devolving the power of the Reconstruction government to the local level. They removed most of the appointive powers of the governor, for example, by making general officers and judges elected officials. They mandated biennial legislative sessions of short duration and prohibited a state debt and the state charter of banks. These provisions all had the effect of shifting power from the Governor’s Mansion and the Capitol to the circles of locally influential lawyers and businessmen who would, for more than a century, be the effective arbiters of policy and wielders of power within the strongly dominant Democratic party. Regional power brokers backed favoriteson candidates and formed coalitions in the party conventions, thus controlling the nominating process and determining the outcome of elections. Local elites found the tangible benefits of power rewarding. Local tax assessors, for example, were known to undervalue land for taxation, or keep it off the rolls altogether. Local judges were similarly loyal to the folks who nominated and elected them. One attorney general, John D. Templeton, learned this lesson anew in 1886 when he tried to bar illegal land enclosures by large-scale ranchers in the Panhandle. When Temple14

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ton stirred up a legislative investigation the following year, a rancher’s lobby headed it off.31 Texas legislators also courted local voters and rewarded political elites with massive sales of public lands at low prices, as when Governor Oran Roberts and a sympathetic legislature raised the amount of public lands purchasable by one buyer from three to seven sections; watered land sold at $2 an acre and unwatered land for half that amount, a potential bonanza for wealthy and influential Texans.32 Within the Democratic party, politics were lively, especially when economic hardship prompted dissent among the rising generation of would-be politicians, characterized successively as Populist and Progressive during the 1880s and 1890s. The Populists, led by rural editors, proposed currency reform and railroad regulation. The Progressives, largely led by young lawyers, picked up railroad regulation and antimonopoly rhetoric but avoided the vagaries of monetary policy. The ostensible leader of the Progressives was an ambitious and enterprising young attorney, James Stephen Hogg, who was elected attorney general in 1886. Hogg organized a circle of the brightest and best, sons of prominent families and ambitious young lawyers, who appealed to dissident farmers with antimonopoly slogans and, occasionally, lived up to their rhetoric.33 The one issue Hogg seized on most effectively was regulation of railroad rates and services, long the object of complaint by farmers, lumbermen, cotton merchants and processors, and their political allies. Building on his visibility as attorney general, Hogg sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1890 and succeeded in defeating George A. Clark, erstwhile secretary of state, attorney general, and appeals court judge, as well as the standard-bearer of the conservative Democrats. Clark was also the most prominent lobbyist in the state, representing railroads, brewers, Panhandle ranchers, and, on occasion, Standard Oil Company interests. As such, he made powerful friends— like the ranchers, who paid him $5,000 and were gratified when he killed a disadvantageous fencing bill in one afternoon. He also enjoyed the backing of the powerful Sealy interests in Galveston, guaranteed to produce campaign funds and near-unanimous newspaper endorsements. The railroads also boosted Clark’s candidacy, promising Jim Wells, leader of ranchers in Southwest Texas, a connecting line from the Rio Grande Valley in return for support in the election. The railroads, understandably, were most eager to elect Clark and thus avoid the creation of a regulatory commission, which Hogg had championed. Clark also appealed to the dwindling number of Confederate veterans, as well as their numerTHE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP

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ous progeny, by publicizing his extensive wartime service for the Lost Cause.34 Clark had powerful and wealthy backers, but he had also made strong enemies during his long career in Texas politics. The Anti-Saloon League and other progressives and prohibitionists resented his representation of the brewers.35 Powerful commercial interests, moreover, had reason to support the creation of a railroad commission. Lumber merchants as a group believed that high freight rates put them at a competitive disadvantage to the white pine industry in the upper Middle West. Cotton merchants in Galveston and Houston chafed at rates and service that favored St. Louis at their expense by discounting for long-haul traffic.36 Most of all, farmers objected to tariff schedules that increased when they finally made good crops. Clark, the railroad lobbyist, was no match for Hogg, candidate of the common man. After election victory against a weak Republican opponent, Hogg began work on creation of a railroad commission. He had valuable backing from U.S. Senator John H. Reagan, who left Washington to chair the new Texas agency. Together with two other commissioners, both former legislators, Reagan devised a rate system that was mileage-based. This satisfied the cotton lobby, including the influential Moody family, all of whom had supported Hogg against Clark.37 At the conclusion of two two-year terms, Hogg arranged the nomination and election of Charles A. Culberson, who was also supported by Edward M. House, son of a wealthy Houston banker, and House led Culberson’s successful gubernatorial campaign. House’s allies included Joseph Weldon Bailey, who enjoyed the support of George Clark and the interests he represented, as well as of the Sealy family, lumberman John Henry Kirby, and leaders of the business community in Dallas.38 Thereafter, political warfare between Bailey and his faction and the stillpowerful Hogg faction commonly focused on the real and imagined activity of Standard Oil and its related companies in the state. Though Clark and the other heirs of the Bourbon Democrats ordinarily dominated state government, by the turn of the century Texas politics had become too complex for any narrowly based interest group to control, and Texas was governed by coalitions with varying components. As the railroads and Standard Oil learned at the hands of Hogg and his allies in the oil industry, Texas politics resisted control of a single, tight-knit faction or interest, above all when that interest could be stigmatized as ‘‘foreign,’’ meaning non-Texan. By the turn of the century, business interests within Texas had also learned to achieve 16

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competitive advantages through political manipulation and regulatory control. It was a lesson they would apply to great profit in the future. When commercially important oil was finally discovered in Texas, the American petroleum industry was just over four decades old. Looking at the state of the industry at the turn of the century is important because the available science and technology, rudimentary by presentday standards, often determined the subsequent development of oil in Texas. In some ways, Texas was much like the older producing regions in the East. Most discoveries in the older producing regions resulted from drilling near oil seeps, as did the first economically significant find by Edwin L. Drake. In August 1859, Drake found oil in a creek bed, and other people were soon drilling up and down Pennsylvania creek beds. Then, in 1865, one enterprising firm successfully drilled on a hill above a creek, consequently including whole valleys in the search for oil. Thereafter, Pennsylvania wildcatters drilled along geographically defined trends, engaging in what was long called ‘‘random drilling.’’ Six years after Drake’s discovery, Cyrus D. Angell theorized that oil existed in belts, like underground rivers. His successful application of his belt theory gave rise to ‘‘yardstick geology’’—finding two producing areas, drawing a straight line on a map to connect them, and drilling along the line. Some oilmen resorted to divining rods, oil smellers, clairvoyants, and spiritualists to find oil. Whatever one did, there was no way to be certain of bringing in production, and professional geology offered little help to the oilman.39 Geologists disagreed on what was responsible for oil accumulation. Some argued that rock fissures allowed oil to accumulate—no fissures, no oil. Some thought oil could be held under disc-shaped lenses of rock. As early as the 1860s, some geologists argued that rock folds or anticlines, clearly visible in surface structures, trapped oil within them, but it was not until the 1880s that geologist Israel C. White said he had actually identified an anticlinal trap from surface structures and successfully found oil in it. White’s application of anticlinal theory would assume major importance in scientific oil prospecting after the first decade of the twentieth century, but before 1900 few oilmen expected much help from geologists in finding oil.40 For that matter, before 1900 few geologists found petroleum to be an exceptionally exciting study. To offer a Texas example, geologist Robert T. Hill, who did geological mapping for both the State of Texas and the U.S. Geological Survey, was best known for mapping the central Texas Blackland Prairie and parts of the Trans-Pecos region. For Hill and THE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP

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others working at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was so much exciting purely descriptive work to do throughout the American West that theorizing about a mineral of far less immediate value than gold, silver, iron, or coal was a lesser priority. Certainly, knowledge about petroleum was not high on the list of priorities for the first head of the Bureau of Economic Geology of the University of Texas, William Battle Phillips. Looking for a geologist in 1911, he hired University of Illinois professor John August Udden, whose specialty was potash.41 In any event, at the beginning of the Texas oil industry, professional geology had not yet assumed the importance it would ultimately have in oil exploration. Oil drilling technology was also in its infancy. Before 1900, oilmen usually drilled with cable tool rigs. These rigs worked by repeatedly dropping a heavy metal bit down on rock to break a hole through it. Early drillers often went through shallow aquifers without bothering to protect them with casing pipe. Cementing to control water was a twentieth-century innovation, and it took decades of experimentation to develop cements that would set reliably around casing in the well.42 If drillers were casual about controlling water, they usually had little or no control over gas when they encountered it. Hitting a pocket of highpressure gas could mean a blowout, in which tools, pipe, and parts of the derrick would shoot sky high and shower down on the countryside. Gas also presented a perennial fire hazard, and a blowout could easily turn to conflagration at the well site. In that event, oilmen could do little more than let the fire burn itself out. By present-day standards, most wells drilled before 1900 were shallow; at the time a 2,000-foot well was a deep well. Barring misadventures, the average well in a proven area could be drilled in a matter of weeks, depending on depth and formations, and cost several thousand dollars. To stimulate production in a well, it was standard practice in most locales to ‘‘shoot’’ it, to detonate nitroglycerin opposite the producing formation, thus shattering rock so that oil could move more readily to the well bore.43 Thereafter, the well was generally produced wide open, at top volume. Production ran into metal or wooden tanks, and once these filled, the oilman dug shallow earthen tanks to store crude. Everyone realized earthen tanks were undesirable, for crude occasionally leaked from them, and lighter petroleum fractions, valuable because they yielded kerosene, evaporated. However, there was often no practical alternative for storing large quantities of oil hastily produced.

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Particularly in flush fields, where the supply of crude oil outran demand, storage was a recurring problem. At this point, it is logical to ask why oilmen before 1900 and for some decades thereafter so often produced wells at top volume when it was inconvenient or even ruinous to do so. A combination of economics, technology, and legal reality was behind all-out or flush production. With respect to economics, the oilman hoped to recover his investment and make money by selling his oil; he did neither if he left it in the ground. Moreover, given the primitive state of work-over technology and the nonexistence of trained petroleum engineers to attack production problems, an oilman who shut in his well for an extended time might see it sand up or clog with paraffin. He could not assume that the well would resume producing at its former level—in fact, it might not produce at all. But the main incentive to produce all the oil one could as fast as possible was that the oilmen all around would do so. Because oil moved through rock, oil under a lease with shut-down wells would migrate into the wells of adjoining producers, enabling them to drain the lease. By 1900, legal convention, in the so-called law of capture, held that oil belonged to whomever produced it, so draining your neighbor’s lease was not stealing oil in the eyes of the law. If an oilman did not produce the oil he found, someone else would.44 The realities of oil production had a number of important consequences. On the field level, they meant that production often started strong and dropped off sharply within a matter of months. Reservoir pressure would diminish enough so that wells would need the pump and then produce declining amounts. Or wells would produce more and more brine water, virtually drowning out oil production. Either way, too little oil might be produced to be profitable. Oilmen were not the only ones who knew that production was often short-lived; bankers quickly learned that no prudent lender extended a loan on the basis of oil production. On the broader industry level, these production realities meant violent cyclical swings between times of boom and bust. When new fields came in, markets flooded with crude, purchasers had more than they could handle, prices fell, producers were pinched for cash, and local refiners turned crude purchased at distress prices into handsome profits. But when production dropped off and prices rose, these local refiners often found themselves short of crude and forced to buy at unprofitably high prices to stay in business. With the boom and bust cycles of the industry, its wild oscillations of prices, prudent oilmen had difficulty in

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planning ahead, and it was easy, either in production or refining, to go broke. Generally speaking, the most likely route to survival in either sector lay in increasing efficiency, lowering costs, and diversifying one’s exposure well beyond one field or locality to new fields and new markets. This last step, of course, mandated carefully planned growth. The company that had grown bigger than any other by 1900 was Standard Oil. Standard’s significant competitive disadvantage was political. As early as the 1860s, before Standard’s greatest growth, oil producers and rival refiners had perfected political infighting to gain competitive advantages. The rhetoric used in these political controversies was full of references to monopoly, conspiracy, and corruption. As Standard Oil grew in importance, then, its competitors were quick to use established techniques of political scrimmage against it, equating it with monopoly and political corruption. They saw that they could use political power to offset Standard’s overwhelming economic advantages, making its size work against it by hauling it up before state and federal investigatory committees and into court.45 Texans proved as inclined to use this avenue of attack as oilmen and businessmen elsewhere, and Texas politicians were as ready as their counterparts in other states to exploit anti-Standard sentiment. Of far greater moment in terms of oil industry regulation was what Texas politicians did in the area of antitrust. The state’s antimonopoly sentiment first appeared in the constitution of the Republic of Texas in 1836 and was retained in subsequent constitutions, including that of 1876. As in other states, the provision was understood originally to bar grants of exclusive privilege by the state, following the common law definition of monopoly. After the Civil War, interpretations changed, following shifts in economic and political contexts, resulting first in the bringing of antitrust action to bear on railroads and later on manufacturing trusts, especially Standard Oil. Beginning in 1889, states including Texas, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Carolina passed revised and expanded antitrust legislation. By the end of 1893, two territories and twenty-one states had constitutional or statutory barriers to the operation of trusts within their borders.46 The revised and broadened definition of monopoly, ‘‘a combination of capital, skill, or acts by two or more persons’’ to cause restriction of trade and lessen competition, affecting the prices of goods or services, was well suited to the defense of local interests. Beyond prohibiting action that produced the identified results, the Texas law, for example, spe-

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cially barred pooling, refusal to do business, sale below costs, giveaways, rebates, territorial marketing, and exclusive dealing. Under its general provisions, the law effectively banned both horizontal and vertical integration, and, under its enumeration of illegal activities, enjoined specific market behavior by vertically integrated companies. Leaving little doubt as to the intended beneficiaries, the law went on to exempt municipal corporations and agricultural producers, later adding advertising agencies, title abstract companies, mortuaries, and dance studios, along with medical practitioners, lawyers, architects, and other local providers of services.47 Texas, like many other states, had also moved to protect its wholesale and retail merchants against the new competition spawned by the railroads, drummers, and integrated corporations. Manufacturers’ representatives were placed at a relative disadvantage because the state required them to purchase and renew licenses. Integrated corporations were barred from the state by prohibitions of vertical integration and of sales incentives and premiums that were commonly employed elsewhere to expand market share. Thus, an unincorporated local merchant could cut prices and offer rebates without violating state law, but a corporation—a structure required by legal and capital requirements of modern ventures— could be called up short for minor technical violation of these statutes. The antitrust laws were thus highly useful to Texas merchants in removing the competitive advantages of larger and nationally integrated corporations. They were also useful to Texas politicians. After the memory of the Lost Cause, most successfully manipulated by the Bourbon Democrats and their successors, the most useful symbolic issue in Texas politics was monopoly. The James Stephen Hogg circle, in particular, used the issue to attract and keep the support of farmers, who had strong complaints against railroads and the short-lived trusts that had monopolized two agricultural essentials, binder-twine and jute. In 1894, during Hogg’s final year in the Governor’s Mansion, the state pursued the antimonopoly crusade by indicting John D. Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, and other leaders of Standard Oil, in a case exploited for maximum publicity. Hogg made a formal request for extradition of Rockefeller from New York and Flagler from Florida, invoking an imaginative interpretation of the ‘‘full faith and credit’’ clause of the U.S. Constitution. New York and Florida governors declined, but Texas saw the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and achieved a technical victory.48 In 1895, at the urging of Texas

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wholesalers, the state filed twin suits in Austin and Waco against local agents of Waters-Pierce, an aggressive St. Louis marketing company in which Standard owned a half interest. After additional publicity, during which Attorney General Martin M. Crane emphasized that Standard controlled 99 percent of all of the oil business in Texas, one agent was fined $50.49 Two years later, Waters-Pierce, defended by George Clark, was hauled into district court in Austin again, in proceedings alleging that the company had violated the terms of its 1889 charter by engaging in monopolistic operations in concert with the Standard Oil Company. The verdict against the company was upheld by the Texas Court of Civil Appeals in March 1898 and by the U.S. Supreme Court the following year.50 Once again, Texas wholesale houses proved adept at exploiting popular sentiment and political leverage to deprive the national firm of its competitive advantages of scale and scope. Once again, Texas politicians had demonstrated to ‘‘foreign’’ capitalists that they could exercise a large measure of control over business activity in the state, if they were so minded. At the very least they could create exceptional impediments for a firm based outside the state. Standard, of course, was not without allies of its own. Working with George Clark and Henry Clay Pierce, U.S. Representative Joseph Weldon Bailey, the emergent leader of the successors to the Bourbon Democrats, intervened for the company, which was rechartered in May 1900. When his role was questioned at the Democratic State Convention in August, Bailey concocted an exchange between Pierce and himself: Bailey: Mr. Pierce, I don’t believe the people of Texas ought to and I do not believe the people of Texas will tolerate the methods of the Standard Oil Company. I would rather go back to the tallow candle than do it. . . . No, Sir; you haven’t got money enough to hire me. I would not be employed for such a purpose. If you want to abide by the law you won’t need a lawyer.51 Hogg’s rejoinder, cheered wildly, won the day: ‘‘The material question presented by the re-permission of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company to do business in Texas is: Shall Texas, or the Trusts control?’’ 52 Although Bailey recouped quickly and engineered his election to the U.S. Senate by the legislature, on January 23, 1901, it was clear that anyone raising the issue of monopoly against Standard Oil could rely on a predictably unfriendly political environment for that company. The cry of ‘‘monopoly’’ would bring tangible advantages to its competitors. When oil was dis22

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covered at Spindletop, Texas, oilmen were quick to exploit that advantage.53 Before 1901, the pickings were small, but the new century brought new opportunities for politically adept Texans, most especially when the discovery of oil near Beaumont opened an era during which the oil industry transformed the economy of the state and the lives of millions of Texans.

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THE FIRST GREAT BOOM At Corsicana, Joseph Stephen Cullinan had demonstrated that with enough energy and experience, an oilman could make money in Texas. At Spindletop, many individuals without prior experience, but with assets and advantages of their own, made their fortunes in oil. It was also at Spindletop that Texas oil captured the attention and imagination of the nation. By any standard, its gushers were prodigious, in scale unlike anything seen before in America. Photos and engravings of Spindletop crude shooting high above derricks, cascading like rain, and collecting in enormous lagoons amazed readers of national magazines. Locally, the gushers provided ongoing entertainment. At Spindletop and other early Gulf Coast oil fields, people drove out to the oil field on a Sunday afternoon, and operators treated them to the sight of wells roaring wide open. Early on, these wide-open wells also acquired additional commercial value. Promoters rapidly learned that the quickest way to pry dollars from would-be investors was to promise a gusher. What was remarkable at Spindletop was the number of times honest operators were actually able to deliver on such promises.1 For more than a decade, however, the prospects of finding oil on the site had seemed consistently dim. Local landowners had long known of gas and oil seeps in the area, but few imagined that the earth would yield more than these scant traces of hydrocarbons. It took an exceptional amount of imagination to read nature at a time when science offered so few reliable aids for finding oil. One Beaumont man, something of a local eccentric, sniffed riches in the stray whiffs of gas on Spindletop hill and foresaw a petroleum empire dwarfing John D. Rockefeller’s. He envisioned vast cities built to house the people who would drill the wells and transport the oil, refine it, and ship it around the world. Even

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in a more credulous age, few people believed him, because Pattillo Higgins was something of a cross between genius and village eccentric, and that is how his neighbors understood him. The son of a Beaumont gunsmith, Pattillo Higgins was intelligent, ambitious, and supremely self-confident. He was also a nonconformist, long-winded, and more than a bit odd. When he became interested in oil, he was making a comfortable living as a land trader and owner of a brickyard. Planning fuel consumption for brick kilns led Higgins to consider natural gas, already used at brickyards near oil fields in the North. He visited some northern oil fields, began to read about geology, and in his typical fashion, hatched a grand scheme: he would find and produce oil and gas near Beaumont. Then, he would build oil refineries, pipelines, and a deepwater port. Next, he would construct a totally planned modern city, with iron smelters, brickyards, glass manufactories, and other industries. His model metropolis would have schools and parks, and he would name it after his favorite Sunday school student, Gladys Bingham. Before he had drilled a foot of hole, Higgins had planned the economy and infrastructure of Gladys City, Texas. By temperament Higgins was an incorrigible dreamer and promoter, types sometimes valued in Gilded Age Texas, but his schemes always escalated to such fantastic proportions that, however sound his initial insight, it was difficult for practical people to take him seriously for very long. Few people in Beaumont did so.2 The site Higgins picked for prospective bonanza was a low mound, three and a half miles south of Beaumont, standing about ten to fifteen feet higher than the surrounding plain. From a distance, the stand of timber on the hill gave it the appearance of a top surmounted by a loom THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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spindle, hence, ‘‘Spindletop.’’ It was well known in town that there were gas seeps on the mound and that in places gas bubbled up through springs, making a noise one man described as like ‘‘a bunch of ducks feeding in the woods.’’ 3 Higgins, walking over the mound, guessed that where there was gas there would be oil, and he promoted a venture to find it. Whatever local investors might have thought of prospecting for oil, however, the rest of Higgins’s scheme, together with his reputation for eccentricity, discouraged potential investors. Only his fellow Baptist church member and former boss, lumberman George W. Carroll, backed his grand project, co-signing a $5,000 note to purchase a 1,077-acre tract covering about half of Spindletop. George W. O’Brien, the local lawyer who owned the land, was sufficiently impressed by Carroll’s participation in the venture to join it by contributing the oil lease on his land. J. F. Lanier, another mound landowner, joined the group, and in August 1892, the directors of the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company held their first meeting.4 There followed three years of frustration for everyone involved. Higgins’s fellow directors soon discovered that he was anything but pliant to work with. Higgins could not bring his fellow directors to believe that he alone knew intuitively how deep oil was or how the well should be drilled. The first contractor, the inauspiciously named M. B. Loonie, who had just completed a city water well, subcontracted the work to young Walter B. Sharp, but in March 1893, they abandoned the hole at a little over 400 feet. Two years passed before the company could finance and organize another test, this time by leasing property to James and Walter Savage, West Virginia drillers who had prospected unsuccessfully at Sour Lake. Over strenuous objections from Higgins, the Savages drilled, and—as he expected—they failed. The main problem was a quicksand-like formation encountered below 300 feet; drillers found that penetrating it was like trying to bore a hole in a pile of wheat. By the end of 1896, Pattillo Higgins had quit the venture with a view to striking out on his own, and the remaining directors were disinclined either to follow him or to continue.5 Higgins had to find money to go farther, but he now faced the liabilities of his promotional style, the recent failures, and the handicap of scientific skepticism. While still in the Gladys City company, Higgins had decided it would be easier to raise more funds if a recognized geologist agreed that oil lay below the Spindletop mound. He had contacted the Texas State Geological Survey, and it sent out its expert on the geology of southeast Texas, William Kennedy. Higgins had read enough geologi26

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Pattillo Higgins. Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont.

cal work on anticlines and oil accumulation to convince himself that the mound was an anticline and, when showing Kennedy around the mound, probably exposed the geologist to his opinion at some length. Kennedy knew that whatever Spindletop was, however, it was not an anticline. For that matter, he decided there was no empirical basis for belief in the presence of commercially significant quantities of oil and gas at Beaumont, Sour Lake, or anywhere else in the area. Far worse for Higgins, in an article published in the Beaumont Journal in March 1895, Kennedy called ventures to explore for oil in the region ‘‘idle dreams or insane notions of irresponsible parties.’’ 6 Lest this judgment seem like a gratuitously nasty and rash response to an overexposure to Pattillo Higgins, it should be noted that before 1900, geologists held differing opinions as to the origin and underlying structure of the mounds along the Texas Gulf Coast. What they could say with certainty was that these low hills scattered here and there on the Coastal Plain did not resemble oil-bearing structures in other places. Thus, in 1900, when C. Willard Hayes and E. W. Parker of the U.S. Geological Survey looked at Spindletop, they came to much the THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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Anthony F. Lucas. Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont.

same conclusion as Kennedy. Practical oilmen arrived at the same judgment. When Calvin Payne and Joseph S. Cullinan looked at the hill in 1900, they concluded that it did not look like any oil field they had ever seen.7 Gas seeps notwithstanding, Spindletop’s anomalous nature condemned it. That condemnation by scientists and veteran oilmen made no difference to Higgins, who was ever supremely confident in his own intuition, and he would not abandon his scheme. Instead, Higgins concluded that what he needed was a truly knowledgeable mining engineer who would see the merit of his belief, and he advertised for one in various mining journals. As luck would have it, Anthony F. Lucas answered the ad and, for a wonder, took Higgins seriously. A naturalized U.S. citizen born in Dalmatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Lucas had worked as a salt-mining engineer for a number of years at Petit Anse and Belle Isle, Louisiana. His work gave him more familiarity with salt domes than the hard-rock geologists had, and as a result, Higgins’s theories about the presence of oil sounded less far-fetched to him than they did to others. Better yet, Lucas had some capital to put into exploration. With Lucas’s money, the two men leased 663 acres on Spindletop from the Gladys City company, which was delighted to have some return on what had looked like a total loss. 28

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In recognition of Higgins’s idea, Lucas gave Higgins one-tenth of the deal. They then began their test in June 1899, but by the end of the year, having drilled as far as 575 feet, familiar problems put an end to the venture. There had been a show of oil, so Lucas was not ready to give up, but he was out of cash.8 To finance a second test, Lucas decided to turn to experienced oilmen, and his search for funds eventually led him to Henry C. Folger, Jr., of the Standard Oil Company. In turn, Folger sent his friends Calvin Payne and Joseph Cullinan to take another look at the prospect. After reconsideration, Cullinan is said to have opined that he would not invest in the project, even with counterfeit money! 9 But a plea for help from Lucas to University of Texas professor William Battle Phillips led him to John H. Galey and James M. Guffey. They had been daring enough to risk drilling at Corsicana, so they might be open to another try, this time at Spindletop. Galey inspected Lucas’s operation in September 1900 and decided that another test might be successful. Galey and his usual partner, Guffey, were next able to interest the Mellons, Pittsburgh bankers and erstwhile oilmen, in contributing to the venture. Accordingly, the group formed the J. M. Guffey Company to lease additional acreage and drill once more at Spindletop.10 The new company gave Lucas a one-eighth interest in return for his property and investment, but Pattillo Higgins was left out. This was a harsh turn of events indeed for the man whose vision it had been to prospect for oil at Spindletop in the first place. On the other hand, Higgins had not actually invested in the prior test, so there was nothing tangible that required compensation. By September 1900, moreover, Lucas had endured months of working with Higgins, whose ego was insufferable. The polite, obliging Lucas probably accepted Higgins’s exclusion with the proverbial sigh of relief. In any event, the founding of the new company brought a permanent rupture in relations between the two men. When Lucas wrote his history of the venture, he omitted Higgins from the story. In turn, Higgins told anyone who would listen that he alone was responsible for the ultimate success at Spindletop. As he would inform an interviewer half a century later, if oil was bringing millions of dollars into Texas, ‘‘Bud Higgins done it . . . but I get no credit.’’ 11 For the new Spindletop test, the J. M. Guffey Company hired experienced Corsicana contractors Curt, Allen, and James Hamill, who got under way at the end of October 1900. As usual, just about everything that could go wrong at Spindletop did. When the Hamills and their crew set out from Beaumont to the well site, one of the mules pulling their THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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wagon sank so deeply in the mud of Pearl Street that they had to cut the harnesses to release the animal. At the site, the shack they bunked in crawled with small frogs and swarmed with mosquitoes. Somehow they had to build a derrick, though it turned out that no one on the Hamill crew had actually done that before. The timbers for the derrick were wet, green wood, straight out of the Neches River and of uneven dimensions—2.5 inches thick on one end and 1.5 inches on the other. The only compensation for this deficiency was that lumberman George Carroll was so sure their project would fail that he told them that the lumber would be free—if they found oil.12 Once the Hamills had erected the derrick and begun to drill with a rotary rig, their experience and resourcefulness were invaluable. They had not gone far before they encountered the familiar problem of caving in the quicksand formation. They improvised by making their drilling fluid into a thicker mud, and to achieve the improvisation, they had a local rice farmer mill his cattle in the stock tank from which they had been drawing water. Eventually the caving became so serious that they tried running casing as if they were using cable tools, effectively bashing the casing down through the caving sand. This required hauling the casing up into the derrick on a rope and letting it fall. The work involved in this effort was so hard that one member of the crew quit, leaving the Hamills short-handed. Next, there was a gas blowout once they got past the caving sand. Still, they were determined to reach the 1,200-foot depth stipulated in their contract, and by the morning of January 10, 1901, they had reached a depth of about 1,020 feet.13 Then the well came in. First, gas blew drill pipe, rocks, and mud high over the derrick and covered the derrick floor with mud. This commotion was followed by what the Hamills thought was a cannon shot. And then frothy green oil rose, slowly at first, and then with a deafening roar, turning into a six-inch column gushing to over twice the height of the now-mangled derrick. The crew had no way to control the gusher, so the eruption ran wild, covering nearby land with crude oil and creating an oily spray that carried on the wind to turn white houses in Beaumont into a dirty yellow gray. Lucas was in town when the well roared in; arriving at the well site, he responded to what had happened by exclaiming, ‘‘Thank God, Thank God!’’ Later that day, a Houston Daily Post reporter found Lucas so excited he could barely talk: ‘‘He merely hugged the reporter and pointing to oil as it sailed high into the air, said, ‘Its equal can not be seen on this earth.’ ’’ 14 Certainly its equal did not exist in America. There had been gush30

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The Lucas gusher, 1901. Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont.

ers before, but not the size of this one, which seemed to grow day after day, rather than subside as Pennsylvania wells had done. As the well roared on, crews with mule teams scraped out earthen tanks to hold the oil. The flow was too strong for these efforts, and oil went down the hill and began to back up like a lagoon beside the Sabine and East Texas Railroad grade. Lucas brought in a trainload of sand to dam it up, and within four days the oil lagoon was four to six feet deep. It took nine days for the resourceful Hamills to devise and install the first primitive multiple-valve control, a Christmas tree, on the well. By that time Spindletop had already experienced the first of many oil field fires. Only three days after the well roared in, an onlooker dropped the inevitable THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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The Hogg-Swayne Syndicate tract, 1903. Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont.

match. Quick action on the part of the Hamill brothers and others kept the well site from exploding into an inferno.15 The size of the Spindletop gusher ensured that virtually every oilman who could get to Spindletop did. The earliest arrivals came from Corsicana, among them J. S. Cullinan, Thomas J. Wood, and James Garrity. Walter Sharp announced that he was shipping in five rigs. David R. Beatty, a Galveston real estate promoter who had gotten into the Corsicana action, lost no time finding acreage and beginning to drill. Within a week, Samuel M. ‘‘Golden Rule’’ Jones, whose Acme Sucker Rod Company of Toledo had an outlet at Corsicana, opened a branch in Beaumont, and the Pittsburgh Oil Well Supply Company was only a few days behind him. Galey, who reached the scene on January 13, predicted accurately to reporters, ‘‘The future of Beaumont is assured by this discovery,’’ something Beaumont residents had probably not thought to question. A few days later Robert Pew, of the Sun Oil family, arrived. Quite apart from oilmen, hordes of sightseers found their way to Spindletop. On Saturday, January 19, for example, a special excursion train arrived with more than fifteen hundred people from Galveston. 32

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Some of these visitors were curiosity seekers, but others were businessmen and investors who previously had had little interest in oil. The Lucas gusher changed many an investor’s mind. Last, but by no means least consequential, well-connected and powerful politicians came to town, including former governor James S. Hogg and other notables, ready to seize economic opportunities and to position themselves to receive whatever considerations non-Texan investors might choose to show them.16 Tall and stout, Hogg was larger than life in many regards. Adept at keeping antimonopoly and business interests yoked in his powerful faction of the Democratic party, Hogg commanded attention and respect wherever he went in Texas, and his arrival in the oil fields was as likely to capture front-page coverage as the completion of a major oil well. He was the stuff that both power and legend were made of. C. M. Rork recalled his presence in Beaumont: He used to sit in front of the Crosby House with a little old battered straw hat on top of his head. One time I heard a young man engage him in conversation and I heard him ask, ‘‘Governor, how does a fellow tell oil land?’’ The governor lapsed into the backwoods vernacular, in which he often spoke, and said, ‘‘Well, son, it’s about this way: if it hain’t no good for nothing else, it’s a good sign; and if the title is bad, it is a cinch.’’ 17 Though Hogg’s advice incorporated the humorous folk wisdom of the oil finders, it acquired additional truth and memorability because Hogg was certainly more than an oilman; he came close to being a cultural force in Texas. Hogg’s oil group included James W. Swayne, a Fort Worth attorney and former legislator; R. E. Brooks of Georgetown, an attorney and former state district court judge; A. S. Fisher, another Georgetown attorney; William T. Campbell, a newspaper publisher from Lampasas; Roderick Oliver, a Groesbeck banker; E. J. Marshall, an influential Beaumont attorney; Harris Masterson, an attorney and politician from Brazoria County; and T. E. Moss, a Houston attorney and developer. Organized into the Hogg-Swayne Syndicate, they began operations in July 1901 by acquiring from J. M. Guffey an exceptionally valuable fifteen-acre lease on Spindletop for $180,000, a bargain price. Later in life, Guffey made no bones about what he bought, political clout: ‘‘Governor Hogg was a power down there and I wanted him on my side because I was going to spend a lot of money.’’ 18 THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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Guffey claimed that he was after protection against preemptive entry by the Standard Oil interests, a somewhat unconvincing explanation given the industry giant’s reluctance to make large and direct investments in Texas in view of its legal entanglements in the state. Standard knew it faced a political climate that was decidedly hostile. But Hogg was strong medicine in Texas politics, a fact that Guffey and everyone else at Spindletop knew, and oil development could raise problems with political dimensions. In the absence of a general right-of-way law, for example, an aspiring pipeline operator without political connections could encounter time- and money-consuming interference from state and local officials. At Spindletop, the Jefferson County commissioners, should they feel so inclined, could contest pipeline transit under any county road or property in the Beaumont area. They did not do so when the powerful former governor and his friends acquired such transit, but industrialists without the proper political connections could anticipate problems. With the Hogg circle’s support, Guffey’s own pipeline met no political obstructions. Long before additional derricks went up and drilling began, land trading at Spindletop and in the adjacent area took off, as oilmen, local businessmen, and speculators bid against each other for choice tracts and leases. Within three months, land that had been considered barely worth the taxes levied on it escalated in value to $100,000 or more an acre. That prompted eventual litigation about land titles, whose questionable elements had hitherto excited no one’s interest. It also meant that a person with acreage could make a tremendous amount of money by selling or leasing tiny parcels to those eager to drill. One-thirty-second of an acre was deemed adequate for a well site, and many a derrick went up on what the Oil Investors’ Journal called ‘‘door mats,’’ lots no larger than fifty by fifty feet! No wonder that in some places the legs of derricks touched; derrick men were said to place planking from the top of one derrick to another as a catwalk escape route in a blowout. Speculation in acreage revived Pattillo Higgins’s fortunes, for he had leases near the Lucas well. He sold them for $5,000 and stock in the Higgins Oil and Fuel Company, organized by lumberman John N. Gilbert and W. S. Davidson, W. M. Carroll, and L. B. Pipkin, all Beaumont businessmen. Only a few years before Gilbert had tried to cut short one of Higgins’s promotional harangues by saying, ‘‘Pattillo, I know very little about oil, and you too, and I wish you’d quit bothering me with it.’’ 19 Land trading was all the more hectic because, geologically speaking, Spindletop was still an anomaly. The most obvious place to drill 34

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The oil field of Texas. Houston Post, 1901.

was near the Lucas well or, failing that, somewhere on the mound. If the mound were a surface feature of a buried anticlinal fold in which petroleum lay trapped, there was the possibility that drilling adjacent to the mound would be successful. But there were observers who thought the mound itself was irrelevant to accumulation of oil. Phillip H. Fall told the Houston Post that there was a large underground river of oil running from Corsicana through Beaumont and out into the Gulf, where it accumulated in a huge underground lake. As he explained it to the reporter, if one could sink ‘‘an immense iron pipe’’ into this lake, one would get enough oil to ‘‘supply the world for centuries.’’ There was evidence of this undersea bonanza in a part of the Gulf itself not far from Sabine Pass, where seafarers had long noted that otherwise rough seas became unaccountably smooth, the effect of oil seeps. Fall also explained that wells near Corsicana, because of the higher elevation, had to be pumped, rather than gushing as the wells did in Beaumont. Other selfstyled experts subscribed to the oil river theory, hypothesizing that the river ran all the way from Colorado. If these theorists were to be believed, any well drilled above the underground river would produce abundant oil. That notion opened up millions of acres to oil prospectors.20 Notwithstanding such geological theorizing, until additional acreage proved productive, the selection of drill sites would owe more to luck than to reason. Moreover, since level-headed observers knew that THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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one gusher, however large, did not ensure an oil field, prudent investors waited to see if more would follow. They did not have to wait long. During the last week of March and the first week of April, a sequence of additional gushers roared in for D. R. Beatty, the J. M. Guffey Petroleum Company, and Higgins Oil & Fuel, showing that Spindletop was indeed a major oil field. These additional wells generated the excitement that created an all-out boom.21 Now newcomers arrived not just from all parts of Texas, but from all over the United States. They poured off the extra trains railroads ran and thronged the city streets. The wealthiest, luckiest, and first to arrive found rooms at Beaumont’s Crosby House, the one local hotel that aimed for gentility, while others found shelter wherever they could—in spare rooms, back rooms, barber shops, pool halls, and backyards. Saloons proliferated, both in Beaumont and out at Spindletop. As the Oil Investors’ Journal noted, ‘‘The old inhabitant tells you whiskey is your best friend . . . it keeps off the malaria and improves your sociability.’’ Everywhere newcomers went in Beaumont in 1901 and 1902, they waited in lines for services. The wait for food at Crosby House was commonly two hours. One participant paid a dollar for a better place in line. Another stood in lines a block long at restaurants and saw men sell their places in lines in front of the post office and privies. Not uncommonly, fist fights broke out if someone seemed to be taking unfair advantage by cutting into a line, a breach of oil field etiquette that was not tolerated. A Texan, John Little thought that northerners started most of these fights: ‘‘The northern people don’t believe in six shooters and cuttin’. They believe in fightin’ with your fists.’’ There is no evidence, however, that Texans either shot or cut anyone during place-in-line disputes. The throng of newcomers also caused immediate sanitation problems in Beaumont: problems with water and waste disposal contributed to problems with dysentery—which newcomers dubbed ‘‘the Beaumonts’’— and typhoid.22 The deluge of newcomers, of course, vastly enhanced the economic opportunities of those who provided services. Telephone operators extracted bribes from anxious oilmen, saving the latter up to a two-day wait to complete long-distance telephone calls.23 Any kind of restaurant, however primitive, did a thriving business, and waiters who promised prompt service were able to extort large tips in advance. Hack drivers charged $5 to $10 for one-way trips from the Beaumont railroad station to Spindletop and never lacked customers. Within days of the

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discovery, one local cleaner had capitalized on the excitement with an advertisement: . . . if you ventured near the geyser When you should have been much wiser And your clothes got full of Lucas grease, The spots I’ll all remove and Press them slick and smooth And in your pants I’ll put the proper crease. And by patronizing me, you Help the town you see— And that’s been the tried and proper caper, And in one year from this date Bradstreet us high will rate And I will build a 90-story scraper.24 The cleaner’s humorous promise to build a ninety-story skyscraper lampooned the boom-time get-rich-quick mentality that reached fever pitch by the summer of 1901. Asserting that the boom eclipsed the Klondike, a spokesman for the newly organized Beaumont Oil Exchange and Board of Trade described the mood: ‘‘Oil insanity [was] strictly monomania. Food, drink, and raiment were forgotten. The oil-crazed man or woman lived on oil. . . . They never thought of sleep as long as they could keep their eyes open. They heard nothing but oil and they talked nothing but oil.’’ 25 It was beyond Beaumont’s capacity to accommodate everyone who wanted to do business. The Crosby House subdivided its porches and then its garden into areas where aspiring land traders and stock floggers could operate, but when that space was snapped up, traders did business from chairs in its lobby. Saloon owners rented corners of barrooms to those who could not squeeze into the Crosby House. Some promoters realized that it would be easier to do mail-order promotion almost anywhere else, since such businesses could be done almost anywhere. Accordingly, Beaumont’s boom spilled over to Galveston, where, by the spring of 1902, an enormous quantity of securities sales literature was produced and distributed. The Houston Post reported that the jobs of several hundred Galvestonians were tied to printing and preparing circulars, and it was all the Galveston post office could do to handle the material.26

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The Log Cabin Saloon, Gladys City. Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont.

As in many an oil boom before and after, much that was for sale in the Beaumont boom was strictly speculative and often bogus. So notorious did Beaumont oil promotions become that Spindletop became known as ‘‘Swindletop,’’ and many an investor with dreams of getting rich quickly, got poorer shortly. Some promotions failed because their organizers lacked capital, expertise, and staying power. Others were shaky from the beginning. The Oil Investors’ Journal, for example, took particular delight in belittling operations like the Reverend J. B. Cranfill’s oil company, which went belly up in 1902 after Cranfill had solicited thousands of dollars from Baptist clergy. While the mania to get rich ran strong, little could keep investors’ dollars from promoters, honest and dishonest alike. As gusher after gusher came in, there was scant encouragement for caution.27 Among oil promoters, men vastly outnumbered women, but as was true during later booms, when the action was hot enough, women joined in, offering stocks, leases, or properties to eager investors. Thus, Mrs. Louisa F. Smead, Mrs. Agnes Hageman, Mrs. D. A. Stump, Miss D. C. Scott, and Miss Maude Wisdom organized the Young Ladies’ Oil Company in Beaumont in 1901. Smead was from New York City and Scott from Fort Smith, Arkansas, but the other directors lived in either Beaumont or Port Arthur. As their promotional squib put it, ‘‘With a 38

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vim, dash, and solidarity that fairly takes the breath of the men, they have, within ten days . . . secured 2500 acres of leases in good territory, taken title to land on Spindletop, erected a derrick, started a drill, and they will have a gusher some morning that will startle the country. . . . the stock goes by wholesale blocks . . . the old fogy oil companies had better wake up or the young ladies will sweep the country.’’ How far the Young Ladies swept is not known, but they did not, in fact, challenge the ‘‘old fogy oil companies’’ at Spindletop, however much their investors may have hoped for it.28 To oilmen, the enormous volume of Spindletop gushers offered the most irresistible incentive to investment. True, in a matter of weeks, rentals and bonuses on leases skyrocketed. It also cost between $8,000 to $10,000 to complete a well, as compared with $1,000 or less at Corsicana. But, more than offsetting such economic realities, there were few dry holes on the hill, and wells came in with staggering production, measured in thousands of barrels per day. Even when crude oil prices dropped below ten cents per barrel, as they did in the fall of 1901, producers still made money. Eager to find buyers for their oil, many oilmen

Patrons at Mrs. Keenan’s Boarding House, Spindletop, 1902. API photo. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

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The Beaumont Oil Exchange, 1902. Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont.

signed long-term sales contracts, agreeing to deliver thousands of barrels of crude at low flush production prices. They were as caught up in the boom-time ‘‘can’t lose’’ mentality as anyone else, and they assumed that at Spindletop, so unlike other oil fields in many other respects, the gushers would never subside.29 By the spring of 1902, there were ominous signs that these expectations were wrong. Here and there, after no discernible pattern, some wells ceased to flow, and declining production in some wells raised the inescapable fear— denied vigorously in print by producers—that all wells would soon decline in the field. By autumn, 1902, not only were an increasing number of once flowing wells on the pump, but quite a number were producing more salt water than oil. Here was the phenomenon oilmen dreaded, for saltwater incursion was seen as an undeniable sign that the field would soon cease to be profitable. As saltwater problems mounted in ensuing months, some commentators looked for parties to blame. Some looked no farther than irresponsible drillers who had not properly cased off water when they drilled. The Oil Investors’ Journal blamed small-tract drilling, but the most creative charge came from the Fort Worth Telegram in September 1903. In what the Oil Investors’ Journal termed a ‘‘jackassy story,’’ the Telegram reported that the Standard Oil Company was pumping sea water from the Gulf 40

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of Mexico into Beaumont oil wells in order to ruin them and make it easier for Standard to buy up the field cheaply. While this charge was no more ridiculous than many levied at Standard, it reflects both mounting alarm over deteriorating conditions in the field and the inability of the operators of the time to cope with brine problems.30 If water was a problem underground, fire was a worse one above it. Initially, as the Lucas well showed, gusher production created storage problems only partially resolved by digging earthen tanks or damming up natural low points. Lucas’s great lake of oil, backed up against the railroad grade, caught fire from a spark from a passing locomotive on March 3, 1901; in the gigantic conflagration following, thousands of barrels of oil went up in thick, black smoke. As development progressed on tiny tracts, moreover, what happened at one well site very quickly affected those adjacent. Thus, in September 1902, a workman carrying a lantern near a wooden settling tank on the Hogg-Swayne tract ignited a blaze that at one time threatened to engulf the entire field. The fire caused an estimated $100,000 loss in oil and equipment and left a large part of the tract in ruins. In fact, the possibilities for disaster were far more profound than even this incident indicated, for Spindletop wells ordinarily produced large quantities of gas, sometimes so thick on the hill that one could ‘‘almost cut it with a knife.’’ Ordinarily over a hundred workers a day suffered respiratory distress from exposure to it. Under these circumstances, it is amazing that carelessness did not take a greater toll in lives and property.31 Water problems and fire notwithstanding, new wells continued to produce Texas crude. Spindletop yielded 17,420,949 barrels of crude oil during 1902, but by mid-year it was obvious that the field’s production was waning. In response, the price of crude began to rise. For many producers, that brought a new set of problems even more serious than those of water and fire. Locked into contracts to deliver crude at 3 to 15 cents per barrel from wells no longer flowing, producers saw oil prices rise to 50 to 60 cents. Company after company went to the wall. One of the largest was the Lone Star and Crescent Oil Company, with seven and a half productive acres at the heart of Spindletop; steel storage tanks at Spindletop, Gladys City, and Sabine Pass; docks at the Pass; and twentyseven miles of pipeline linking those docks to the field. Caught in a long-term contract with terms it could not meet, the company went into receivership and was purchased by the Pew interests of Philadelphia. Many others, far less ambitious, suffered the same fate, so much so that in October 1903, the Oil Investors’ Journal offered to sell its THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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readers a list of failed companies it entitled ‘‘The Morgue: A List of the Dead Ones.’’ 32 By mid-year of 1902, oilmen had drilled 380 wells in the field, which was surrounded by a retinue of dry holes, some drilled as deep as 3,000 feet. Despite a promising two-hundred-acre extension in 1903, the field continued to decline rapidly, producing half as much oil in 1903 as in 1902.33 Long before Spindletop wound down, however, its bonanza prompted wildcatting all over the Gulf Coastal Plain and elsewhere in Texas. Virtually any hill jutting up from flatlands or any place with an oil seep or oily paraffin dirt was a likely target for the drill. Between 1901 and 1905 alone, there were wildcat tests at Barber’s Hill in Chambers County; Big Hill in Jefferson County; Bryan Heights, Damon Mound, Hoskins Mound, and West Columbia in Brazoria County; Blue Ridge in Fort Bend County; North Dayton, South Dayton, and Davis Hill in Liberty County; Pierce Junction in Harris County; High Island in Galveston County; and Piedras Pintas in distant Duval County. These tests found little or no oil, but the hope of another Spindletop kept prospectors active. Among the most prominent wildcatters were the J. M. Guffey Company, Walter Sharp’s Producers Oil, and D. R. Beatty. The Guffey Company, in particular, drilled at Big Hill, Bryan Heights, Damon Mound, Dayton, and High Island without success, at the same time it brought in production at Sour Lake, Saratoga, Batson, and Humble. Such widespread wildcatting required large investments in leases, as well as in labor, equipment, and ancillary facilities like storage and pipelines when production came in. So keen was the race to find oil that in 1909, even after several years of diminished activity, over 800,000 acres were under lease on the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain.34 As Spindletop fever spread, prospecting was not limited to oilmen or the Gulf Coast area. Seeing what oil had done for the economy of Beaumont, city fathers in many a struggling small town could wonder if they, too, should look for an oil El Dorado. By May 1902, for example, residents of Brownwood had invested in three oil companies organized to search for oil in their vicinity; Mayor John McMinn was treasurer of one firm. At Rusk, landowners hired ‘‘expert oilmen’’ to locate and drill a wildcat well for them. Typical of this sort of enterprise was that launched by Mineola residents. An old ‘‘colonel,’’ locally known for his claim to have been one of Quantrill’s raiders, told locals that the hill outside town lay 800 feet over oil. In response, Mineola residents organized the Bluebonnet Oil Company, invested in shares, and hired Claude Witherspoon to drill a single well test— only one would be needed to 42

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bring in flush production, according to the colonel. While carpenters erected the derrick, Mineola ladies sewed an over-sized blue bonnet, with which they topped-off the derrick. The local preacher prayed for success. As Witherspoon put it, ‘‘they were all pepped up.’’ But, alas, when the drill reached 800 feet, there was no oil. Revising his prophecy, the colonel predicted a gusher at 1,500 feet. When drilling finally stopped at 2,000 feet, without success, no one in Mineola was bothering to visit the rig; their enthusiasm and savings were spent.35 Back down on the Gulf Coast, however, wildcatters continued to find new salt-dome fields. The most significant finds in the two years after Spindletop were Sour Lake in March 1902, Saratoga in 1902, and Batson Prairie in October 1903 (all in Hardin County). By the end of 1904, according to one estimate, 3,210 wells had been completed along the Gulf Coast, a number that rose sharply following the discovery of the Humble field in Harris County in January 1905.36 The hottest Gulf Coast discovery between 1905 and 1910 was Goose Creek in Harris County. Because a salt dome was visible on the ground, almost any operator of any size tried to find oil on it. In June 1908, after two years of prospecting, a group of Houston oilmen—including R. A. Welch, organized as the Goose Creek Oil Company— brought in an 800-barrel well at 1,600 feet. Pattillo Higgins claimed that he had long known that a great oil field would be found at the site, a claim that the Houston Daily Post took as evidence that Higgins was ‘‘a genuine oil expert from an scientific stand point.’’ 37 Unfortunately, offsetting wells at the site were less prolific, and field development slowed until another optimistic wildcatter drilled to 2,000 feet eight years later. Like Spindletop, the other early Gulf Coast fields were located on salt domes, and their first stages had many similarities. In all of them, persons and firms active at Spindletop were active in exploration and development. When activity peaked in one field, prospectors moved on to the next, creating a phenomenon typical for decades to come: a cluster of familiar faces in a string of new locations. In all fields there were many wildcatters, and some of them drilled on very small tracts. Sour Lake, for example, had its Shoestring District, a section of leases so narrow that derrick legs virtually touched. Gushers of several thousand of barrels of oil per day were common in the initial development and production of all of these fields. Production was shallow—Walter Sharp brought in an enormous Sour Lake gusher at only 380 feet, and nothing was as deep as 1,500 feet. Drillers completed wells quickly, 450 of them in the Sour Lake field by June 1903, and initial flush production comTHE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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Pier rigs at Goose Creek. E. L. DeGolyer, Jr., Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

monly paid their bills in a few weeks. In all, the economics of exploration were highly rewarding for successful wildcatters in the early Gulf Coast fields.38 The early Gulf Coast fields also presented the same obstacles and shared a common pattern of development. Isolated in the swamps of the Big Thicket, Sour Lake, Saratoga, and Batson all posed severe problems to contractors and operators when they shipped in equipment. In rainy weather, the boggy tracks through woods and marsh became impassable; 44

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reliable transportation waited for the construction of railway spurs. Even at Humble, on the Houston East & West Texas Railroad, feeder roadways became so muddy in February 1905 that pipe and equipment accumulated at the freight depot for days on end until teamsters could make their way to the well sites.39 As soon as operators got drilling equipment, however, they proceeded at a headlong pace, completing more gushers. Gas blowouts also were a frequent and serious problem in these fields, more so than at Spindletop, and many a well was ruined when the

Oil rigs in the Humble field. E. L. DeGolyer Jr. Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

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driller tapped an unexpected pocket of high-pressure gas. At Humble, for example, initial tests by George Hart and C. E. Barrett resulted in blowouts that ruined their wells. Higgins Oil & Gas No. 1 had a blowout so huge that the roar of escaping gas could be heard for miles; rocks and debris choked the well, whereupon gas erupted in other wells and turned crayfish holes nearby into little geysers. Experience and experimentation were applied to this problem, and by the time the Humble field came in, H. R. Decker and others had experimented with various blowout preventers. However, under field conditions at Humble, the innovations were far from fail-safe. Nor did drilling mud, concocted on-site from earth and water, do much to prevent blowouts.40 What disturbed oilmen most about the pattern of development in these fields, however, were rapid peaks and declines. As at Spindletop, wells in these fields sanded up and ceased to gush after several weeks of flush production. Stimulation with compressed air provided a temporary revival in some wells, but the wells all went on pump in short order. Then, after several more months, water incursion occurred, and wells produced increasing quantities of water or brine with diminishing amounts of crude oil. Saltwater production and disposal were serious problems at Sour Lake by the end of 1903, at Saratoga and Batson by the end of 1904, and at Humble, after only two months of intensive development, by mid-March, 1905.41 Neither petroleum science nor drilling and production technology had advanced far enough to address such water problems. As late as the 1920s, production experts’ only effective recourse for identifying the source in a well that was making water lay in starting at the bottom of a well and, level by level, plugging it with cement until the water ceased to flow. At that point the well would not be producing water— or oil. In oil fields in other areas, drillers learned to use metal casing shoes, packers, and cement to seal off water formations as they drilled, but the soft caving formations encountered in Gulf Coast salt domes made these expedients unreliable. In short, no one had an effective method either of preventing water problems or of resolving them once they happened, and especially when crude prices were low, it did not pay to separate oil from water. No wonder water problems were cause for alarm.42 Operators and technical experts alike regarded saltwater incursion as signaling the end of profitable production. Thus, the recurrent Gulf Coast pattern of gushers followed by saltwater incursion made the future of Texas as a significant oil-producing state questionable and cast doubts on its suitability as a site for long-term investment. Other areas, 46

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like Oklahoma, were far more attractive by contrast. Still, the fact remained that these Gulf Coast fields had yielded about ninety million barrels of oil by the end of 1905. The big question for the industry in Texas was how many more comparable discoveries would take place in the future.43 It was also obvious after 1905 that not every hill, deposit of paraffin dirt, or gas seep overlay a petroleum bonanza. Beside the well-known success stories were set notable disappointments, like Barber’s Hill, where Pattillo Higgins promised the Houston Post he would find production that would dwarf Spindletop, with a field twenty miles long, or Bryan Heights, where seven tests between 1901 and 1904 produced only deadly hydrogen sulfide. Elsewhere, in North Texas, Walter Sharp’s Producers Oil and others found modest production at Petrolia in Clay County in 1904, but no one was excited by 500 barrels of oil per day (bopd), his yield in the new field.44 Though the Gulf Coast gushers of 1901–1905 played out, the effects of this era of discovery proved longer lasting, setting in motion developments that were important for decades to come. In no area was this more noticeable than in the entry of Eastern capitalists into the state’s petroleum industry. Some of them were experienced oilmen. John E. Crosbie, born in Petrolia, Canada, had entered the industry with his father, developing properties in Ontario, moving on to Sumatra, and arriving in Beaumont within a few weeks of the discovery. Marcus L. Lockwood, long-time Pennsylvania oilman, Standard Oil critic, and politician, arrived from Kansas and organized the Sabine Oil and Marketing Company. Both men did exceptionally well, Crosbie in property dealings and Lockwood in speculating in stored oil, which he bought at three cents a barrel and held until prices neared one dollar. Texas was, indeed, a magnet for entrepreneurial talent and capital from many corners of North America.45 Of greater long-term significance, the widespread publicity given Lucas’s discovery brought a rush of Texans into the oil business. Lumbermen who took part included John D. Cameron, George W. Carroll, F. L. Carroll, E. H. Lingo, John Henry Kirby, Jesse H. Jones, William Wiess, V. Wiess, and Mark Wiess. These men organized a variety of companies—including the Yellow Pine Oil Company, Paraffine Oil Company, and the Lumberman Oil Company—acquired leases, and placed investments with drillers and promoters. Dallas dry-goods merchants, including Alex Sanger and Sam Marcus, took their chances on Beaumont Oil and Refining and the Rebecca Oil Company. Cattlemen joined THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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them: John Scharbauer of Fort Worth invested in the Globe Oil Company and in the Buffalo Oil Company with John T. McElroy of Midland and Pecos. W. E. West, Jr., invested in the Hugo-West Oil Company, and George West in the Cattlemen’s and Consolidated Oil Company. Thus, apart from local promoters and the developers who flocked to Texas from other states, prosperous Texans sought to become even richer from the new discoveries.46 Business circles of great future significance for the Texas petroleum industry were formed in Beaumont and along the Texas Gulf Coast. As noted, Anthony Lucas brought the independent partnership of James M. Guffey and John Galey to Spindletop. After the discovery, Guffey, back in Pittsburgh, approached members of the Mellon family, bankers and investors, for development money, which led to a new corporation, the J. M. Guffey Petroleum Company, a production company that sold crude mainly to the Shell Oil Company during its first year.47 Guffey then organized a new 12,000 bopd refining operation, Gulf Oil Refining Company, and distributed shares to stockholders in Guffey Petroleum Company. Guffey and the Gulf Refining Company of Texas were reorganized into Gulf Oil Company in January 1907, when the venture needed more funds to build its 405-mile pipeline to the new Oklahoma fields. Guffey sold his interests to the Mellons, long represented at Gulf by W. L. Mellon, and the Gulf Pipe Line Company was organized.48 Members of the Pew family, producers, transporters, and refiners in Ohio, also were keenly interested in the possibilities of oil in Texas and dispatched J. Edgar Pew to Corsicana in 1898 to investigate a partnership with J. S. Cullinan, who needed capital at the time. In 1901, Robert C. Pew purchased several profitable leases in the Beaumont area and recommended that the family company, the Sun Oil Company, take advantage of low crude-oil transportation costs in Beaumont by building a pipeline to Port Arthur and purchasing or chartering ships. After J. Edgar Pew returned as Sun’s Texas representative in March, the Pews executed this strategy through organization of the Texas Transit Company, the purchase and conversion of a Great Lakes ore carrier, the S. S. Paraguay, and the construction of a refinery at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, to process Texas crude.49 Thereafter, with J. Edgar Pew in Texas, the Sun interests bought leases at Sour Lake and Batson, acquired the pipeline and storage facilities of the Lone Star and Crescent Oil Company at a sheriff’s sale, formed Sun Pipeline Company (Texas), and built and acquired more ships. By the end of 1904, the Sun interests 48

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Texas Company’s Port Arthur works in 1903. Texaco Star, October 1941. Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

held place alongside Gulf and the Texas Company as major players in the state.50 Another corporate giant, the Texas Company, was born at Beaumont, with even greater long-range significance for the development of the industry, largely because of the complexity and political dimensions of the interests of various members of the company. One was Joseph S. Cullinan, its founder. After Spindletop came in, he renewed his efforts to interest Standard Oil in the new discovery, failed again, and responded by forming his own purchasing and pipeline company, the Texas Fuel Company. Using the 37,000-barrel storage facilities at Sabine that he had built to hold Corsicana crude oil, Cullinan enjoyed a significant competitive advantage over other buyers, who lacked storage capacity. Thus, he purchased large quantities of oil at flush production prices of pennies a barrel, leased tank cars, and shipped crude to his tanks at Sabine. Cullinan’s major customers for this oil were Standard and two railroads, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, and the Southern Pacific, which purchased fuel oil through its Rio Bravo Oil Company. As he watched the Guffey-Mellon-Gulf group expand their operations, Cullinan realized that his initial advantages would soon be lost unless he could expand the scale of his operation, largely by imitating the classic Standard Oil model of vertical integration from production through refining.51 Lacking Standard Oil’s capital, Cullinan pursued a plan of paying for integration on a gradual basis, first operating as a producer and buyer of crude oil until he could afford to move into refining. He then sold most of his refined products to Standard, until he could finance his own marTHE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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keting organization. Finally, Cullinan’s ventures extended into marketing, using the Texaco product name for the first time at the end of 1902.52 Cullinan’s next opportunity to expand came in 1902, as the colorful and enterprising group of Texas politicians grouped around former governor James S. Hogg ran out of financial resources to continue their operation. Though masters of politics, the Hogg-Swayne circle was unfamiliar with many of the pitfalls of the oil business, and costly errors meant that despite the windfall tract from Guffey, they were short the capital necessary to ride the tide of opportunity at Spindletop. After a highly publicized trip by Hogg to England failed to raise capital from British investors, his group received overtures from Cullinan. HoggSwayne’s political power was useful to Cullinan as it had been to Guffey, but of special value were more tangible properties, especially a refinery site in Port Arthur and, most important, a pipeline right-of-way to the site. Hogg and Cullinan agreed on the disposition of the syndicate’s option on the refinery site and their pipeline right-of-way, which were given to the Texas Fuel Company in exchange for half of the company’s shares. The Hogg-Swayne group also received indirect benefits from joining Cullinan. The Texas Fuel Company, for example, used a Port Arthur bank controlled by William T. Campbell and Roderick Oliver.53 Campbell and Oliver had also operated the Producer’s Oil Company, with money from John W. ‘‘Bet-a-Million’’ Gates, but they ran short of cash in 1902. Walter Sharp, a major driller and independent producer, bought into the venture and became president, selling a block of his stock to Cullinan in exchange for shares in the Texas Company, which succeeded Texas Fuel. Cullinan also bought into the Paraffine Oil Company, organized by three Beaumont businessmen: William Wiess, one of three members of a prominent lumber company family who ventured into oil; Judge William L. Douglass; and S. W. Pipkin. Along with these powerful connections, Cullinan relied on James L. Autry, a long-time associate from Corsicana days. Autry, a former county judge, served as a director and as the general attorney for the Texas Company.54 The Texas Company had assets ranging from oil wells to refineries and high-octane Texas politicians. Opportunities in Spindletop oil gave rise to a weblike network of business and political connections that was not limited to the original investors and well-financed outside operators who came to Spindletop. Locally influential Galveston figures jumped into oil, among them Frank B. Moody and W. L. Moody, who were connected to the Hogg and Texas Company circles. Local power rival John Sealy participated in half 50

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a dozen companies and maintained ties with U.S. Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey (an opponent of the Hogg faction), John Henry Kirby, and the Standard Oil interests.55 Both Galveston-based factions did business with Walter Sharp, who, in turn, connected with the Wiess family of Beaumont and hence to the Texas Company and W. E. Davidson. Davidson, in turn, was in businesses with the Texas Company, Gulf, and the Heywood family from California, along with W. C. Tyrell of Austin and Charles E. Anderson, an Austin attorney and law partner of Governor Hogg. Anderson also did business with Davidson, William Wiess, and John Henry Kirby. Kirby, a wealthy timberman and developer, associated with Judge James H. Robertson of Austin, Hogg’s law partner and erstwhile prosecutor in cases against Standard Oil,56 in a large lease play near Sour Lake. Kirby also paid Joseph Weldon Bailey $149,000 on retainer to have his ear and the benefits of his political connections in Texas.57 In Houston, influential attorney and erstwhile state representative for Houston J. C. Hutcheson represented Robert Kleberg and J. B. Wells, large landowners and major political powers in South Texas. Hutcheson also did business with J. W. Lee, associated with the Texas Company. Lee’s brother, T. P., briefly employed by the Texas Company, went into business with J. S. Cullinan to develop the Farmers’ Petroleum Company, along with James L. Autry and Will C. Hogg, son of the then late-governor. In 1916, they reorganized their ventures into the Republic Production Company and American Petroleum Company, later American Republics Company, a large and powerful independent company. Thus, early on and for decades thereafter, the Texas oil industry consisted of some visible large companies, some conspicuously successful independents—and some who were merely conspicuously conspicuous—and, above all, of circles, and of circles within circles. What circles and firms had in common was the aggressive involvement of major elements of the pre-oil economic, social, and political elites of the state. A major dispute in the legislature in 1905 provided an incontrovertible demonstration of the value of politically powerful friends. In January 1905, Beaumont’s state representative, Walter B. Myrick, introduced a bill that would let companies engaged in transportation and storage of oil produce and refine it as well, establishing an exception to the Texas antitrust law. In response, small producers met in Beaumont, organized the Oil Producers’ Association of Beaumont, and hired Robert A. John, an Austin attorney, to fight the Myrick bill. At hearings, the local interests repeated antimonopoly mantras, warnings about the perils of big business. John charged that the Myrick bill would THE FIRST GREAT BOOM

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‘‘enable the great capitalists of the North to seize complete control of the Texas oil industry,’’ successfully playing on antisectional feelings that predated the Civil War and flourished after it. By way of counterattack, Representative Chester H. Bryan of Houston introduced a bill that would bar transportation companies from production and refining and place transportation and storage costs under state regulation. Passage of Bryan’s bill would result in a considerable loss for the Gulf and Texas companies, which now shifted their efforts from enactment of the Myrick bill to defeat of Bryan’s. The Hogg connection rallied to the campaign, which ended in the defeat of both measures.58 By the time the Myrick bill failed, the first great Texas oil boom, touched off in spectacular style by Spindletop and extended in Sour Lake, Batson, and Humble, had run its course. Action continued up and down the Texas Gulf Coast, and in many other places locals tried their luck at finding their own oil bonanzas. In terms of fever-pitch activity, however, Louisiana and Oklahoma stole the show from Texas. The boom having deflated, it remained to be seen whether the next years would see consolidation and solid growth, or whether boom would lead to bust. At the end of 1905, one could wonder which alternative would unfold.

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AFTER THE BOOM Between 1905 and 1910, the Texas petroleum industry, so dazzlingly advanced at Spindletop, entered a period of consolidation and steady growth. The drama of the first great gusher in 1901 was relived but it was not repeated. In its place, the less noticeable advances in the economy, more sophisticated means of organizing ventures and of spreading risk, and expanded blue-collar employment built a durable foundation for the industry. As the oil industry expanded, Texans confronted two inter-related problems, the shortage of venture capital in the state and the possibility that the recruitment of powerful backers from elsewhere would lead to lost opportunities in business for Texans and to a loss of political power by local elites. As matters turned out, Texans did much more than hold their own. Key to Texan dominance of the state’s emerging petroleum industry was control of politics at all levels. Keeping political power in their own hands, Texans accepted capital from outsiders, but strictly on their own highly advantageous terms, as the story of Standard Oil’s gradual involvement in the state dramatically illustrates. After 1903, the Standard Oil Company reassessed its policy of not investing heavily in Texas and attempted to become a major player in the new Texas petroleum industry. Still smarting from its previous misfortunes at the hands of Texas courts, Standard limited its visible presence in Texas to the purchase of crude oil, which it shipped to East Coast refineries. When Standard decided to take a larger role in Texas developments, it did so covertly through George Burt, an oil buyer and refiner whom it financed. This indirect and relatively small-scale entry was no doubt intended to evade the provisions of the Texas antitrust law as well as opportunistic attacks by better-connected Texas competitors. By 1904, the

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Burt refinery had expanded and reorganized as the Security Oil Company, a London company financed by Standard of New York (known by its cable address, SOCONY) through the Anglo-American Oil Company, its affiliate in England. At the end of this labyrinth of companies, Burt operated a refinery near Beaumont, a product pipeline to Sabine Pass, and pipelines to the new fields that followed Spindletop. He did not compete for leases, choosing to remain a large buyer of crude oil in the general region.1 Burt’s aggressive search for the cheapest possible feedstocks for his refinery gave a group of Texans an opportunity to profit at Standard’s expense. As Gulf Coast crude prices rose in 1906, Security announced that it would ship cheaper Oklahoma crude to its refinery. When the state barred this course with an injunction, Security took up its gathering lines in the Humble, Batson, and Sour Lake fields and organized large-scale rail shipments of Oklahoma crude. These shipments reached 8,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd), and the company planned expanded shipments to reach 12,000 bopd, further depressing the income of Gulf Coast producers. The Texans were quick to obtain legal and political remedies.2 The opening shot was fired in 1906, when Texas Attorney General Robert Vance Davidson, an erstwhile investor in the Beaumont and East Texas Oil Company, prepared a new antitrust suit against Waters-Pierce. When the case was tried the following year, a Texas jury convicted the company of illegal operations and levied fines of $1,623,000, a finding that was upheld on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Davidson later ran for the Democratic nomination for governor on the strength of this conviction and the size of the fine. Fighting Standard made good politics in Texas, so much so that the Waters-Pierce suit was followed by one against Navarro Refining, Security Oil, and Union Tank Line Company for antitrust violations. With little doubt as to the outcome of a prospective trial, Standard dismantled some of the Burt refinery and shipped it to Baton Rouge, out of harm’s way. Once Security was convicted, the State of Texas sold the Security Oil properties to John Sealy for $85,000, a token amount. In turn, Sealy parlayed Security Oil into a large stock position in the Magnolia Oil Company when the company was organized in 1911. To carry out his coup, Sealy went to the dispossessed for money. He secured funding from a New York bank associated with SOCONY, which was, in turn, controlled by Standard Oil of New Jersey (SONJ). Sealy, with 7.5 percent of Magnolia’s stock, and his brother-in-law, who was given 3.75 percent of the stock, thereafter represented Standard’s Texas connection, without further inconvenience to the industry giant.3 54

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The New York Times, commonly a critic of Standard, described the action against the Standard interests in Texas as being as ‘‘near capital punishment and burial in quicklime of the malefactor corporation’s remains as the Texas lawgivers could imagine.’’ Standard paid the price of not being connected to the political elite of Texas. Gulf’s transportation of Oklahoma crude and the Texas Company’s importation of oil from Mexico were not popular with other Texas producers, but both companies were well enough connected in Texas political and business circles to avoid draconian prosecution.4 After the U.S. Supreme Court–mandated breakup of the Standard Oil Company in 1911, one of its components, SOCONY, acquired 45 percent of the stock in Magnolia in 1918, adding an additional 25 percent two years later. John Sealy and the other Texans on the Magnolia board continued to control the voting stock of the corporation, and thus Sealy still headed the company when he died in 1925. On paper, what he and his associates had was not nearly as valuable as the properties SOCONY acquired with the interest in Magnolia, but their continued control of the company was clearly the price the New York company paid to hold a significant place in the Texas petroleum industry. As they had demonstrated in the past, the Texans were more than able to hold their own against powerful outside capitalists. As this episode exemplifies, the Texans were never at the mercy of large integrated oil companies. In 1907, as Texas producers were caught between rising exploration and production costs and declining production from the Gulf fields, they protected their holdings from hardship purchases by Standard, Gulf, and the Texas Company by working effectively through the legislature. The producers’ efforts resulted in the adding of severe amendments to state antitrust statutes, which made violations felonies and punished convicted firms with expulsion. Eight years later, Texas producers, organized as the Texas Oil Producers and Landowners Association, defeated an attempt by the Texas Company to secure legislation legalizing integrated operations under a single charter, something the company had been doing quietly for some years. As political trading progressed, however, the producers abandoned their opposition to any integration with a producing company and, in return, secured two important changes. The first was an act making all pipelines common carriers (1917), and the second was a measure that permitted an integrated company to include all phases of the oil business except pipelines. Pipelines had to be incorporated separately, though an oil company could own all the stock of such a pipeline company. Once AFTER THE BOOM

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The Texas Oil Syndicate. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1908.

again, the Texans proved adept at using their considerable leverage in state politics to protect and advance their interests, especially in production. As for the apparent concession to the Texas Company, in fact a number of Texan-owned producers were associated with the larger companies in pipeline and storage ventures, in technical violation of state law. The compromise legalized not only the long-standing status of the Texas Company, but of these independents as well.5 Political and industrial leaders, despite their determination to control the activity of outside capital in the Texas oil industry, realized that the development of the holdings of the Texas Company, Gulf, and Sun— for that matter, development of the state’s petroleum resources—required outside capital. Without it, the market for Texas crude would 56

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have been small and unrewarding, limited largely to what had existed at Corsicana in the 1890s. The modus vivendi that emerged during the first decade after Spindletop left Texas oilmen in control of the production of crude oil, but outside interests held transportation, storage, and refinery facilities adequate to absorb their crude oil. The investment patterns of this decade clearly reflect this arrangement. According to one contemporary estimate, about $36 million was invested in the Texas Gulf Coast oil industry by mid-year of 1904. Of that amount, about one-third went into exploration and production, where the Texans dominated. The larger balance was invested in downstream facilities—pipelines, refineries, loading docks, and wholesale facilities—more largely financed and operated by non-Texans.6 The sequence of events triggered by the Spindletop discovery not only had a profound effect upon Texas petroleum investment and business but also gave a tremendous push to the economic development of the upper Gulf Coast. The population of Jefferson County, already growing with the expansion of rice farming and lumber processing before Spindletop, doubled between 1900 and 1910 and again between 1910 and 1920. Beaumont, the principal city, swelled from about 330 inhabitants in 1890 to 40,000 in 1920. Port Arthur, not yet developed in 1890, had more than 22,000 inhabitants three decades later.7 By then, Gulf and Texaco were operating large refineries in Port Arthur, while Magnolia’s large refinery was sited in Beaumont. Thereafter, with the advantage of first-site location, Beaumont–Port Arthur remained a refining center, although its production ties changed over the years: to Sour Lake, Batson, Saratoga, and Humble between 1903 and 1905; to the Glenn Pool, in Oklahoma, in 1907; to the Caddo, Louisiana, field in 1910; and to the Cushing and Healdton fields of Oklahoma thereafter.8 As Gulf and Texaco developed lucrative foreign market niches—the latter, for example, by developing upriver markets for illuminating oil in Brazil—Port Arthur refineries were increasingly integrated into worldwide petroleum markets.9 The refineries and loading terminals at Port Arthur required vast expansion of the port’s facilities to accommodate growing shipments of refined products by Gulf Refining and the Texas Company to England, the Netherlands, and domestic ports. Both Gulf and the Sun Pipe Line Company also shipped crude oil to Pennsylvania, Gulf to Philadelphia and Sun to its Marcus Hook refinery. This activity made the Port Arthur region the fastest growing port in the United States in 1909.10 Growth, although stimulated by petroleum, was not entirely reliant on the oil industry, as pre-oil industries, principally cotton and timber, still generAFTER THE BOOM

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ated half of the dollar-value exports in that year. Oil served rather to reinforce growth based initially on lumber and agribusiness.11 The expansion of oil and gas activity in the Beaumont–Port Arthur area had variable effects on other economic activity. Rice production, for example, enjoyed a minor boost in local consumption, but it continued to expand in response to larger markets, generally unaffected by oil. The lumber industry, by contrast, received a massive stimulus from oil exploration. Drilling rigs, varying from sixty to eighty-two feet high and about twenty-feet square at the base, required at least six thousand linear feet of lumber, in sizes varying from 16-inch by 18-inch stock for mud sills to 1-inch by 6-inch boards for derrick braces.12 To meet this soaring demand, sawmills ran overtime, and both railroads and waterways from forests to mills were choked with unfinished timber. Responding to demand, companies like the Beaumont Lumber Company converted part of their operations to making rig timbers and tank roofs.13 In addition to the demand for rig timbers, drilling required, at the beginning of activity, wood to fuel the boilers that powered the works and, later, lumber for auxiliary buildings and for shoring-up the walls of earthen storage tanks. Secondary demands for lumber were generated by uses that would not have existed had it not been for the surging growth produced by drilling activity and by the transportation needs that came along with it. Thus, new construction was commonly wooden in Beaumont as in successive oil boom towns. Houses, shops, supply warehouses, and sidewalks all required stock finished in varying degrees. Because unpaved muddy oil field roads quickly became impassable, it was often necessary to lay down logs for corduroy roads. On all sides, there was demand for the products of the mills. Except for a large increase in business for railroads and maritime docks, the stimulus to other sectors of the economy of the upper Gulf Coast acted more slowly. Local machine shops undertook repairs for drillers, and the Parker Well Works began production of rotary drilling apparatus at the Southern Car Manufacturing and Supply Company. According to one local estimate, the manufacturing and supply distribution companies employed about a hundred men in Beaumont.14 Another company responding to oil-industry needs was Beaumont Iron Works, founded in 1910 by C. L. Wallis, once head of a wholesale grocery firm in Galveston, and other officers in the Higgins Oil and Fuel Company. They undertook casting and forging to produce oil field materials but also made drilling tools for water-well drillers and equipment for area sawmills, looking to diversify their business beyond the oil industry.15 58

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Texas Company pipeline crew, 1914. Texaco Star, October 1941. Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

Tubular goods, boilers, refinery apparatus, and the like were manufactured in older producing centers in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio for distribution from company supply stores in Texas. The large Oil Well Supply Company, for example, carried out production at its home plant in Pittsburgh and operated supply outlets in Beaumont, Humble, Sour Lake, Corsicana, and Petrolia in Texas and Jennings in Louisiana.16 Spin-off developments at Spindletop were limited by the modest earlier oil production at Corsicana, which led many service and supply companies to watch for further development before they located extensive facilities on the Texas Gulf Coast. It is also clear that the availability of rapid rail transportation and of cheap water routes initially kept the producers of oil equipment and supplies from building production facilities in Texas. Additional economic gains came, however, as oil enhanced the efficiency of pre-existing industries. Thus, by 1909, the major energy users—railroads, brickyards, ice factories, slaughterhouses, cottonseed oil mills, and breweries—had largely converted from wood or coal to fuel oil, lowering their operating costs and enhancing their profitability.17 In this way, the new industry strengthened the pre-oil sectors of the Texas economy. While Beaumont and Port Arthur remained the center of much of the oil industry activity in Texas through the first decade of the twentiAFTER THE BOOM

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Texas Company basketball team, Port Arthur Refinery, 1923. Texaco Star, March 1923.

eth century, Houston emerged as a competitor as oil was found in the Humble and Goose Creek fields, both in Harris County. The departure of the Texas Company for Houston in 1908 began a parade, as most sizable producers followed, attracted by the banking and business infrastructure of the larger city. By 1920, Beaumont–Port Arthur was still one of the greatest refining centers in the world, but, except for refineryworks managers, most executives had relocated.18 Following the lead of Beaumont manufacturers, operators of machine shops in Houston began to manufacture equipment specifically for oil field applications. Thus, by 1906, the Union Iron Works was producing pumps and fittings and, to fill out their line, acting as sales agents for iron pipe, packing, and belting. Henry Worthington reorganized his shop as well, to produce the Worthington Special Slush Pump.19 Sharp and Hughes—the first of what would become large companies throughout the region and, later, the world—began in 1909 to make rotary rock bits adapted to Gulf Coast area drilling conditions. Illustrative of the typical process through which Texas business circles expanded into subsidiary enterprises, Walter B. Sharp and Howard R. Hughes signed a part60

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nership agreement to form the company on December 11, 1908, with Sharp using income from his drilling operations to provide set-up funds and Hughes managing the venture. Two years later, when they needed additional capital, they brought J. S. Cullinan into the business.20 The expansion of subsidiary enterprises continued as Kettler Brass Manufacturing began to produce fittings in Houston in 1909, and Texas Ironworks opened at what is now Baytown in 1916, the same year that Reed Roller Bit began production of rotary rock bits and reamers. The following year, Howard Smith Company undertook the manufacture of pipe fittings and other supplies for the growing Texas market. In 1920, two other important plants opened in Houston, W-K-M Manufacturing to produce rotary slips and pipeline valves, and Cameron Iron Works to produce control valves, blowout preventers, and other equipment. Thus, by the end of the second decade of development, the oil industry in Texas had spun off related industries that stimulated the economy of the Houston area and established it as the principal oil supply and equipment center in the state.21 Though the mercantile and agricultural processing sectors of the Houston economy continued to expand during the twentieth century, thus contributing to population growth, the expan-

Hughes Tool Company workers, Houston, 1909. Pioneers of Texas Oil, Barker Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

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sion of the city’s population from 45,000 in 1900 to 138,000 in 1920 was also fueled by the growth of the oil industry and related activity.22 Additional spin-offs in the Houston region came with the beginning of the petrochemical industry and improvements in refining technology. On the basis of information acquired through the random drilling of wildcatters at Bryan Mound, the Freeport Sulphur Company began extraction operations in 1912, establishing an industry that would remain significant in the Texas economy. Gulf Oil launched development of aluminum chloride, used in ‘‘cracking’’ petroleum, at Port Arthur in 1915.23 The most important oil company to emerge in the Houston business community was unquestionably Humble Oil & Refining Company, which grew to be the largest crude oil purchaser in Texas. The company was founded by men in four business circles who, in the second decade of the century, combined to solve the problem of disposing of their crude oil for maximum return. The first circle was organized around William S. Farish and Robert Lee Blaffer. Farish arrived in Beaumont from Mississippi in 1901 to trade in oil certificates, Blaffer from New Orleans a year later, to purchase oil for the Southern Pacific Railroad. A lifelong association began in 1904, when the two oilmen formed a partnership through which they did contract drilling and traded in leases for Gulf, Texaco, and themselves. The following year, they relocated to Houston to focus on developing properties in the new Humble field. They had achieved considerable success by 1908 but encountered slack times thereafter until their fortunes revived in 1914 with new production, largely in North Texas.24 The second circle was organized around Harry C. Wiess of Beaumont, son of lumberman and Spindletop pioneer William Wiess, a founder of the successful Paraffine Oil Company. Paraffine Oil, established in 1903, discovered the Batson field, developed sizable production at Sour Lake, and invested with Higgins Oil and Fuel in a pipeline to move crude from that field to the coast. Continuing in an alliance with the Higgins Oil and Fuel circle, Paraffine invested early in leases in the North Dayton and Humble fields and became one of the largest independent producers in Texas. In every field, William Wiess invested both for Paraffine and for himself, a common practice of independents. By 1907, his own holdings had become sufficiently extensive to require corporate organization and management, so he set up the Reliance Oil Company, based largely on Batson and Humble field properties. In 1910, Harry Wiess took Reliance into Oklahoma, where it invested on its own account and occasionally with others: the Gypsy Oil Company, a produc62

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tion affiliate of Gulf; Ardmore Oil, in which Wiess also owned a large interest; the Texas Company; and Humble Oil, which also had a large position in Ardmore Oil.25 This investment connected the Wiess interests to those of Ross and Frank Sterling. At the center of the third circle was Ross Sterling, who began his activity in oil by selling grain and hay to teamsters in the Sour Lake field. He used the profits from this venture to open branches of his grain business in Saratoga, Dayton, and Humble, often working with his six brothers. By 1907, he had amassed enough capital to acquire a group of banks in the small towns where he owned feed stores and in other locales. Thereafter, he used the banks to support the operations of his other business ventures. In 1909, he began large-scale investments in oil properties and never stopped thereafter. Sterling and his associates organized their holdings into the Humble Oil Company in 1911 and moved their office to Houston the next year. With luck and careful management, the new company paid a consistently high rate of return on capitalization, about 3 percent per month.26 As the company acquired additional production, reaching 6,000 bopd in 1916, Sterling attempted to secure more favorable purchase terms, only to be told that large buyers, like Sun, were unwilling to anger other producers unless Humble’s volume could be increased significantly. In response to this rebuff, Sterling began to explore the possibilities of consolidation with the companies and producers he had worked with in the past, including the Wiess circle and Farish and Blaffer. He also approached Walter Fondren, a Spindletop pioneer and a highly successful contract driller and oil producer, who was also an investor in Sterling’s Humble Oil Company.27 The involvement of Fondren completed the four circles. These principals continued negotiations through 1916 and settled on ownership terms early in 1917. To comply with Texas law, they combined most of their resources in a newly chartered company, the Humble Oil and Refining Company. Though limited by critical cashflow problems, Humble was a stunningly profitable venture thereafter and one credited by the rival Texas Company with both ‘‘brains and luck.’’ 28 In 1919 SONJ, anxious for reserves, purchased a half interest in Humble Oil and Refining for $17,000,000.29 Shortly thereafter, SONJ purchased enough of the remaining stock in Humble to elect a board of its own and subsequently rolled Humble into what is now Exxon, USA. Even as the acquiring company, however, SONJ left Humble’s operations in the hands of the Texans, who were both remarkably successful AFTER THE BOOM

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at producing oil and fully capable of coping with the legal and regulatory systems of the state, which SONJ’s executives at 26 Broadway never succeeded in doing.30 ‘‘The Humble,’’ as generations of Texans called it, was Texas’s greatest success story during the first two decades after Spindletop. The Humble story also underscores one of the consistent success patterns for Texas oilmen: those who settled into stable business circles or, as with Humble, combined their holdings, tended to endure in the highrisk industry, functioning as promoters in some ventures and as investors in others. Though these oilmen were still exposed to volatile crude prices and rising costs, doing business with familiar faces limited other risks. Finally, participation in a circle produced a large number of investment opportunities with less effort by the individual oilman, and association also cut transaction costs as companies integrated into transportation, refining, and distribution. The lone wolves at Spindletop who did not work within circles rarely survived the decade as significant players. The major reason, simply put, is that they failed to spread the high risks of exploration and production over enough ventures. Secondarily, outside of stable circles, when they did invest, they were more vulnerable to incompetence and dishonesty. Thus, though the high visibility of successful wildcatters created the impression that oilmen were solitary heroes, those who succeeded in the high-risk end of the industry, exploration, learned that partnerships, business circles, and cooperative relationships with each other and large integrated oil companies were all requisites of survival and growth on the geological frontier. Apart from profiting from their ability to define the terms for the entry and participation of ‘‘foreign’’ capital, the long-term Texan survivors in the oil industry learned to hedge their risks in what they all understood as a gambler’s business. Experienced businessmen like William Wiess applied the commonplace tactic of spreading capital through separate ventures. Thus, the Wiess interests created new companies to take new risks. When they entered Southwest Texas in 1909, they joined with fellow Beaumont lumbermen and investors to charter the Cactus Oil Company. After a try for oil in Duval County failed in 1910, the company dissolved, losing only the capital sunk in one well—probably not in excess of $5,000. Similarly, when the Wiess interests entered North Texas in 1910, they did so through the Denison Oil Company, capitalized to buy one lease and drill one wildcat well in Grayson County, near the Red River. When that well reached 1,500 feet without finding oil, the company folded.31 Oilmen commonly operated under different 64

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companies even in a single field. Ed Prather, for example, produced oil in the Batson field under his own name and as the Prather Company, Prather and Britton, Prather and Decker, and Prather and Benjamin Andrews, Jr. The president of Higgins Oil and Fuel, C. L. Wallis, also operated in Oklahoma in connection with M. H. Mosler as the Keystone Oil and Gas Company, and he invested in California oil ventures. For all of these operators, multiple partnerships served to raise capital for high-risk ventures and to protect capital amassed from profitable operations. These partnerships also multiplied an operator-investor’s contacts within the industry, increasing his exposure to information and opportunity and, thus, lowering his risk.32 These means of protecting capital by spreading and sharing risk were commonly applied in other ventures, including banks, but in oil they were inseparable from survival, as ill-fated attempts to follow-up Spindletop in Southwest Texas illustrate. The area became newly attractive to oilmen after the salt-dome discovery suggested that similar structures would produce large quantities of oil. There was a salt dome at Piedras Pintas in east central Duval County, about 110 miles due south of San Antonio, and Guffey and Galey made a cable-tool test on it after they took over the leases of a Corsicana oil operator in April 1901. Unsuccessful, they tried another test with a rotary rig in 1903 with similar results. The following year, the Texas Company took over Guffey and Galey’s leases, drilled, and found shows of oil but nothing that could be produced commercially. The Cactus Oil Company tried in 1909, and William Wiess even invested separately in a venture with Walker and Ennis. All of these wells ran heavily to salt water and failed to produce amounts of oil worth recovering. By 1910, Cactus had given up, and Walker and Ennis drilled three additional dry holes before they completed three small producers, yielding a combined total of 45 bopd. In the meantime, Jim Hamill drilled a dry hole for the Norway Oil Company, and Jourdan and Campbell abandoned a ‘‘duster.’’ In expectation of sizable production, Lawson and Cleary laid a four-inch pipeline to a sixcar loading station on the Mexican National Railroad. Short of capital, they sold the line to a new company, Piedras Pintas Consolidated Oil and Pipeline Company, with $250,000 authorized capital, run by Corpus Christi investors employed by and connected with the First State Bank of Corpus Christi. In the end the Lawson and Cleary interests sued each other, their operation was taken over by a receiver, and the pipeline remained unfilled. In all, the ventures at Piedras Pintas probably consumed at least $100,000 in capital by the time they failed, a daunting AFTER THE BOOM

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sum during the first decade of this century and one that few investors could afford to face without a considerable hedge, which they achieved through separate partnerships and spreading risk.33 Networking was an essential part of survival strategies for the long-term players in the early Texas oil industry. By the end of the Spindletop decade, these networks formed a loosely knit business community, marked by the apparently contradictory values of individualism and cooperation—and always in pursuit of opportunity. Though the entrepreneurs were often the most visible players in the industry, Texas workers also benefited from the expansion of the Gulf Coast economy. Texans, however, did not have a major position in the industry at the onset. In part, the relative absence of Texans from the early ranks of skilled oil field workers resulted from the lack of sufficient on-the-job experience, particularly among drillers and supervisory personnel. Though some Texans, notably the Hamill brothers, learned oil well drilling at Corsicana, many of the other drillers in that field migrated from the older oil-producing regions, notably Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Thus, at Spindletop, Texans were more likely to find work in the less-skilled jobs, building tanks, laying pipelines, moving earth, and driving teams. Farm boys could do all of these jobs, with little additional experience needed to qualify. After Spindletop, many more Texans learned the requisite oil field skills and commonly worked as drillers and rig builders. Wherever drills penetrated the earth, they lured farm boys into the oil patch. The lure of the oil field for farm boys, sawmill hands, and others was higher wages. Pay for unskilled workers at Spindletop ranged from $2.50 to $3.00 a day for a twelve-hour day. Drillers earned $5 a day. These wages were the highest in the region, even if overtime pay was unknown and pay was irregular. As James W. Riggs, a young roughneck at Goose Creek, discovered, men on the rig floor often went unpaid when wildcatters failed to find oil. In 1901 and for long thereafter, a seven-day work week was the norm. Claude Deer, a roughneck at Spindletop, recalled, ‘‘We didn’t know when Sunday came.’’ Farm boys were accustomed to long hours doing physically exerting work in hot weather, so oil field conditions were not novel for them. Exceptionally taxing work regimes were commonly of brief duration, moreover, because jobs usually lasted for two to four weeks. Oil field workers went from job to job, accepting intermittent unemployment. During extended unemployment, when hiring was down, farm boys went home and waited for the next discovery and drilling boom.34 66

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Gulf Coast drilling crew. Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont.

Entrepreneurs and workers alike lived in crowded and costly boom towns. From Spindletop onward, oil boom towns lacked adequate housing and dining facilities. Single men slept rough if they were short of money, or perhaps paid a dollar to sleep on a cot in someone’s front yard for the night. At Sour Lake, Curly Johnson slept on two trunks in the back of a saloon tent: ‘‘a pretty orderly place, mostly just working men.’’ At Batson, James Donohoe stayed in the Caledonia Boarding House, a board building with a dozen twelve-by-eight-foot rooms, each with two cots: ‘‘If it was a rainy night you would lay there in bed and dodge the raindrops from the leaks. There was mud in front of the boarding house and all around and when they went to clean out the floor they [took] a hoe and raked the mud out of the dining room.’’ Donohoe paid $26 a month for room and board, out of $90 in wages, ahead of scale for unskilled labor in the oil fields.35 Tent towns became a continuing feature of Texas oil field life. In the absence of tents, workers made do with whatever was at hand. Improvising shelter, some Sour Lake boomers slept under pieces of galvanized iron, raised just high enough off the ground to allow for a cot underneath. Ultimately, all of these oil field communities acquired more permanent housing, banks, retail stores, and hotels, but the first workers commonly did without such amenities in early Texas Gulf Coast boom towns. Need to walk to work led workers to put up tents and shanties AFTER THE BOOM

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as close to their work as possible, which led to hazardous exposure to poisonous gases and other combustible materials. One night in January 1904, for example, sleeping workers in a Batson tent town were roused from bed and evacuated because of low-lying gas on the fringe of the settlement. Before the move could be completed, about a hundred people suffered respiratory injury.36 Gas was a common hazard in early Gulf Coast fields. Sam Webb was gassed on one drilling job: ‘‘It was just like takin’ a handful of hot sand or salt and throwin’ it in your eyes, just the way it felt for days at a time. Your eyes was awful weak for a long time after it.’’ John Little and his brother were both gassed at Sour Lake: ‘‘The first breath you can tell that you’re goin’ if you git another one like it, and if you can, run and get fresh air. Otherwise, your second breath, you go down, just don’t know nothing.’’ At Sour Lake, workers tried to fight the effects of gas by breathing through wet handkerchiefs. Frank Hamilton, a roughneck, was blinded for three weeks; his treatment consisted of placing raw potato slices on his eyes and keeping him in a dark room.37 Respect for the dangers of gas usually had to be learned the hard way, even by relative veterans in the field. William S. Farish (who later served as president, successively, of Humble Oil and Refining and of SONJ) was, like most of the first generation of Texas oilmen, a hands-on boss and ran many of the same risks as his employees. He went to inspect a well in the early days of the Humble field and found his crew slowly swabbing it with a gunny sack to stimulate production. Impatient with the progress, Farish took control, as Walter Cline later told the story: ‘‘I know how to run that thing. I’ll just bail it.’’ I said, ‘‘Mr. Farish, that sulphur’l knock you out. It’ll knock anybody out.’’ ‘‘Oh, it won’t knock me out.’’ So he goes in and starts swabbing. And you could see this gas roll out, you know, and this little old soft breeze just a blowing it right down his throat. And he stood it for quite a little while and he started up with another jag and his knees began to buckle like a fellow who’s taken a haymaker, you know, in a prize fight. And he got a little wobbly and I ran over to the engine and shut it off right where it was and started in on the derrick floor. Well, of course, in the swabbing, we had swabbed out some bad muddy water and all out and it was an inch or two thick on the

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derrick floor and . . . he fell smack on his face with his nose right in that stuff. And if you ever saw an ordinary digger . . . wrastling [sic] with a big load of human being, you should have seen me trying to get Brother Farish off that thing and out into a pine thicket where I could ride him a little bit and pump some of that stuff out of him. Well, I got a little assist from two or three of the boys that worked on the rig . . . and we turned him over and give him a little first aid and jumped up and down on that big set of lungs he had and knocked some air in him.38 Some workers faced special perils on the job. Derrickmen had the most dangerous jobs on the rig floor, as Walter Cline recalled generations later: If a fire started, he burned and fell just like a crippled squirrel. I’ve seen a dozen of them burn up in the derrick. And rock could hit him; pipe could hit him and kill him. He was the most vulnerable man you had so we gave him this safety line. All he had to do was know that he was gonna burn the skin off of his inside of his elbow and the inside of his knee sliding down this rope at about a mile a minute, but that’s better than getting hit and knocked out.39 Well shooters had the most dangerous job in the oil field, transporting and dropping nitroglycerin down wells to stimulate production.40

Workers practice artificial respiration, 1920s. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

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Newspapers in oil field towns were filled with accounts of accidents that left little behind besides large holes in dirt roads and damaged rigs. Walter Cline never forgot one especially daring shooter, Tom Mendenhall, and the risks he ran: There was quite a bit of gas in the well and we loaded a six-foot bucket with liquid nitroglycerin and were letting it down on top of another bucket that was already in the hole. . . . When we let the second bucket down, the gas just caught it and began to push it back up. And there was slack on the line. I was never a speed demon, but I figured I’d try to make a new track record. And Tom was standing right by the well. And he put his head down and he could hear this glycerin bucket scraping on the side of the casing as it came up and he said, ‘‘Don’t run off, Walter. I’ll take care of it.’’ And so old foolish me, I stood there to see what he was going to do and he just spread his legs out on each side of the top of the casing and waited until this gas pushed this bucket of liquid glycerin right up. And when it got up about waist high, he just reached over and hugged it like he was coming home to Mama. And picked it up the rest of the way and took it over in the corner and set it down.41 The perception of shared danger and the reality of hard work supported the prevalent image of tough men, living hard. John Little, who roughnecked for Walter Sharp at Sour Lake, Batson, and many fields thereafter, defined his kind: ‘‘Roughneck means that they’re just not afraid of nothing—mud, gas, oil, or anything else; they’d do anything.’’ Bill Bryant described a typical roughneck’s evening at Sour Lake in 1903: Well, we would go down to the saloon and get a few drinks and we’d go back to the dance hall and we’d dance a while. Then we’d either go to the roulette wheel or crap table or shell game. We’d play a while, ’til that would get kinda tired, and then we’d lost most of our money, and then we’d go back and dance some more and then probably fight the rest of the time, ’til it was time for us to go to bed. You see, we would have to turn in sometime around four o’clock so we would be able to work the next day.42 Beaumont offered some diversions of the sort considered more wholesome by the town fathers. The town entered the South Texas Base70

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ball League in 1903, adding sports recreation to entertainment offered at the Kyle Opera House, which opened in 1901. In one of their earliest efforts to organize respectable diversion for workers, the Texas Company, Sun, and other refiners and drillers organized the Oilers baseball team in 1907. Before an audience of seven spectators, the Oilers apparently lost badly. The Oil Investor’s Journal claimed that the opposing team, representing the Beaumont YMCA, ‘‘made the Oilers look like a tub of salt water.’’ Having made an effort, such as it was, oil companies would continue to support sports teams until well into the 1950s.43 Despite a bad day at the ball park in 1907, the roughneck was everything the brave, young, and independent Texas man was supposed to be and was thus especially appealing as a cultural model for young farm boys, who could find little confirmation for this kind of identity in plowing fields and chopping cotton. Like the cowboy, oil field roughnecks would enjoy cultural standing beyond their times and numbers. Prevailing patterns of racial and gender discrimination meant white males enjoyed the lion’s share of petroleum-created economic opportunity. Still, young Anglo men did not do all of the work in the oil fields and boom towns. African American men had labored in Beaumont lumbermills before oil was discovered, and black women were employed as domestics in both Beaumont and Port Arthur. After Spindletop, they found expanded opportunities in the same lines, men doing dirt work and driving horses and mules, and women working in hotels and laundries. The Spindletop discovery-well crew was served by a black male cook, and Willie Henry, a black teamster, hauled wood to the rig. At Sour Lake, black men worked as mule skinners and tank builders, and they did these jobs and dirt work as well at Batson. White workers, however, did not want to concede these jobs to blacks. A Galveston contractor used black men to build earthen tanks at Sour Lake and thereby began a small riot, which he ended by shooting at white rioters who attempted to attack his crew. Gulf Pipeline brought black teamsters on a crew to Saratoga and successfully resisted violent attempts by white teamsters to drive them off. In Spindletop, Sour Lake, Batson, and Saratoga, blacks were not permitted to work on drilling crews, because, as James William Kinnear, a white oil field worker, recalled with obvious disapproval, ‘‘The white folks wouldn’t let them work out there.’’ 44 Thus, prevailing racial prejudice constricted opportunities just when labor shortages might have broadened them. While Texas Gulf Coast oil fields created economic opportunities, they also gave rise to localized environmental problems, some avoidAFTER THE BOOM

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able, some not. The tremendous gushers characteristic of most early Gulf Coast fields were the result of oil in highly porous rock under high gas pressures. Just as industry technology had not been ready initially to meet the problems of drilling in peculiar Gulf Coast formations, it was also unready for the problems of completing wells that came in as wild and prolonged gushers. Once the Hamill brothers improvised the first Christmas tree and Harry R. Decker came up with the blowout preventer, the way was paved for future management of completion problems, but such technological progress only emerged with field experience. Until then there were many blowouts and wild wells, which caused oil spills. Giant Gulf Coast gushers also brought the immediate problem of storing crude oil. No prudent operator would lay aside scores of metal tanks before bringing in production, but once production came in, in fields like Spindletop, Batson, and Humble, it often mounted so rapidly that whatever metal tankage was at hand soon filled. Operators then had to improvise storage, commonly resorting to rapidly constructed, claylined earthen tanks ten to twelve feet deep.45 Storing large quantities of crude in hastily dug earthen tanks was, practically speaking, unavoidable under the circumstances that prevailed in the Gulf Coast oil fields. By the end of 1903, after only three years of development, close to thirteen million barrels of crude was stored in earthen tanks. Of the roughly three million barrels of storage capacity at Sour Lake, for example, almost half of it was in earthen tanks. Operators at the Humble oil field used vast lagoons, much larger than simple earthen tanks. Operators were well aware that such storage was not ideal, but, for want of practical alternatives, they continued to store oil in this way. The alternative was shutting down the wells until metal storage became available. Yet, if operators did so, the Gulf Coast wells commonly sanded up and produced little oil when reopened. If oilmen delayed drilling, they risked seeing gas pressures critical to production dwindle to ineffectiveness.46 Prevailing industry practice, however, aggravated environmental problems. Once a well came in, for example, it was standard procedure to let it gush wide open for an hour or more to let it clear itself of rock chips and other debris. When an operator brought in a gusher, moreover, potential investors and curious spectators enjoyed seeing oil shoot over the top of the derrick. That letting wells gush was good public relations reflects some measure of the difference in attitudes at the beginning of the twentieth century and at its end.47 Because early Gulf Coast fields began to produce large quantities 72

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Earthen pits in the Humble Field. Houston Area Research Center, Houston Public Library.

of salt water after only a few months of production, the mounting tide of oil field brine also presented inescapable environmental problems. At Spindletop, operators were obliged to dig reservoirs to hold salt water. Jefferson County commissioners decided that, when there were sizable downpours, operators could let these reservoirs release their contents into Hillebrant Bayou. Comparable problems existed at Saratoga, but there operators regularly let brine run into Little Pine Island Bayou. In 1905 several landowners, trying to enjoin brine runoff, brought suits against Saratoga operators, claiming brine runoff had spoiled water in stock tanks. The local court denied the request for an injunction.48 From an oil producer’s point of view, salt water was a far more vexing problem below the ground than on top of it. By 1905, operators were thoroughly familiar with the profoundly disturbing phenomenon of seeing profitable wells become worthless producers of salt water. Most shocking was the example of Humble field. After little more than two months of prolific gushers, Humble wells began to show serious saltwater incursions in March 1905. As familiar as saltwater problems were, AFTER THE BOOM

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no one knew how to head them off. Prevailing opinion held that they were the result of ‘‘reckless drilling’’: wells drilled too close together or irresponsibly abandoned without proper casing to seal off saltwaterproducing geological formations.49 The Humble field experience prompted a number of Gulf Coast oilmen to meet in Houston in March to draft regulatory legislation. Their measure, aimed specifically at preventing saltwater incursion in wells and producing formations, included the following proposals: prohibiting drilling closer than forty feet to the nearest property line or within eighty feet of the nearest well; requiring the filing of a well log with the county clerk within five days of well completion; requiring owners of wells producing salt water to plug them; giving district courts power to prescribe oil field regulation and to appoint field superintendents to enforce regulations; and setting penalties for violations. The bill, without the spacing and well-log requirements, eventually passed the Texas legislature. The spacing requirement was controversial because some oilmen argued that one could not prevent an operator from drilling, because spacing rules violated property rights. The welllog requirement was impractical because most drillers, some illiterate, simply did not keep reliable well logs.50 Whatever the psychological satisfaction of having such regulation on the books, oilmen came to terms with underground saltwater incursion only after several decades of progress in petroleum engineering and technology. The years 1905 to 1911 showed that even after the wells no longer gushed, there was no turning back from Spindletop. Texas oil created unparalleled opportunities for new players in the petroleum industry, not only on the regional but also the national level; it would change the structure of the American petroleum industry, supporting growth to major size of companies outside the Standard Oil circle. It permitted the Texas Gulf Coast to become an industry center for petroleum refining, shipment, and export. And, of course, Texas emerged as a major oilproducing state. By the time the first decade of oil development on the Gulf Coast had drawn to an end, it had worked profound changes in the economy and society of the region. By 1910, it was clear that the petroleum industry would continue to be important to the region, but how important was less certain. After Humble in 1905, there was a dearth of new bonanza field discoveries. It was also evident that other parts of Texas were well worth exploring, but what would result from such prospecting would be revealed only gradually during the next decade.

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OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD The second decade of Texas oil after Spindletop saw gushers in many parts of North and North Central Texas and the discovery of some oil and much more gas in Southwest Texas. At the same time, wildcatters on the Gulf Coast, in the quest for another Spindletop, continued to drill practically every hill that looked like it might be a salt dome. In the process, they found some gargantuan production and drilled many dry holes. Higher oil prices resulting from World War I demand encouraged wildcatting, but, generally speaking, the searchers were anything but scientific. Most of the discoveries opening up these new parts of Texas were made on the basis of strictly visual clues—gas seeps and oil in water wells. Nevertheless, wildcatters found a tremendous amount of oil. Before there was a search for oil in North Texas, there was a search for water. Oil was not welcome. As W. T. ‘‘Ole Tom’’ Waggoner explained when describing a well drilled on his Wichita County ranch in 1902, ‘‘I wanted water, and they got me oil. I tell you, I was mad, mad clean through. We needed water to drink for ourselves and for our cattle to drink. I said damn the oil, I want water.’’ Ranch hands bailed oil from the disappointing well in buckets and used it to lubricate machinery and kill ticks on Waggoner’s white-faced cattle. Eventually they trashed and abandoned the oily well. It was nine more years before a commercially attractive oil well came in at a location not far away.1 As the Oil and Gas Journal remarked, in North Texas every farmer had an ‘‘oil well,’’ a water well with oily scum on its surface. More than anything else, such seeps prompted wildcatting, particularly after the bonanza discovery at Spindletop. Early tests seldom went below 2,000 feet, and with good reason, for small quantities of oil and gas often lay within

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a few hundred feet of the surface of the earth—at only 117 feet in the Avis field in Jack County, for example, and at only 35 feet at St. Jo in Montague County. These finds, however, failed to encourage investment in prospecting and development because they were minuscule in comparison with what oilmen found on Gulf Coast salt domes or in Oklahoma’s Glenn pool. The opening of the oil fields in North Texas waited on a major find, a money-maker.2 Ironically, in this region where oil and gas at shallow depths was a common phenomenon, state-of-the-art geology was not helpful in finding major fields. As one scientist ruefully put it, ‘‘the best sign of oil is a little oil.’’ Geologists of the early twentieth century were keen on using surface mapping to locate structures with oil-trapping potential, and they worked hard at mapping in North Texas. But scientists soon learned to their chagrin that surface indications in North Texas did not conform closely to what was underground. Surface folds did not necessarily overlie subsurface folds, and beds dipping west might overlie beds dipping east.3 Once an area had been drilled, geologists might be reasonably accurate about describing subsurface structures, but to oilmen, that was twenty-twenty hindsight. In fact, many oilmen of this period were unimpressed by what geology offered them in practical terms, a point of view which some expensive scientific mistakes did little to set aside. Even after commercial quantities of oil and gas were discovered, the opening of North Texas still lagged behind the Gulf Coast, because during its early years, North Texas was not gusher country. Thus, shortly after Spindletop thundered in, little interest was expressed from outside the region when Clay County rancher J. W. Lockridge found a strong show of oil at about 160 feet when he was attempting to drill a water 76

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well twelve miles north of Henrietta. Lockridge showed a fruit jar of the fluid to local banker W. B. Worsham, prompting the latter to organize the Lockridge Oil Company to drill for oil at the location and to see if he could sell an interest to Standard Oil. Standard forwarded Worsham’s letter to Calvin T. Payne, a director of the Corsicana Petroleum Company. But talk of oil in water wells was common all over Texas, and it could not compete with real gushers at Beaumont, Sour Lake, Saratoga, and Batson. Understandably, Payne and his circle did not rush to Clay County. Regional businessmen, however, joined Worsham in taking a chance on drilling, and by mid-1904 there were over seventy wells in the developing field. True, most produced no more than 3 to 5 barrels of oil per day (bopd), but one had only to drill around 300 feet and spend about $400 for a well. The field was named ‘‘Petrolia,’’ after the nearby new settlement of oil field workers, near the Wichita & Oklahoma Railroad.4 Because Petrolia’s small production held up reasonably well, and because the oil produced was high-gravity crude yielding good proportions of kerosene and gasoline on refining, it became more attractive to Payne and his circle, and they organized the Clayco Oil & Pipeline Company to pursue Clay County development. Clayco built storage tanks and a pipeline to the railroad and purchased oil to refine at Corsicana.5 The company also began to drill tests to deeper depths, and deeper drilling brought in wells with greater production. More important, a Clayco test to about 1,500 feet in 1907 brought in a large gas well. The typical oilman’s response to a gasser at this time may be gauged by the Oil Investor’s Journal headline: ‘‘No Oil in Henrietta Deep Test.’’ Once again, compared to gushers spouting in Louisiana and Oklahoma, Clay County wells were not attractive. Still, in 1907 it was clear that one could find large volumes of natural gas at low cost at Petrolia. That realization led Payne, E. R. Brown, I. H. Kempner, and others to organize the Lone Star Gas Company in 1909, and in 1910 Lone Star’s line from Petrolia was supplying gas to Fort Worth, Dallas, Wichita Falls, and a number of smaller towns.6 Developments at Petrolia encouraged more drilling in that area and in nearby counties for a number of reasons, the least of which was Petrolia’s emergence as a commercial gas field. Rather than focusing on gas, oilmen reasoned that where there was a lot of gas there might be a lot of oil, and that if one drilled deeper one might then come to oil. Petrolia, moreover, had a number of paying sands, and whenever oilmen encountered multiple pays, they reasoned that this might be the result of seepage from an underlying pool. At any rate, such considerations, OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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taken in the context of a lull in Gulf Coast activity, encouraged oilmen to serious prospecting in North Texas. In particular, in 1909, Producers Oil, the exploration and production affiliate of the Texas Company, began a series of tests near Electra, on the vast Waggoner ranch, on a spread of about 270,000 acres. Producers, however, drilled these wells as ‘‘tight holes,’’ trying to keep secret what it found. In January 1911, at a location a mile and half northwest of Electra, it brought in Waggoner No. 5, a 50-barrel well. Although Producers shut the well down and called it a ‘‘duster,’’ news of the find leaked out. On April 1, 1911, Clayco Oil put down a test on a small lease two and a half miles from town and brought in the long-awaited North Texas gusher. John O’Donohoe, later a leading North Texas independent, recalled being in Petrolia that day and having his brother call and tell him, ‘‘You better get over here as fast as you can . . . it looks like they’ve got a real well here.’’ O’Donohoe hesitated because it was April Fool’s Day.7 Clayco’s well produced about 260 bopd from a pay just a little deeper than 1,600 feet, about 200 feet less than Producer’s discovery, and it led to the first major North Texas oil boom. Landmen and company representatives descended upon the area, and by November they had not only leased what they could find near the new field but had expanded as far as Shackelford, Young, Eastland, Stephens, and Callahan counties. Clayco’s production, originally run into a dammed-up creek bed, was stored in tanks built by Magnolia, and both Magnolia and the Texas Company were securing right-of-way for pipelines. Electra grew to a bustling town of over 1,000, mostly oil field workers. Since Electra could not accommodate all the newcomers, many of them commuted each day from Wichita Falls. Unpaved roads between the field and Wichita Falls made it easier to take the eighteen-mile train ride, on a small train called ‘‘Coal Oil Johnny,’’ than to attempt the journey by automobile. The town quickly got its first brick buildings, cement sidewalks, and telephone exchange, but it took longer to get clean drinking water. Aside from the problems of overcrowding and commuting, one consequent and more serious problem of growth was an epidemic of typhoid.8 Although Electra produced a desirably high gravity crude, its distance from markets kept prices for oil low until the pipelines were completed. Still, there were few dry holes and a number of producing sands, the best at about 1,000 feet and between 1,700 and 1,900 feet, so oilmen could offset low prices with high-volume production. Wildcatting extended to the nearby areas of Burkburnett, Iowa Park, and Fowlkes Station, where small fields were discovered in 1912, 1913, and 1914, respec78

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Main Street in Burkburnett, 1918. James ‘‘Blondie’’ Flowers Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

tively. The Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce, hoping for a discovery near its city limits, offered a $10,000 reward for a test at least 2,000 feet deep that resulted in a 200-barrel well, no more than ten miles from town. The chamber discovered that it was not possible to order up an oil field, especially when the cost of a test would exceed the reward. Wildcatting also spread to nearby counties, but initially expenditures were not offset by income. In 1911, for example, a disappointingly small Archer County well came in, and a Texas Company test at Moran in Shackelford County found gas, but not enough for a major market. The main disincentive to all-out wildcatting in the region, however, was not the lack of big finds, but the impact of huge discoveries in Oklahoma during the same period—Cushing in 1912 and Healdton in 1913. North Texas could offer no action comparable to those strikes.9 The relative lull in wildcatting in North Texas came to an abrupt end on October 25, 1917, when the Texas Pacific Coal Company brought in a 1,600-barrel gusher on the J. H. McClesky farm, one mile southwest of the sleepy town of Ranger in Eastland County. The sequence of events leading to this major discovery began when Texas Pacific undertook core drilling for coal seams and turned up traces of oil in Palo Pinto County. The company’s vice president and general manager, W. K. Gordon, OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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The Coal-Oil Johnny Special, Wichita Falls to Burkburnett, 1918–1919. Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Oklahoma.

Backyard oil wells in Burkburnett, 1918. Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library.

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Curbstone brokers at Breckenridge, 1919. Basil Clemons Photography. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

pressed for oil exploration, and in 1915 the company brought in the Strawn field. Gordon then took the company into a leasing campaign to support future wildcatting. Thus, when civic leaders in Ranger offered the company a block of 25,000 acres in exchange for four tests near town, Gordon leapt at the offer. The test on the Walker farm found a 6 million cubic feet (MMcf) per day gas well, a disappointment. The second and third tests, McClesky and Davenport, produced large gushers, and the fourth, Hagaman, a 200 bopd well. Before the campaign was over, the Walker farm test was producing 200 bopd as well. All of the wells produced from between 3,400 and 3,500 feet, and their oil was a light green crude of 38 to 41 degrees (API) gravity, which yielded a large proportion of gasoline. The Ranger town fathers and Texas Pacific succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations, and their 100 percent wildcatting success rate was sufficient to capture the attention of the most skeptical oilman. In short order, another boom was on.10 And what a boom it was! With the exception of East Texas during the 1930s, no other oil boom has so captured public attention and imagination, both inside and outside Texas. The boom’s geographical scope was vast. Most action took place in a corridor 200 miles long and

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Crossing a muddy street in Ranger, 1918. Permian Historical Society Collection, University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

125 miles wide, but wildcatters ventured into untested territory ranging from Bosque County up to the Panhandle and west to the Trans-Pecos region.11 In terms of geological focus, most exploration took place along the Bend Arch, and prospectors looked for anticlinal folds, or ‘‘noses,’’ in Pennsylvanian formations. Not only was initial production of many wells at Ranger impressive—the Texas Pacific Norwood No. 1, completed in February, 1919, came in for 11,500 bopd—but there were as many as nine producing horizons in the Ranger pool, and at least at first, little salt water was produced with oil. The biggest downside to activity was expense. Because Texas Pacific had so much acreage, it took plenty of money and persistence for others to sit in on the action. One operator, Warren Wagner, had both, paying $2,000 to lease one and an eighth acres in a schoolyard and a cemetery near the prolific Brewer farm well. Drilling a well usually cost at least $35,000, a large sum by the standards of the time. Nonetheless, oilmen of all varieties swarmed to the new boom, the Californians, allegedly, ‘‘with their grips packed with greenbacks.’’ Many others who had no experience and little money arrived as well. The boom was a magnet for young white men, attracting farm boys leaving parched family acres in search of well-paid and low-skill jobs and, after 1918, demobilized veterans ready to take jobs that, as wits quipped, required a strong back and a weak brain. To these newcomers,

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the novelty of a boom made an indelible impression that helped turn recollection into folklore and legend.12 The boom at Ranger encouraged citizens in many other communities to take their own initiatives in looking for oil, especially when they had seen oil and gas in their water wells. One of the more striking instances of local action occurred at Brownwood, where old-timers could scarcely recall a water well that did not show oil. Residents took waterwell drilling machines, powered by Model-T Ford engines, drilled to between two hundred and three hundred feet, and found oil. Not bothering to case wells, they attached gasoline pumps to them and produced 4 to 7 bopd or more in their backyards and vacant lots. The cost of the wells ranged from only $800 to $1,600, and a local pipeline company bought the oil and hauled it to a railroad loading rack, from which it moved to small refineries in Dallas and Gainesville. When some wells began to produce salt water, Brownwood citizens built a swimming pool to use it. No wonder one journalist decided, ‘‘as an oil community that is different, Brownwood gets the prize.’’ 13 Far more significant was the initiative taken by a Wichita County farmer, S. L. Fowler, who lived on the northeast edge of the Burkburnett townsite. The small oil field opened up south of town did nothing for Fowler, and like other farmers in Texas in 1918, he had suffered through two years of drought. He decided that before he sold out, he would be certain that there was not oil under his land. Fowler gathered some neighbors and organized the Fowler Farm Oil Company, raised $12,000, and persuaded drilling contractor Walter Cline to go to work. On July 24, 1918, the test well flowed oil over Fowler’s cotton fields. Several days later, it blew in at 2,200 bopd, and by the end of August, an offset test had brought in another gusher, launching the Burkburnett Townsite boom.14 The Burkburnett Townsite boom was especially hectic because the area targeted for drilling was carved up into home lots of an acre or less, permitting operators and traders to pick up sites for tests readily. The price of a lot ranged from $1,000 to $5,000, an absurdly high rate in the context of most oil leasing but a bargain in terms of getting in on the action. Until the federal government intervened—the nation’s petroleum industry being under the wartime control of the Fuel Administration— operators could drill in front yards and backyards up and down a block; the Fuel Administration tried unsuccessfully to limit drilling to two wells per city block. Gushers were not as large as some in Eastland County, but wells usually came in for 500 to 1,000 bopd of 40-gravity oil OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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and cost from $20,000 to $30,000 to drill to 1,500 to 1,800 feet, far cheaper and faster to drill than wells in Eastland County. The only brakes on activity in 1918 were a shortage of water for boilers powering drilling rigs during the summer and the flu epidemic that hit the area in October.15 Apart from the ease of entry to a town-lot drilling boom, the pace of drilling in such an environment was bound to be hectic because operators had to compete on adjoining leases to extract oil. Given the socalled law of capture, oil belonged to whomever produced it, so once drilling began, rig matched rig all over town. On payment of $35 to the Wichita County Commissioners, one crafty group actually got a lease on county roads for oil development and began to drill in them, opposite producing properties, until halted by a court order. No wonder that by the beginning of 1920, in the Burkburnett Townsite field there were 1,200 wells on only 1,500 acres. As Thelma Berry remembered, derricks were ‘‘just like bristles on a hair brush.’’ 16 In the course of the Burkburnett boom, drilling extended into the bed of the Red River, precipitating a dispute between Oklahoma and Texas over the exact boundary between the states. In 1920 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that the entire riverbed area be put into federal receivership, a move affecting some 170 wells producing almost 9,000 bopd. In the end, the court decided that the boundary lay at the south cutbank of the river but that the federal government would own the area from the center of the stream to the south cutbank, the heart of the riverbed producing area. The dispute was not finally settled until 1927.17 The boom at Burkburnett, rather than losing momentum after a few months, heated up still more in April 1919, when new production came in to the northwest of the town. The area was known as the Northwest Extension, and by June this area alone was producing over 20,000 bopd. Existing pipelines and tankage could not contain flush production, so oilmen dug earthen pits and ran oil into them, the usual emergency expedient. At the same time, the Townsite field was producing over 55,000 bopd. Future oil conservationists would look back on the hectic days at Burkburnett as the classic nightmare example of oil field waste.18 As usual in oil booms, the horde of boomers descending on small North Texas towns like Ranger and Burkburnett completely swamped local accommodations and facilities. At Ranger, for example, J. H. McClesky and others ran the town’s one modern hotel, but only oil company executives ordinarily managed to get rooms; the less privileged slept in the McClesky’s ‘‘Annex,’’ a circus tent with row upon row 84

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of cots. In fact, boarded tents— conventional army surplus tents with hastily knocked together board floors and four-foot sides—became the commonest form of shelter. Some people, however, resorted to more creative expedients: one farmer near Ranger cleaned out his hog shed and rented it. There were the usual long lines at cafes, where, if a customer did not like what was served, the waiters simply gave the plate of food to a hungrier customer. Knowledgeable boomers usually preferred to eat at family-style boardinghouses run by women who were decent ‘‘plain cooks.’’ Such challenging living conditions encouraged larger companies like Gulf and Humble to adopt the California device of the company camp to house employees. North Texas was the first region in Texas where these settlements would become common.19 Weather aggravated normal boom problems in North Texas. Coming at the end of a drought, the boom hit communities when water was in short supply. In Ranger, water was shipped in by the barrel, and street vendors sold drinking water at a nickel or dime a glass. Bathhouses at Burkburnett and Wichita Falls charged patrons for tub baths lasting fifteen minutes, after which an attendant pulled the plug and growled, ‘‘Get out, Bud.’’ When workers tried to clean up by using the Wichita Falls city swimming pool, they were thrown out. Out in the country, suspicious farmers were not eager to share drinking water; one oil field worker in search of a cup of water was directed by a farmer to a stock tank. But when rains finally came in the autumn of 1918, such problems gave way to monumental transportation tangles as roads once inches deep in dust became seas of mud. Ranger’s unpaved streets got so deep in muck that pedestrians hired locals with horse-drawn sledges to haul them across the main road at 25 cents a trip. Rain made roads to the oil fields impassable, and as drivers and truckers got stuck, farmers made money hauling them out. Some farmers even turned mudholes into regular businesses by putting planks across them and charging tolls— and they watered the mudholes when the rains let up. It was even said that where mudholes had not existed, farmers dug them out. But at least one oil field driver got even with an avaricious farmer, by giving the man a worthless check.20 Most farmers made money from leases and royalties rather than mudholes. Notwithstanding the giant Waggoner ranch, much of North Texas was divided into many small farms and ranches, so landmen competed for leases, bidding prices up during the boom. Even in peripheral areas, landowners received leasing bonuses of 15 to 25 cents an acre. In hot sections, bonuses totaled thousands of dollars. Landowners also had OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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the option of selling mineral rights or royalty rights on minerals, a hedge against the chance that tests would result in dry holes. The conventional royalty offered a lessor was one-eighth of production or what that amount of oil sold for at the wellhead. When crude oil prices rose to $3 a barrel and more in North Texas during 1920, the owner of land on which there was a 100 bopd well would receive a monthly check for $1,125, a handsome sum for the time. In short, the benefit of oil development to landowners was immediate, as J. H. McClesky of Ranger discovery fame was quick to realize. Once the well came in on his farm, he bought a whole stalk of bananas. As he explained to bystanders at the local store, ‘‘All my life, I’ve had a yearning to be able to feel like I was financially able to sit down and eat all the bananas I could eat at one sitting, and now I think I can afford it.’’ He ate six before he slowed down.21 Because there were so many landowners in North Texas, it was unusual for any company to be able to shut others out of the play by leasing preemptively in any area—as Texas Pacific Coal did initially at Ranger. Consequently, small operators were as active as big companies. In most North Texas pools of the 1910s and 1920s, wells were surprisingly affordable because pay depths were shallow, often about 2,000 feet. Better yet, though production of most wells usually dropped from hundreds to dozens of barrels a day within a few months, the desirable refining qualities of North Texas oil meant crude from the region fetched relatively high prices. Nor was it difficult to market production; railroads crisscrossed the region, major purchasers built trunk pipelines into it, and many small local refineries appeared after production was established. All of these elements added up to an especially congenial environment for independent oilmen whose energies were primarily given to exploration and production and whose focus was more likely to be regional rather than broad in scope. The small oil fields of North Texas emerged as independent turf. As at Corsicana and Spindletop, many of the independents active in North Texas in the 1910s were successful businessmen who were drawn into the industry from other pursuits. The career of Ralph O. Harvey offers a good example of such a transition. An Iowa native, Harvey went to work in Dallas for a cotton-exporting firm. In 1907 he set up as a cotton broker in Seymour, and two years later he moved to Wichita Falls and established the cotton firm R. O. Harvey & Company. Upon settling in Wichita Falls, he joined the extraordinarily dynamic business circle around J. A. Kemp and Frank Kell, whose ventures included railroads, coal mining, flour milling, townsite development, and banking. 86

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Like others in this group, Harvey took a keen interest in oil at Petrolia and Electra and began to learn about petroleum, but he continued in cotton, which, ironically, led to major profits in oil.22 In 1917, one of the dealers from whom Harvey bought cotton ran short of cash and gave Harvey four town lots at Burkburnett to settle his debt. As luck would have it, the lots were near the Fowler discovery that occurred the following year. Harvey hired Corsicana contractor A. R. Dillard to drill on the lots. In their first month, Harvey’s wells produced 73,000 barrels of oil, at a time of high oil prices. As his son Ralph recalled, Harvey said, ‘‘I didn’t ever believe that money could come into your hands that easily.’’ Meanwhile, working with Landon H. Cullum, Harvey and his partners picked up acreage in southeastern Eastland County, which Pittsburgh wildcatter Michael Late Benedum agreed to test, and on September 1, 1918, the discovery well for the Desdemona oil field came in. The partnership sold out its Desdemona properties to Benedum and his partner, Joseph Trees, and went on to a lucrative discovery on the south edge of the Electra field. Then, in 1923, they sold the Burkburnett, Electra, and some Eastland County production to Magnolia for $2,250,000. Harvey and his partners continued to bring in wells throughout North Texas, but Harvey also invested heavily in Wichita Falls real estate, a course which would prove disastrous during the Depression. Even then, his petroleum interests and business connections helped launch his sons as drilling contractors in the late 1930s.23 In addition to showing how a successful businessman could gravitate to oil, Ralph Harvey’s career also illustrates a number of features characteristic of the emerging group of Texas independents of the period. The early independents often did not keep much of the reserves they found, preferring to sell out to the crude-hungry major companies and go on to look for more oil. They were inclined to focus operations in one or two regions, becoming adept at exploiting strategies especially tailored to exploration and production in them. And they aggressively promoted the economic development of the communities that were their bases of operation. In fact, energetic promotion of the local economy probably contributed as much, if not more, than proximity to the oil fields did to the growth of Wichita Falls as a regional oil center. The foundations of that growth had been laid by J. A. Kemp and Frank Kell, who spearheaded railroad construction to bring grain, cotton, and coal to Wichita Falls. But, once oil was discovered, those same railroads took crude to refineries, products to more distant markets, and oil equipment and supplies OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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Tent City in Wichita Falls, 1918. Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Oklahoma.

to the fields. As on the Gulf Coast, local business leaders used the discovery of oil to build on a pre-existing prosperous economic base. Thus, by 1922, there were eleven refineries in Wichita Falls, the three largest being the Panhandle Refining Company, run by Roy B. Jones; the Texhoma Refining company, bought by Continental Oil; and the American Refining Company, headed by Walter M. Priddy. American Refining ambitiously grew to include both pipeline and retail operations. Major companies with offices in Wichita Falls included Gulf, Sinclair, and Empire Gas & Fuel. Rapid construction of modern office space by local businessmen helped ensure Wichita Falls’s position as an attractive regional center for management of operations.24 Wichita Falls’s principal rival as a regional oil center was Fort Worth. Like Wichita Falls, Fort Worth was a railroad hub, but its railroads— chiefly the Texas & Pacific, the Rock Island, the Fort Worth & Denver City, and the Fort Worth & Rio Grande—served a larger area in North and West Texas. For western Texas, moreover, Fort Worth was the center for banking and cattle trade. As the Oil and Gas Journal put it, for ranchers Fort Worth was ‘‘their London, New York, and Paris.’’ 25 The 88

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town experienced some growth as a result of early developments at Petrolia and Electra. In particular, Gulf and the Pierce Oil Association erected office buildings in Fort Worth in 1911, and Magnolia followed in 1914. But, because Wichita Falls was closer to Electra-area production, oil did not dramatically affect Fort Worth’s growth until the Ranger area discoveries in 1917. Getting to Ranger and points farther westward in the Permian Basin was easier by rail from Fort Worth than from any other metropolitan center, so as exploration and production moved westward through the 1920s, Fort Worth came to be the base of operations for major and independent oil companies as well as oil field supply and service firms. By the early 1920s, the city had also become a national center for mail-order oil stock promotion. Promoters, both honest and otherwise,

The Canyon, on Eighth Street in Wichita Falls, 1920s. Courtesy of J. C. and W. F. Reynolds, Wichita Falls.

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Traders on the Fort Worth Oil Exchange, 1919. Fort Worth Record, July 17, 1919.

rented space in new office buildings, such as the W. T. Waggoner and Farmers and Mechanics Bank buildings, and created work for stenographers, printers, and postal workers. Less affluent promoters thronged hotel lobbies and sidewalks, ready to trade leases, shares, interests in ventures, virtually anything vendible. Thus, an oil boom one hundred miles west made Fort Worth boom.26 By 1920, then, Fort Worth was one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, and it had a tremendously dynamic oil community. Larger companies like Gulf, Marland, the Texas Company, and Texas Pacific Coal & Oil, as well as companies that would grow large like Amerada, Skelly, and Phillips, set up divisional offices in town to handle land and lease work, geology, and production. The presence of these larger company offices, as well as ready rail access to opening areas for exploration and development, also made Fort Worth a highly desirable base of operations for smaller independents. Fort Worth operators like Ed Landreth, Charles Roeser, J. D. Collett, W. H. Dunning, Roy Westbrook, A. J. Broderick, George Calvert, George McCamey, C. J. Davidson and, of course, Sid Richardson would take a leading role in the opening of the Permian 90

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Basin during the 1920s and 1930s. Fort Worth’s oil community also became the locus for drilling and pipeline construction contractors like Loffland Brothers and Rowan Drilling and for equipment firms like Well Machinery and Supply Company, whose Fort Worth spudder became synonymous for the light-weight drilling machines used on shallow wells throughout the Mid-Continent oil fields.27 Fort Worth started out larger and richer than Wichita Falls. The business and transportation network in Fort Worth was more extensive, and the oil community was less locally focused than that of Wichita Falls. Although Fort Worth came to surpass Wichita Falls as an oil center, both towns remained strongholds of independent oilmen rather than major companies, reflecting the continuing exploration and development of relatively small and shallow North Texas fields by independents. Operating on small budgets, independents could prosper by drilling lowcost wells, even when production was modest. By contrast, North Texas was disappointing to many major companies that were lured into substantial investments in the early stages of fields like Ranger, Breckenridge, and Burkburnett, in the hope of sustained high levels of production. The best example of such disappointment is probably offered by Humble’s experience in the Ranger area. A relative latecomer in the boom, Humble bought undrilled leases at premium prices, at times spending over $50,000 a day, in the hope that it was buying into a huge oil pool. It also bought production throughout the field. To handle the bonanza of crude it expected, Humble rushed construction of a pipeline from Comyn in Comanche County to Webster, southeast of Houston, a project that required crossing four rivers and construction of six large pump stations. Humble also built a large company camp, the camp of camps, at Cisco to house all the employees who would be working for years extracting Ranger oil.28 Unhappily, Humble guessed wrong. The Ranger area oil pools were not part of an enormous field, meeting lease obligation required drilling a large number of dry holes, and wells that came in for hundreds of barrels per day fizzled rapidly. Humble spent $250,000 for one property producing 800 bopd, and, in a month, production had fallen to 200 bopd. Compared with production at West Columbia and Goose Creek, what Humble got at Ranger was small potatoes. Only the pipeline project was on the mark, eventually becoming part of a system linking Humble’s Gulf Coast refineries with the giant production of the Permian Basin and Panhandle. It was far better, then, for a company like Humble to buy oil that someone else found and produced in North Texas.29 OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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The great North Texas boom not only brought many more persons into the oil industry and created bustling regional oil centers in Wichita Falls and Fort Worth, it also helped push the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) into new regulatory functions for which it was ill prepared. The commission consisted of three elected commissioners, and its work was not overly demanding. It had no assigned responsibility for petroleum until 1917. In that year, as we have noted earlier, the Texas legislature finally lifted the ban on oil companies having integrated operations, but it also made pipelines common carriers. It gave responsibility for pipeline regulation to the TRC and mandated the commission’s administration of conservation laws relating to oil and gas. In the same year, section 59a amended article 16 of the state constitution to permit the legislature to make laws to conserve natural resources.30 The amendment was a response to mounting national interest in conservation questions, an interest promoted by Progressive conservationists. By the late 1910s, conservationists had raised alarm about a dwindling supply of oil in the United States and had begun to condemn waste of oil and gas by the petroleum industry. In particular, they criticized oilmen for headlong drilling in places like Burkburnett; for letting gas produced in the production of oil flare off or simply flow into the air; and for overproducing oil that was then stored wastefully in open pits or leaky tanks, where volatile components evaporated. America, they argued, was running out of oil, and such practices were irresponsible. Accordingly, in 1919, the Texas legislature passed an act directed against waste of oil and gas and gave the TRC regulatory and enforcement powers in this area. Among other things, the act defined ‘‘waste’’ as letting ‘‘commercial quantities’’ of natural gas produced from a gas formation simply flow into the air; letting water drown out a natural gas formation; burning off natural gas; and using gas wastefully, as in flambeaus or in daytime lighting. Gas that was produced with oil was omitted from these provisions, with the exception of one limiting the number of flambeaus. The act also prohibited, but did not define, ‘‘underground waste,’’ which conservationists took to mean practices resulting in oil left unrecoverable in depleted pools.31 Following passage of the 1919 act, the TRC began to hold hearings and work out regulations, so that by the end of November it had issued thirty-eight rules, the most controversial being Rule 37, relating to wellspacing. Designed to address the town-lot drilling issue, Rule 37 barred drilling wells within 300 feet of one another or within 150 feet of a prop-

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Humble Barber’s Hill

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Houston Goose Creek Blue Ridge Damon Mound West Columbia

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erty line. This rule was often challenged, and it was vulnerable on both engineering and legal grounds— on engineering grounds because some authorities held that close spacing maximized recovery, and on legal grounds because it could deprive a small-tract owner of the right to use his property. Not surprisingly, the TRC granted frequent exceptions to Rule 37.32 Although the TRC bravely set about making rules, it was illprepared to take on the task given it in 1919. For one thing, neither commissioners nor staff had oil-industry experience. The industry itself was only beginning to hire numbers of geologists, and petroleum engineering was a newly created field in 1919, so the commission may be forgiven for not having such experts under its command. Nevertheless, their absence did not make problem-solving easier. Then, too, the TRC had far too few deputy supervisors in its field force to support efficient enforcement during the 1920s. There were between nine and seventeen to monitor activity in all of Texas! In general, the deputy supervisors seem to have concentrated on booming fields, and operators elsewhere were on their honor to comply with regulations. Not uncommonly, they ignored TRC requirements to file for permits to drill and submit information about well completions. One operator, for example, contacted the commission only when he needed a pipeline connection. When the commission asked him where his drilling permits were, he ceased to correspond and letters came back to the commission undelivered. To say that the TRC made much difference in field operations during the 1920s, then, would be hard to defend. Many operators did not take its regulation seriously, but, had they done so, the understaffed and amateur com-

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mission would have had difficulty responding. In the earliest years of its regulation of petroleum, the TRC lacked regulatory credibility. This lack would have serious consequences during the 1930s.33 While North Texas boomed, oilmen made significant additions to upper Gulf Coast reserves during the second and third decades of the century, thereby providing sufficient crude to supply the large refineries along the coast and to prompt their expansion. For the most part, exploration took the form of a continued search for salt domes, the only structures in the area that were known to contain commercial quantities of oil. The drilling of domes with surface features led to discoveries at Brenham in 1914, Damon Mound in 1915, Barber’s Hill in 1916 (where Pattillo Higgins had drilled unsuccessfully in 1902), Markham in 1917, West Columbia in 1918, Hull in 1918, and Blue Ridge in 1919. In 1901, oilmen began testing West Columbia, due south of Houston in Brazoria County, but they had no commercial success. Four small wells were completed at 1,050 feet on the south edge of the field during 1904, but development did not begin at a swift pace until 1918, when Tyndall-Wyoming’s No. 2 Hogg confirmed the presence of shows of oil at 2,900 feet. This discovery prompted extensive work by Gulf, the Texas Company, and other operators, leading to the Texas Company’s No. 2 Arnold well, which was completed in January 1919, with 6,500 bopd initial production. Shortly thereafter, Gulf extended the field to include the property of the Hogg family in the heavily productive area, triggering a lease run during which land leased for $2,500 to $5,000 an acre plus one-sixth royalty. As the field developed, encompassing about one-half of a section of land, it yielded some spectacular results. One twenty-acre Humble Oil lease produced 620,298 barrels per acre. The Texas Company’s No. 1 Abrams came in during 1920, with initial production of 30,000 bopd. The well averaged 26,000 bopd for five months, declined to 20,000 bopd after an additional thirty days, stopped for a few hours, and came back at 8,000 bopd, averaging 7,400 bopd for four more months. In all, the well produced about two million barrels before it fell below 300 bopd. At the beginning of 1927, it was still making 250 bopd. To that date, No. 1 Abrams was the biggest revenue producer in the history of the petroleum industry. Other wells also were exceptionally prolific: Texas’s No. 49 Hogg came in at 28,000 bopd, while its No. 58 Hogg produced more than three million barrels of oil during two decades. Humble’s No. 1 Robinson came in at 8,000 bopd, and Humble’s No. 27 Japhet came in at 8,000 to 10,000 bopd. By the end of 1920, the field was producing 41,000 bopd, with Humble accounting for half the volume 94

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and the Texas Company for about one-fourth.34 The field also produced the first millionaire African American royalty owner, Charles Brown, a ninety-year-old farmer who owned acreage in the heart of the field. An enterprising and successful farmer before oil was discovered on his land, he died in late 1920, leaving an estate valued at between one million and two million dollars.35 Oilmen made the second major upper Gulf Coast discovery of the era near the Louisiana border, six miles west of Orange. Like other fields in all sections of Texas, this field’s discovery well was drilled because of gas seepages into water wells and the detection of sulfur springs and paraffin dirt. First drilled to a shallow depth in 1903, the area yielded no oil, but in 1913, after deeper drilling on other domes found oil, Rio Bravo, a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad, tried again. The company took over a lease, and the resulting No. 1 Bland produced 150 bopd from 3,209 to 3,227 feet, making it the deepest well in Texas at that time.36 Attempts to exploit the discovery failed, however, until an independent, Little Six Oil Company, completed a second well, nearly a mile away, in 1919. Another drilling campaign ensued, with Gulf and independents drilling most of the wells. Gulf, especially effective, completed two wells that produced 4,100 and 2,500 bopd. At the end of 1921, Humble cashed in heavily with the field titan, its No. 5 Chesson, which produced 14,000 bopd from 3,900 feet. The third major discovery during the period occurred at Hull, about fifty miles northeast of Houston in Liberty County. The Sun Oil Company had drilled a dry hole in the locale in 1908, and this effort was followed by a decade of desultory exploration, mainly of shallow drilling in areas that had gas in water wells and sulfur water. At the end of that period, the Republic company made the discovery that began field development. Its Fee No. 3, completed from a shallow flank of the salt dome at 1,200 feet, yielded initial production of 1,000 bopd.37 Compared with Hull, Orange, and West Columbia, other new field discoveries were of limited significance. For the most part, the smaller fields—Blue Ridge, Barber’s Hill, and Damon Mound—yielded oil only after extended exploration. Blue Ridge, fifteen miles southwest of Houston, had been explored without success since 1903, but drillers had found either gas or salt. In 1918–1919, Gulf drilled three tests there and got a 1,200-barrel well with low-gravity crude in April 1919. A few months later, leases were running as high as $1,000 an acre, and twenty rigs were running in the field. The Texas Company, Gulf, Sinclair, Atlantic, and Republic Production were all active in the largely unsuccessful OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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A happy farmer inspecting wells on his tract near Hull. Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library.

effort to find a major field. The Texas Company’s No. 1 Robinson was the best early well in the field, with initial production of 8,000 bopd.38 Barber’s Hill was drilled on a seepage after E. W. Barber found gas in a sixty-five-foot water well near his house. The field, twenty-six miles northeast of Houston, was explored by Pattillo Higgins, who predicted that Barber’s Hill would be even bigger than Spindletop. As he put it, ‘‘Our oil field around Barber’s Hill is twenty miles larger than the Beaumont field.’’ With his characteristic imagination, he announced that he would construct a refinery and two pipeline systems at the hill. ‘‘Its future is glorious.’’ 39 He drilled five dry holes. J. M. Guffey drilled five more with Higgins. Sun drilled a dry hole in 1904. Gulf Production Company, which took over the Guffey properties, drilled four more tests in 1916, jointly with Humble, obtaining production on its fourth well. The well produced about 40 bopd but was abandoned when saltwater encroachment made it uneconomical. In 1918, Sam Hindman’s United Petroleum Company achieved the first success of nearly two decades of exploration in the field, a 70 bopd well producing low-gravity oil. By the time the field had produced a significant amount of oil, more than a dozen dry holes dotted the surface of the dome.40 Damon Mound, thirty-eight miles southwest of Houston, was discovered by H. T. Staiti’s Texas Exploration Company, an active wild96

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catter and producer in the region. Previous exploration of the dome, beginning in 1901 with a test by J. M. Guffey, found oil shows but no production. Following up on the flank drilling at Sour Lake and Humble, Staiti entered the field in July 1915 and in November found a large producer that ran wild and then sanded up and was junked. The following year, he brought in a 10 MMcf per day gasser, at best marginal until it began to produce oil at the rate of 5,000 bopd. In 1917, Staiti got a 7,500 bopd well, but it produced 3,500 barrels of water a day along with the oil.41 Individual oilmen profited from minor discoveries, but dollars invested in finding these small fields probably exceeded the value of the crude they yielded. There could be no doubt as to the negative balance sheets on three failures. For example, work continued on the Dayton salt dome in Liberty County, northeast of Houston. J. M. Guffey and others had explored on the mound in 1901, after T. M. McGowan, a local landowner, demonstrated that he was running natural gas to his home from a thirty-foot water well in his backyard. Oilmen were less successful than McGowan, however, commonly getting only shows until 1905, when they found oil at 419 feet. The discovery prompted a brief rush, until the well turned to producing salt- and sulfur water. By the end of 1906, some of the larger Gulf Coast companies, including Heywood Oil and Paraffine Oil, also had made unsuccessful tests. Efforts resumed in 1917, after deep production on other domes led Empire Gas and Fuel to try fourteen tests, which found deeper shows but insufficient oil to justify development.42 Similarly, the High Island field, a mile from the coast in Galveston County, had been explored during the excitement that followed the initial Spindletop discovery in 1901, but without success. The next year, J. M. Guffey Petroleum drilled and abandoned three test wells, then in 1912 and 1913 returned as Gulf Production Company for two additional tests, obtaining shows in both wells. In 1916, Marrs McLean drilled three dry holes in the cap rock. Three years later, Sun Oil took over his leases and drilled three more dusters.43 Quite apart from the dry holes, oilmen were learning that new field discoveries were not necessarily the most efficient way to increase reserves, as work-overs, deeper drilling, and flank drilling in known oil fields produced sharp increases in Gulf Coast production. In 1914, the discovery of flank production at Humble boosted field production fourfold, to more than two-thirds of its flush level of 1905. This discovery encouraged flank drilling and deeper drilling throughout the region. At Goose Creek, deeper drilling by the American Production Company in OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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1916 led to a 10,000 bopd well on the company’s Galliard lease and launched active development of that old field. This re-entry brought the field to its historical peak of nine million barrels of oil per year in 1918. Work-overs and deeper drilling kept the pool a major producer. The Texas Company completed No. 16 Koehler in 1917 and reworked the well three times in 1920 –1921 for sizable boosts in production. Gulf Coast oil, though abundant, had from the beginning posed particular problems for producers. It was low-gravity oil, yielding relatively little of the valuable light fractions. Deeper drilling often located higher grade oil, but crude throughout the region tended to carry large quantities of pulverized rock and other minerals, along with high volumes of water, making a thick emulsion. ‘‘Cut oil,’’ as it was called at the time, could be treated in the field to some extent with sand screens and by heating and separating the water from the crude. With prolific production, however, producers sought other solutions, includingchemical treatments and centrifugal machines, but the volumes of oil and the relatively low prices that Gulf Coast crude fetched made these methods inefficient and unaffordable. In recourse to an economical approach, leading producers, including Gulf, Texas Company, and Humble, all constructed large, covered earthen reservoirs in major fields such as West Columbia, Orange, and Humble, where they used gravity and heated pipes to separate the lighter crude from water and to permit sediment to settle out. Humble preferred to let the settling process occur for at least six months before crude oil was delivered to its refinery. In 1917, nearly half of the crude stored at the Humble field and at Goose Creek was in earthen pits, and more than half at Sour Lake. Prolific wells at West Columbia and Orange taxed the capacity of pipelines, requiring more earthen storage in those fields. By 1921, more than fourteen million barrels of oil were held in earthen storage on the Gulf Coast. A year later more than fifteen million barrels of oil were stored in earthen tanks at Orange.44 The availability of massive production within a hundred miles of Houston supported the development and expansion of refining activity in the Bayou City. J. S. Cullinan and Ross Sterling, in particular, pushed the development of the Houston Ship Channel during the second and third decades of the century. In the process, they fostered the diversification of the local economy beyond its historical base in distribution, as the channel attracted an increasing number of industries, twenty-two of them below the Turning Basin and sixteen above by 1918. Beginning with the construction of the Sinclair Refinery in 1918, the channel was 98

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marked as an industrial center with an increasing number of petroleum installations.45 New field discoveries, extensions and work-overs, and refinery operations all sustained a strong demand for skilled and unskilled workers alike, often leading to periodic labor shortages and giving workers a rare opportunity to bargain for better terms through labor organizations. Beginning in California, exploration and production workers, supported by the American Federation of Labor, organized in major fields in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana during 1916 and 1917. At Goose Creek, workers organized and pressed for an eight-hour day, with wage increases to offset reduced hours. When talks with employers broke down in October 1917, workers walked off their jobs, slowing drilling for several weeks until about one-quarter of them were replaced and the others returned to work. Federal mediation failed to resolve the dispute, which finally collapsed after refinery workers refused to close down their plants. Some companies, notably Humble, Gulf, and Shell, raised wages once the strike was over, and several also created stock-option-based pension plans to build employees’ loyalty to the company.46 Notwithstanding major company attempts to kill union organization with paternalism, the task of a labor organizer in the oil fields at this time was unenviable. Many oil field workers were young farm boys; compared with the rewards in agricultural labor, the return from oil field work looked good. By 1919, so many of them had left the farms for oil field work that the U.S. Employment Service bureau in Houston reported a serious shortage of farm labor. Even pipeline companies, paying $3.50 a day plus room and board, had no trouble luring young men out of the cotton fields for even harder work.47 At a time of high activity and labor shortage, the easiest way to settle a difference with one’s employer was to quit and go to work for another; it was easy to find another job. Moreover, field workers were highly mobile, moving from boom to boom, and this mobility posed a challenge to sustaining the vigor of a union local. In the end, during the first decades of Texas oil, unions were only relatively successful in organizing refinery workers, white and male, and more modestly successful in organizing rig builders. The typical roughneck was not a part of organized labor. The second decade of Texas oil saw a final producing region open up in Southwest Texas. There Indians are reported to have gathered oil from seeps along the Rio Grande in the sixteenth century. Farmers and ranchers in the region, like their counterparts in other sections of the OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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state, commonly found oil and gas when they drilled for water. In the days of early settlement, before the Civil War, a planter had found oil in a water well near Lavernia, about twenty miles southeast of San Antonio. Water wells near Floresville contained shows of oil and gas at fifty feet. Within San Antonio, artesian wells usually passed through oil- and gas-bearing strata. The Crystal Ice Company, for example, struck gas at 375 feet near the center of the city in 1889, and a municipal well in a suburb, Alamo Heights, found oil and produced 7 bopd for a brief period. Well drillers in Bexar County found oil and gas where they least expected it. When one driller erected demonstration machinery at the fair grounds and began a shallow well, he struck natural gas and some oil during the opening days of the fete. As with other regional shows, the pay was thick and the oil low gravity.48 A small show in an artesian water well in Harlandale, a suburb to the southwest, created a momentary stir when the driller described the oil as ‘‘the highest grade ever brought in these parts . . . a fraction over 92 per cent’’ illuminating oil. The well, in fact, produced little oil and, at that, it was low gravity and sulfury. Oil and gas seeps were often located in the vicinity of Corpus Christi. Surveying the common situation in 1900, William Battle Phillips observed, ‘‘There are few wells 500 feet deep in which flows of oil have not been encountered.’’ 49 Thus, before the modern era of oil production began with Spindletop, and for decades thereafter, surface and shallow shows 100

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had been encountered in three principal areas of the large region: Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and Laredo.50 Following the discovery of oil on the Spindletop salt dome, the frenzied drilling of all visible domes brought oilmen to the region. As early as August 1900, however, the oil and gas in a sixteen-foot water well on the Tinney tract at Piedras Pintas in Duval County had prompted A. C. Hall, a Corsicana oil operator, to lease areas around the well. In April 1901, he sold the leases to Guffey and Galey and the American Well and Prospecting Company. Guffey and Galey attempted a cable-tool test, followed by a rotary test on the same acreage, but they abandoned the prospect after shows of oil at 465 feet, 700 feet, and 900 feet. Deeper drilling to 1,506 feet found nothing but water, some of which was saline. In 1904, the Texas Company took over the leases, drilled two tests, and found shows of oil in 1905. By the end of that year, oilmen had drilled five wells in the locale. Two of the five were small producers, one at 183 feet for 15 bopd. Texaco’s initial test produced some gas and then blew out in 1908 with additional oil shows. Drilling on an adjoining tract, the Border Oil Company produced about 25 bopd and large quantities of water, making the lease unproduceable at the time. Border’s No. 3 well was more encouraging, producing 100 bopd as a pumper. Another offset well, which initially produced 300 bopd and less water, served largely to sustain the interest of oilmen in Piedras Pintas. By the end of 1907, there were four producing wells in the field. Total production for the year was 8,354 barrels. Remote from efficient transportation, the wells were too expensive to produce until the TexasMexican Railroad built a six-car loading station and Larson and Cleary built a four-inch line to connect Duval Station to the field.51 Another tightly controlled play on the 53,000-acre Driscoll ranch brought in large natural gas reserves. In 1908, Robert Driscoll found 30 MMcf per day of gas in a water well he was trying to complete. Already a multimillionaire from cattle, banking, and other investments, he declined to lease his land and proceeded to drill it himself over several decades, generally finding from 15 to 40 MMcf per day with each well. Driscoll completed six shallow wells in 1908 and 1909, the deepest 608 feet. His son, Robert Jr., who succeeded his father in the family business in 1914, postponed further development until 1927, when pipeline connections became available in the area. Resumed development resulted in finds of both oil and gas between 2,400 and 3,000 feet. After Robert’s death in 1929, his sister, Clara Driscoll Sevier, supervised drilling. Like her brother, she resisted the temptation to launch into largeOILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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scale activity and disrupt ranch life, leaving large parts of the play accessible only on horseback or foot.52 Sporadic exploration began near Corpus Christi in 1906, when Guffey Petroleum drilled on a natural gas seep but stopped at 1,206 feet without a discovery. The next year, another operator found gas at between 400 and 450 feet. Several years after this second attempt, another test drilled near the Guffey well found strong gas, but there was no follow-up. Isolated searches were made elsewhere in the vicinity. In Kleberg County, for example, J. B. Smith and William Mundall, of Pennsylvania, made several unsuccessful attempts to find Frio-sand oil on the King Ranch during 1907–1908.53 The San Antonio area seemed like a more likely locale for gushers, but wildcatters drilled dry holes until 1907 when commercially profitable production was found in the Mission field, twelve miles southwest of the city. A spurt of leasing followed the initial discovery and accelerated in the area after the third well in the field, completed in the Edwards limestone at 1,150 feet, produced 400 bopd for a short period. The oil was heavy and black, with a specific gravity of 15, thus yielding few of the valuable light fractions for illumination. Producers Oil Company (Texas Company) undertook two wells with Hamill and Josey, who also drilled one well for themselves. Thereafter, steady drilling continued, with small production and seven rigs drilling at the end of 1907.54 The discovery well produced 5,000 barrels of oil per year, but later wells rarely produced as much as half of that amount. Though wells were drilled occasionally during the next decade, the Mission field never realized the great expectations San Antonians had for it. By 1919, it contained only seven wells, each producing from 2 to 6 bopd.55 Except for occasional tests on salt domes, exploration in the San Antonio region subsided until 1913, when water-well drillers located the Somerset field eighteen miles southwest of San Antonio, near the Bexar-Atascosa county line.56 Development of the field began six years later, opening what would prove to be the most extensive field in its vicinity. The field, as ultimately defined, was twelve and a half miles long and averaged a mile and a half in width.57 The Somerset field encouraged explorers with the most prolific initial production in the whole region. Early wells produced from 15 to 50 bopd, but occasionally a well produced as much as 400 bopd initially and then declined slowly to about 10 to 15 bopd. Gravity of the Somerset oil, which was higher than that of the Mission field, was still low, ranging from 26 to 40 degrees and increasing in oil from wells located in 102

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a southwesterly direction across the field. Large producers, including Gulf, were attracted by the shallow production and entered the field despite the low gravity of the oil. As better production came in along the upper Gulf Coast and in North Texas, however, they sold out to local interests. Gulf, for example, sold to the Grayburg Oil Company, a San Antonio operation. Activity in the field did lead to the growth of the crossroads community of Somerset, which expanded after F. L. Thompson, a veteran of the Sour Lake field and president of Grayburg Oil Company, sold a hundred townsite lots to a local developer. The settlement expanded to include a hotel, half a dozen stores, a lumberyard, several cafes, a bank, a post office, and garages.58 As the Somerset field was being defined by additional drilling, its success prompted additional wildcatting in the area, leading to one notable addition. In 1915, J. T. Marrs brought in an Edwards limestone discovery, the Alta Vista field in Bexar County, eight miles south of San Antonio. The discovery well produced 60 bopd of heavy crude at 1,090 feet. Marrs had leased up 2,700 acres in the vicinity of his well, some of which he sold to local investors for further development. Some wells in the field were said to have produced as much as 200 bopd, though the measured range was actually less, from 15 to 100 bopd. Despite an initial drilling rush, with the completion of seven wells in short order, the field was not a bonanza, and development was slow. Reaching about a dozen wells at its peak, the field contained only four producing wells by 1919. Less noteworthy during the search for oil, the location of natural gas in the Alta Vista–Mission area began with a small discovery in 1912. This find, however, was of greater consequence for San Antonio than oil, because it provided more than seven billion cubic feet of gas to the city by 1929.59 Natural gas was abundant throughout Southwest Texas, most notably near Corpus Christi, where a natural gas seep into a water well on the west side of the White Point peninsula, north of the city, suggested the presence of a salt-dome structure and revived the search for oil. In 1914, the White Point Oil and Gas Company began a search in the same area and found a massive flow of natural gas in a Frio sand at 1,690 feet. The gas was of little immediate interest in itself, however, because the objective of the search was oil, which was presumed to lie under large pockets of gas. Thus White Point Oil and Gas drilled deeper but at 1,820 feet abandoned the well as a dry hole. The company went 500 feet to the south of this failure and tried again. Near the end of the year, they found a massive flow of natural gas at 2,225 feet. The well blew out its OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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casing with such strong pressure that adjoining dry holes began to produce gas. Then it completely blew out, swallowing the derrick and rig in a crater 100 feet wide and more than 60 feet deep. After the well caved in on itself, it continued to belch mud, water, and slush 25 feet into the air. Then it vented into Corpus Christi Bay, about 750 feet away. J. M. Guffey Petroleum (later Gulf) bought the well and a 2,000-acre lease for $60,000 and one-quarter royalty and undertook development. Guffey, by 1915, had drilled seven wells at White Point. Some were large, with capacities ranging from 20 to 100 MMcf of gas per day, confirming the presence of large commercial quantities of natural gas in the region. The high-pressure gas produced another spectacular blowout as gas found fissures to Corpus Christi Bay, where it erupted, sending up gas jets twenty feet into the air. Two Gulf wells had showings of oil, one at 1,025 feet and the other above 2,260 feet. Another Gulf well showed exceptionally high grade crude oil, but not in sufficient quantity to develop. A third test, in 1916, led to the first commercial production of gas from the Corpus Christi Oil and Gas Company’s White Point No. 3.60 White Point Oil and Gas Company took over one of the Gulf tests and ran natural gas lines to the city of Taft, and natural gas from the field was delivered to Corpus Christi consumers in 1920.61 The discovery of White Point prompted additional exploration of the Frio sand on St. Joseph Island, across the bay from Corpus Christi. Tom Corrigan of Tulsa undertook a test, which was hampered first by a hurricane and then by the collapse of the casing. The project was taken over by the Rockport Oil and Gas Company, which completed the well. They made an additional test about 350 feet from the first but without a commercial discovery.62 The wells at White Point had also stimulated widespread leasing in the area, and all of the land within five miles of the field’s big gasser was signed up within a few days of the initial discovery. Leasing activity carried over into adjoining areas, including Kleberg, Duval, McMullen, Webb, and other counties in the southwestern corner of the state. For example, despite the failure of at least five tests on the King Ranch, Joseph F. Guffey, E. Gillespie, and Benedum and Trees went so far as to acquire an oil and gas lease on the property, sixteen miles south of the gas well at White Point. This lease was the largest acreage transaction in the history of the Texas oil industry to that time. Drilling on the lease, which occurred in 1915, consisted of two test wells that were found to be dry and were abandoned at about 3,000 feet.63 Impatient at the slow pace of exploration, in 1918 the Kingsville Chamber of Commerce pro104

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An oil field worker and his home near Laredo, after World War I. Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

moted a test in Kleberg County, to follow up on a gas show encountered several years earlier, six miles southeast of the town. In 1920, the Kleberg Oil and Gas Company found 6 MMcf of gas per day on the King Ranch near Kingsville, not enough to prompt further searches for gas but sufficient to provide fuel for two more tests. The second of the tests discovered more gas along with oil at 3,013 feet, but it was abandoned after water incursion flooded the well bore.64 Though prospecting for oil yielded discouraging results as far as oilmen were concerned, tests along the lower Gulf Coast led to substantial discoveries of natural gas, which local lines carried to neighboring towns. In 1908, larger pockets of gas were discovered in McMullen County, where a well ran uncontrolled for some time. A definitive test by the Grubstake Investment Company, in 1918, brought in a well that produced 40 MMcf of gas per day at 800 feet, leading to further development. Following completion of the Grubstake well, there was additional exploration in the county, but without commercial success during the first two decades of the century.65 Oilmen also searched for petroleum on the Gulf Coastal Plain in the vicinity of the town of Refugio, where OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD

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there were identifiable salt domes. No significant discoveries were made until September 1920, when the Texas Gulf Gas Association’s No. 1 V. F. W. Heard produced from 1,902 feet. During the next seven years, additional production was found in two more shallow sands.66 During 1918 through 1920, oilmen also carried out intensive development of small fields south of Laredo in Starr County. A group of Brownsville investors found gas at 325 feet in 1909, but no oil appeared and the test was abandoned. News of their noncommercial gas find, however, sustained at least limited interest in the area and led to further exploration. East of Laredo, a rancher found a gas field while drilling for oil. In 1911, this discovery of the Reiser field was connected to Laredo with a thirty-mile pipeline by the Border Gas Company. Three years later, a water well drilled thirty miles from this field on the Jennings Ranch in Zapata County produced 15 MMcf of gas per day at 1,314 feet and was capped to await a market. Lone Star Gas brought in a well on the Jennings Ranch that produced 10 MMcf of gas per day. The well and a lease on 40,000 acres were sold to Border Gas, a company then identified with the Texas Company, which also undertook tests in Webb County through Producers Oil Company. Border Gas connected the new field with its line to Laredo. Occasional shallow shows of oil in the gas wells attracted Empire Gas and Fuel to the region, where it drilled unsuccessfully for oil but had more luck with gas. In 1918 the Zapata Oil and Gas Company drilled an 8 bopd well about sixty miles southeast of Laredo, stimulating additional tests in the Rio Grande border counties and leading to discoveries in the next decade.67 By the end of the twentieth century’s second decade, wildcatters had extended petroleum production away from the Gulf Coast and into vast new stretches of North, North-Central, and Southwest Texas. At the same time, they brought in great additional volumes of Gulf Coast crude, particularly by drilling deeper in areas already productive. Texas oil’s second decade saw the oil boom become a familiar part of the Texas experience, and existing regional centers like Wichita Falls, Fort Worth, and Houston boomed along with oil. Oil made more and more Texas fortunes. But this was just the beginning. The next decade would bring even more spectacular discoveries, finds in which science began to play a more frequent role. Texas, in sum, was well into the golden age of the wildcatter, and wildcatters of all sorts were carrying on the search for black gold.

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THE RISING TIDE OF OIL During the 1920s, oilmen continued to explore the far reaches of Texas, finding a series of small fields in the Laredo area and more significant fields in the Corpus Christi vicinity. These discoveries were largely overshadowed, however, by major strikes in Central Texas and new field activity in the upper Gulf Coast. In the coastal region, oilmen made massive additions to reserves by drilling on the flanks of old fields and by reentering them to produce from deeper horizons. In some measure, the oil prospectors had begun to benefit from geoscience, which provided mounting evidence that it could narrow drilling risks. The growing volume of oil production fostered the extension of the pipeline systems in the state and supported the expansion of refinery capacity in the Houston–Beaumont–Port Arthur area. Prospectors also found an enormous amount of natural gas, and improvements in pipeline construction allowed an increasing amount of gas to reach markets. By the end of the decade, all of the major sections of the state produced oil and gas, and Texas was squarely placed in the modern industrial age. During the third gusher decade, Southwest Texas remained an arena for minor plays. In the San Antonio area, Grayburg Oil had acquired Gulf’s wells and leases in the Somerset field and began another active drilling campaign, going down about 1,500 feet, deeper than earlier operators had ventured. When Grayburg’s second well, the first gusher in the field, flowed more than 600 barrels before it was choked back, it triggered new interest in Bexar and Atascosa counties. A ‘‘veritable rush for acreage’’ occurred, leading Gulf to reassess its declining role in the region and to reopen a local office for tracking developments.1 By mid-1922, fifty rigs were running in the field, sixteen of them owned by Grayburg, and more than a hundred derricks were building.

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Operators completed wells quickly and cheaply, finding oil between 1,500 and 2,000 feet. However, Grayburg’s gusher proved to be exceptional in the field. For the most part, Somerset wells produced only about 10 barrels of oil per day (bopd), though they declined more slowly than wells in other parts of Texas. With an increasing number of pumping wells, Grayburg expanded rapidly, averaging field production of 1,000 bopd by late 1922 and completing its own gathering system, a pipeline, a 4,000 bopd refinery, and a dozen retail stations. By the end of the decade, Grayburg had gathered nearly one million barrels a year from Somerset and held a dominant position in the field. Other independents with significant production there included Golden West Oil Company and Claude Witherspoon of San Antonio, O. W. Killam of Laredo, and M. K. Towns of Luling. During the next decade, Grayburg and other operators continued to develop the field with small shallow wells as it declined in importance.2 Other South Texas tries were promising but few were commercial. At Palangana, Empire Gas and Fuel found shows of oil at about 575 feet in its No. 1 Singer well. This area was also tested by Sinclair, National, E. F. Simms, and Humble Oil and Refining, but none located commercial production. The Garcia Oil and Refining Company drilled on the Yzarguerra Ranch, got a show of oil, and then drilled a dry test eight miles south of that site. Producers Oil Company (the Texas Company) drilled 108

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wells at Falfurrias in response to seeps in water wells but got only dry holes for its effort, stopping short of the deeper pay that would be found at a later date. A small cap-rock well, drilled in 1928, was the first commercial production in the field, but it was abandoned after production of little more than 2,000 barrels of oil. The low level of exploration that characterized most of the decade was sustained only by a few large companies and a handful of independents who were determined to test leases or to pursue speculation as to underlying formations.3 To the west, major development along the Rio Grande began in 1920, when the discovery of the Mirando Valley field set off a geological trend play along the foot of the Reynosa Escarpment, leading to additional finds. The wildcat discovery was made by an unlikely group, the Mirando City Oil Company, formed by investors from the area and O. W. Killam, a Missouri-born attorney. Killam had promoted lead and zinc mines near Joplin and pursued a political and business career in Indian Territory before coming to the Rio Grande Valley. There he set himself up as an oilman by purchasing a 45-horsepower rotary drilling rig for $13,000. His initial test to 1,600 feet was dry, but it did have the usual shows of oil and gas. He abandoned a second test because the casing collapsed. His determination paid off the next time, with a discovery well on Section 114 of the Hinnant ranch in the northeast corner of Zapata County, about thirty-five miles east-southeast of Laredo. The success of the well was realized when the driller had to shut down for lack of fuel and found that crude oil was accumulating in the drilling mud. The oil, flowing at a rate of 75 to 100 bopd, characterized the well as a small pumper in short order. Production was low gravity, about 21.5 degrees without light shows, but it was valuable because it contained only small quantities of sediment and water.4 Above all, it confirmed the presence of commercial quantities of oil in the Laredo region. Killam’s discovery produced the first boom in the area, the Oil Weekly reported, as ‘‘oilmen continue to flock to Laredo from all over the country and from Mexico.’’ At the time, little was known about Killam’s method of selecting the discovery site, which was to skid the rig sixty feet from the preceding dry hole, or about his exploration method, which he described as ‘‘a little geology and a little doodle-bugology and a little common sense and a few things put together.’’ Doodlebugs, miscellaneous mechanical and chemical objects hidden from view, were long a fixture in the oil fields, but they varied so greatly as to defy common description. Killam described his doodlebug as ‘‘a little instrument that goes up and down and around and around and makes you spend your THE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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money drilling holes in the ground. And the law of averages will finally hit you a pool of oil.’’ Joe Morris, who drilled for Killam, believed that the little black box containing the doodlebug was probably empty. Local folklore had it that the box contained a bottle of urine, provenance unknown. Whatever his method, in an area that would yield numerous shallow fields, Killam’s approach—random drilling on what seemed to be identifiable geological trends—led to the discovery of oil.5 Not that Killam was opposed to geology, but he claimed that his most successful geologist was ‘‘a one-armed Indian . . . [who] did most of his geology by climbing up on windmills and studying the country.’’ 6 Less preposterous than it might seem at first glance, Killam’s comment reveals that he, like more scientifically oriented oilmen, was trying to identify geological and topographical formations by observing the surface of the land— in this instance, the Reynosa Escarpment. The Mirando City Oil Company was a rewarding venture because the Killam group had blocked up all of the probable acreage by securing leases on 8,500 acres of the Hinnant ranch before they drilled. Killam, like other wildcatters, also acquired additional properties. He bought mineral interests on his own account throughout the region, hoping that other wildcatters would either bid on them or find oil and establish a high value for them. He also continued to explore, making a series of small additions to his reserves. In 1926, he sold part of those reserves to Magnolia for $1,075,000.7 To large companies like Magnolia, the discovery at Mirando City was promising, but it posed problems for their geoscientists. The heavy accumulation of soil overlaying formations made it difficult for geologists to interpret what they saw. As a consequence, major companies tended to avoid large investments in this area, and ensuing small discoveries in the area generally were made by independent operators. Thus, the Alsworth brothers extended the original field in 1924, with a 500 bopd well at 1,711 feet. Like other wells in the area, it declined to half or less of its initial production within a year of discovery. This general pattern of decline further discouraged large companies from seeking acreage and production in the area, because they needed more prolific wells and fields to maintain their oil resources.8 The small extension of the field was sufficient, however, to drive up the costs of leases in the Mirando-Laredo area. The price of $7.50 an acre, the amount that Killam paid when he made his first purchases, had risen to as much as $1,000 an acre three years later. The sharp rise in lease prices, a source of ready capital for Killam and other early specu110

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lators, was driven by a series of additional small finds. One of these was the Schott pool, which was located thirty-five miles east of Laredo, along the foot of the Reynosa Escarpment. The Schott opening stirred additional interest in the region when the discovery well settled to 800 bopd after it was completed and cleaned out. Activity quickened in March 1922, when the Laredo Oil Company’s No. 2 well made 1,500 barrels of oil in five hours, a gusher by Southwest Texas standards. Then, like other wells along the Rio Grande, it soon spewed large volumes of salt water without much oil, and the initial excitement abated. Killam continued to drill, however, and the field grew in importance, achieving production of 105,301 barrels for the month of November in 1922. An extension of the field in 1923 resulted in a well that produced 50 to 75 bopd and set off another small flurry of drilling.9 As a result of this pair of small field discoveries, Magnolia came into the area and was one of the first major companies to risk capital in Killam territory. With its initial success, an extension of the Schott field, Magnolia began what would be a major presence in Southwest Texas. By the end of 1923, production from the Mirando City field and the Schott field were sufficient to support the Misko Refinery, which O. W. Killam and associates had opened in September, connecting it to the Mirando field with their Pantex Pipeline and the Texas-Mexico Railroad. With production, pipelines, and a refinery, Killam, like so many independents, followed the vertical integration strategy validated by Standard Oil during the late decades of the previous century: he diversified his investments through related segments of the industry and saved the transaction costs that would otherwise be paid to other companies.10 Despite his growing local business empire, Killam was not content to stay in Laredo and manage his investments. The inveterate wildcatter continued to add to the known producing territory of the area in 1922 with Puig No. 1 of the Aviators’ Oil Company, so named because the well was funded by a syndicate of army officers from the air base at Kelly Field, in San Antonio. Four miles south of Schott-Mirando, the discovery well produced 25 million cubic feet (MMcf) of gas per day and small amounts of oil—not encouraging, but, by the end of 1922, the new field contained six producing oil wells and one gas well. Seven wells were dry or abandoned. At best a small return for Killam’s effort, this result was still sufficient to keep his rigs running for two more years, until a 3,000 bopd extension well on the Puig lease ‘‘set the scouts and operators wild’’ and filled Laredo’s hotels with newly arrived wildcatters. Three years after the initial discovery, another extension well, proTHE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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ducing 400 bopd, was drilled half a mile beyond the current production area. This well, and a steady succession of small but cheap wells that followed, also served to keep Killam’s crews at work.11 The lower Rio Grande counties, Cameron and Hidalgo, had sponsored oil exploration during the first decade of the century, but with no commercial success. Then, in 1922, upriver excitement spread to this area, triggering near frenzy after a well near Mission showed traces of oil. As the Houston Chronicle reported the action: At Mercedes, men were rushing back and forth from the telegraph office after having sent mysterious telegrams to Houston. . . . There is something doing, something big astir, but the usual secrecy is being observed when a field is about to be brought in. The facts are, according to well informed residents of the sector who have watched oil operations here during the past five years, that a big field would have been brought in long ago but for the fact that the titles to the land are difficult to obtain. Rumors of secret wells capped while titles were cured and deals closed swept through the area along with cars of curious local residents, who drove through the region looking for the action.12 Rumor, however, was all there was to this activity. Elsewhere in the region, there were some real, if small, field discoveries during 1922. In Zapata County, twenty-five miles south of the Mirando Valley field, the Charco Redondo field yielded small wells, averaging 2 bopd on pump, from shallow depths. Leaseholder’s pool in northwest Webb County began with a discovery well that pumped 60 bopd and then blew in with 52.8 MMcf of dry gas per day from a depth of 1,944 to 1,960 feet, with a slight show of oil.13 Continued prospecting in the vicinity of Schott–Mirando City led to another discovery, the Carolina Gas field, during 1923. One of the Carolina wells, Barnsley No. 4, blew wild for two days, destroying a control valve and producing a loud whistling sound that could be heard for miles around. Barnsley No. 5 produced 41 MMcf of natural gas per day, at a thousand feet deeper than previous wells. Major companies had just completed extensive purchases of protection acreage along the Rio Grande, and Magnolia was leading the pack with its preemptive bidding north of Mirando City. Other large companies leased more widely in the region. Gulf signed for 12,000 acres in one corner of it, and the Texas Company purchased 112

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leases to offset Gulf’s, even as Humble and Sun wrote lease checks to other ranchers and lease brokers.14 None of the modest finds alone could have kept even the most determined gambler in Laredo, but together they were a strong attraction. By the beginning of 1923, oilmen had developed eight small fields in the upper Rio Grande area: Schott-Mirando, Aviators, Carolina gas, Reiser gas, Leaseholder’s oil, Mirando Valley oil, Jennings gas, and Charco Redondo oil. During that year, the Cole field was discovered in Webb County; extensions of it led to the Bruni field and to consolidation of the producing area as Cole-Bruni. By April of 1924, 260 producing wells were located along the Reynosa Escarpment.15 All the while, drillers found more and more natural gas. In 1925, a 75 MMcf per day gasser blew in east of Mirando Valley in Jim Hogg County, in what was designated as the Henne-Winch-Farris field, after the principals in the discovery syndicate. The field was developed and extended to produce about 89,000 barrels of oil, along with gas, during January, 1925. O. W. Killam added to the field in mid-year with a 1,000 bopd oil well and shortly thereafter completed a 60 MMcf per day gas well. He leased 15,000 acres between the Henne-Winch-Farris pool and the Aviator pool, drilled, and brought in a 35 MMcf per day well. By then Henne-Winch-Farris looked like the Golden Lane in Mexico, as a string of derricks stretched a mile through the area. Twenty-five rigs were operating and seventy-five more locations were staked during the first month of 1925. The upper valley was booming.16 These early discovery years boosted the population of Laredo and brought the first Tejano workers into the industry. Killam’s crews, for example, were roughly 80 percent Tejano and 20 percent Anglo, an ethnic mix that was reflected in the mixed wood and adobe construction of the new oil field towns. Some Tejanos rose to jobs as drillers over the years, and they and others often benefited from the wildcatter’s paternalism. For example, after Killam discovered that his workers frequently took out loans at exorbitant rates to meet family emergencies, he began to make no-interest loans against future pay, incurring what he recalled as a default rate that never exceeded 1 percent.17 While Grayburg Oil continued to drill small wells near San Antonio and O. W. Killam was striking both oil and gas along the border, oilmen in the Corpus Christi area continued to expand the already vast natural-gas reserves in their area. The expansion of these reserves in turn prompted extensive construction of gathering and pipeline systems. Crucial to this expansion were two developments. The first was change in the geological opinion of South and Southwest Texas’s natural-gas poTHE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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A Tejano pipeline crew working for Magnolia (Exxon/Mobil) during the 1920s. J. Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Wright Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

tential. Though it is scarcely credible in hindsight, prior to the mid1920s, many geologists were highly skeptical about the region’s naturalgas potential. The often-prolific oil production from salt domes had led many geologists to see the Texas Gulf Coast as strictly ‘‘oil country.’’ One would therefore not expect the region to contain gas reserves sufficient to offer the kind of durable supply that would justify construction of a trunk pipeline. Indeed, prior to 1925, natural gas for Beaumont and Houston was imported from northern Louisiana. Yet, without the kind of market outlet a trunk line to metropolitan markets afforded, there was marginal incentive to develop gas reserves. However, continuing discoveries of large amounts of gas in South and Southwest Texas by prospectors more interested in finding oil gradually eroded conventional pessimism. In 1925, Odie Seagraves and William L. Moody III, having bought options on some gas wells in Refugio County, decided to promote a gas line to Houston and formed the Houston Gulf Gas Company to do so. Meanwhile, the Houston Oil Company found gas while looking for oil in the Refugio area and also built a line to Houston. This progress toward better outlets offered more inducement for the development of natural-gas reserves. By mid-1926, three gas pipeline systems, with a combined capacity of 165 MMcf per day, were constructed at a cost of about $21,500,000. The combined systems made up 589 miles of pipe114

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line that tied the region to Houston. The Magnolia Gas Company line, 220 miles long, augmented the market outlet to Houston.18 Magnolia Gas, a subsidiary of Magnolia Petroleum, also constructed a 217-mile line from northeast Texas to Port Arthur and Houston and a 214-mile line from Webster Parish, Louisiana, to the Magnolia refinery in Beaumont. The line from Louisiana to Beaumont had the distinction of being the first long-distance, all-welded pipeline.19 The second breakthrough for natural-gas development in Texas came with improved pipeline technology. Until the mid-1920s, pipe capable of handling the pressure necessary to ship gas much more than two hundred miles was not available, and what was on the market was hard to weld with existing technology. But, after 1925, seamless highcarbon steel pipe was available, and both acetylene and electric arc welding came into use. Both improvements allowed for pipelines that were larger in diameter and capable of withstanding higher pressures. With these technological advances, the way was open for shipping huge volumes of natural gas to distant markets.20 Through 1927, drillers continued to find large gas fields. A well in the White Point field yielded 40 MMcf per day, and the Houston Gulf Gas Company extended its line about forty miles from the Refugio field to carry it.21 Drilling in the Kingsville field, Humble found 80 MMcf per day at 2,250 feet; a half-mile north, the same sand produced oil from four wells. Not only was the discovered gas enough to keep the pipelines filled, its discovery made areas along the coast look increasingly promising for significant oil production as drillers and roughnecks extended fields. By the end of 1927, activity in the whole region had heated up, and leases, once bought for 50 cents an acre, were now trading for more than ten times that amount, putting additional capital into the local economy.22 Corpus Christi was on the brink of a boom. The breakthrough period for the region came during 1928 and 1929, when major plays began along the Vicksburg Fault Zone. Significant oil discoveries were made in a number of locations, especially in Refugio and Nueces counties. The play opened with the Agua Dulce field in Nueces County on the northern tip of the trend. The field’s discovery well, H. F. Grimm et al., No. 1 Garrett, came in with 35 MMcf per day. When three additional gas wells were completed, Alice and the town of Agua Dulce, four miles southeast, were supplied with natural gas.23 The Refugio field, which had produced large quantities of natural gas since 1919, came alive again when natural-gas pipelines were laid to THE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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the field during the 1920s. The connections prompted more drilling, which brought in additional natural-gas production during 1925 and 1926. The Texas Gas Company, searching for still more gas in 1928, reentered a dry hole drilled by the Houston Oil Company in the gas field, deepened it, and completed a 700-bopd well. The Refugio field was extensive, underlying almost ten square miles, and it provided vast volumes of natural gas when it was more fully developed during 1929.24 The availability of cheap natural gas in Southwest Texas led to the construction of additional trunk lines, tying the region to nonproducing areas. During 1926 and 1927, for example, the Rio Grande Valley Gas Company built a line to the lower valley, and Southern Gas Pipeline reached McMullen County, and hence San Antonio, from the Laredo area.25 The Houston Gulf Gas Company, organized in 1925, constructed a system that carried gas to Houston and to industries along the ship channel. Thus, by the end of the decade, the region was served with three natural-gas transmission systems. As wildcatters continued to test the sands of Southwest Texas, finding a growing number of commercial areas, more pipelines also were built during the 1920s to carry oil to refineries. The Saxet Gas Company found oil in the Saxet gas field near Corpus Christi, the Government Wells field was discovered in Duval County, and the Pettus field opened near Bee.26 Continuing activity in Duval County, the Laredo area, and the vicinity of Corpus Christi led large companies to take a stronger interest in Southwest Texas, and they opened district offices first in San Antonio and later in Corpus Christi, Laredo, and Beeville. Support personnel in services and supplies, geologists, and technical experts began to appear in the area in significant numbers. Humble, other large companies, and independents funded geological surveys of extensive portions of the region, looking for correlations with formations identified as productive in other parts of Texas and, especially, in the new fields of the region. By the end of the 1920s, Southwest Texas was a major source of natural gas, and it held the promise of becoming a major oil province if exploration continued and enough gushers attracted investment. The region had to compete for capital, however, with other parts of the state, especially Central Texas.27 In the 1920s, Central Texas was better known for its geological anomalies than for its gushers. Small production from altered igneous rock was one oddity that attracted the attention of geologists. The Thrall field, in Williamson County, was discovered in 1915 when a rancher who was drilling for water found traces of oil. When a driller 116

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deepened the well to 700 feet, modest production came in. The Thrall discovery was typical of the region, where most wells—with the sole exception of one 5,000 bopd gusher—were small producers, and cumulative production during the next ten years amounted to 4.5 million barrels. In the mid-1920s, Gulf Production Company geologists conducted surface mapping twenty-eight miles south of Austin, and, in March 1925, the company discovered production in the Lytton Springs field at about 1,250 feet. The field, however, was highly erratic, and its wide variations in porosity and elevations made the siting of wells problematic. By March 1926, the field was defined as 1.56 miles in diameter, with about 325 producing wells, having initial yields of 50 to 200 bopd.28 Despite the modest size of these fields and their wells, local farmers received windfalls from frenzied competition for leases on their lands. Fritz Fuchs, on whose land the Thrall discovery well was found, received $84,000 cash and one-sixth royalty for leases on 482 acres. An owner of an adjoining tract was paid $50,000 and one-eighth royalty on 261 acres. A trade journal commented, in a report of the development, that the thrifty Bohemian farmers ‘‘now speak of $1,000 with the same ease with which they formerly referred to a single dollar.’’ In an unproven area near Lytton Springs, a farmer sold one-sixth of his royalty interest in a 100-acre location for $23,000, while a neighbor received THE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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$50,000 for leases and royalties on part of his 800-acre spread.29 The infusion of oil money into local economies was the most spectacular outcome of the emergence of the Thrall and Lytton Springs fields. In terms of oil discovery, both fields were overshadowed by major action in the Mexia-Corsicana area and at Luling. Like most Central Texas fields, Mexia had been producing natural gas and small quantities of oil for some time before commercial production came in. In 1909 and at various other times, shallow water wells showed traces of both, encouraging the drilling of a dozen dry holes through 1913. In that year, a local wildcatter, Blake Smith, drilled a shallow gas well, just short of 1,500 feet deep, and encountered additional traces of oil. His find, which was not commercially viable, discouraged further development in the area until nascent geological theory caught up with what was already known about the geology of the area. By 1916, the Mexia-Groesbeck gas field was defined as 12.25 miles long and about 1 mile wide, with forty wells in the field. Production was sufficient to supply Mexia, Groesbeck, Waco, and Corsicana.30 By 1919, geologists were moving beyond their fixation on shallow Gulf Coast salt domes, most of the visible ones having been drilled with highly variable results. Thus, geologists working in South and Central Texas were looking for oil trapped in different trends, notably anticlines and stratigraphic traps. They were searching for surface indications of faultings, breaks, or slippages in layers. Such searches brought F. Julius Fohs, of the Homaokla Oil Company, to Central Texas, where he supervised a two-man crew that surveyed territory around Mexia. In response to his optimistic report, the company assembled a 5,000-acre tract, paying lease bonuses of as little as a dollar an acre. Homaokla also accepted a 1,000-acre contribution from the Mexia Gas Company, which hoped to have its more extensive lease holdings proved out with a test well. After the failure of two Homaokla test wells, Colonel A. E. Humphreys, a veritable P. T. Barnum among oil promoters, acquired the Homaokla leases. With a relatively small well opening the field, Humphreys’s second try, No. 1 Henry, came in at 3,000 bopd, launching the Mexia field as the site of extensive speculation, drilling, and production. Humphreys, a bear of a man who weighed 240 pounds and stood six feet two inches in height, predicted a 100-million-barrel field and tagged Mexia ‘‘the greatest oil producer in Texas.’’ When the gusher went on public view, he arranged for a sizable local delegation to view the activity. As the well sprayed its contents over the group, the enthusiastic local citizens changed the words of the hymn they had been singing, 118

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‘‘Let the Light from the Lighthouse Shine on Me’’ to ‘‘Let the Oil from the Henry Spray on Me.’’ After this spirited send-off, the Mexia field developed over nearly 4,000 acres, attaining a production high point of 53,000 bopd in November, 1921—with Humphreys’s companies holding the commanding acreage position and the largest share of production.31 Humphreys shared credit for the discovery with Fohs, the geologists, and his lucky brown suit. Addressing the Mexia Commercial Club several months after the confirmation well was completed, he assured the group that Mexia would become ‘‘the greatest oil town in Texas.’’ The club responded by electing him to its board of directors.32 The boom escalated when Humphreys’s second well touched off a conventional leasing rush in the region. Leases one mile away brought $1,000 an acre, while those five to six miles out brought $50 an acre. An eleven-acre tract three-quarters of a mile from the second Humphreys well sold for $50,000 to the Kirby Petroleum Company of Houston. Larger companies such as Humble, having written off the area until the second well, drove up lease prices sharply as they purchased ‘‘protection’’ acreage in the region. Well after well came in strongly, bringing the integrated oil companies to purchase producing leases to supply their refineries. After completion of wells yielding from 15,000 to 40,000 bopd on the Nussbaum and Deseberg leases, the big oil companies opened wide their checkbooks. Magnolia paid $1.1 million for a forty-eight-acre lease. Humble also made large purchases at preemptive prices, paying $2,000 an acre plus an unusual one-twenty-fourth override for fifty-four acres that an independent had acquired earlier for $25 an acre. The Mexia field, quickly defined as 6 miles long and 3.5 miles wide, contained 3,800 productive acres, large by Texas standards.33 Landowners thrived. For example, Thornton Carter received $75,000 in lease bonuses, built ten rent houses in town, and staked his son to six hundred acres of good bottom land. The example of Carter, an African American, demonstrated that at least as royalty owners, blacks could share opportunity with whites. The good fortune of all of the landowners also benefited the town of Mexia. When the newly rich farmers in the area went to town, shops in Mexia upgraded their inventories, raised prices, and sold out regularly. That made Mexia boom.34 Even as Mexia developed, Humphreys and Fohs roamed through the neighboring countryside looking for additional evidence of faulting that might signal the presence of more oil. They did not find it, but, less than a year after the discovery of the Mexia field, they did make a major discovery ten miles north at Currie. After a strong confirmation well THE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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Col. Albert E. Humphreys at Mexia, 1925. Corsicana Sun.

drilled by J. K. Hughes, and after Humphreys’s later No. 2 McCaw came in at 10,000 bopd, the action in the Currie field added to the surge of workers and speculators into the area.35 The Oil and Gas Journal reported in December 1921 that Mexia was ‘‘in the throes of an oil excitement’’ and that the upswing in activity had brought 125 corporations and other oil seekers to the field along with ‘‘a very large floating population.’’ 36 Wages were good. Drillers earned $8 to $10 a day and teamsters $10 a load. As work slowed in Oklahoma, along the Gulf Coast, and in North Texas, roughnecks and roustabouts moved to Central Texas, and local farmers hired themselves and their teams out for more money per month than they would ordinarily earn in a year.37 The 120

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newcomers quickly swamped existing facilities. Tent colonies appeared on the outskirts of Mexia and Currie, and between them and Kosse, where workers slept in ten army tents, sides boarded up and surrounded by a snow fence. The Wigwam Hotel, as the settlement was called, was located amid oil wells. In Mexia, one entrepreneur tried the now familiar oil field expedient of erecting a large circus tent, renting cots to sixty workers for a dollar a night. New field towns sprang up in the region— Juarez, Oil City, Tuckertown, Wildcat, Mildred, and others. Mildred was notable for two hotels and a four-chair barbershop, ‘‘Maudie’s,’’ which was staffed entirely by lady barbers.38 The large, floating, boomtime population, made up largely of workers and businessmen and their families, also included a criminal element. By the end of 1921, Mexia was experiencing higher levels of crime and violence. In December, a grocery store clerk was killed in a holdup of the store by three unidentified men, described by the local newspaper as ‘‘reckless, unscrupulous, and unmindful of the laws of God and Man.’’ 39 The county sheriff and the town marshal were unable and unwilling to curb bootlegging and other ‘‘victimless’’ crime; they hired additional deputies, often themselves newcomers, who offered previous

The Golden Lane at Mexia. Collins photo. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

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Texas Rangers pose with confiscated liquor at Mexia. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

law work in oil boom towns in Texas and Oklahoma as credentials. At best, the lawmen were less than diligent. At worst, they encouraged crime and profited from it. One of them sold land near Wortham for the site of the ‘‘Chicken Farm,’’ reputedly a gambling hall, two hundred yards away from his home. Nearer to Mexia, gamblers erected the Winter Garden, a large wood-frame building that sheltered a restaurant, dance hall, and gambling rooms. Moonshining was rife as poor local farmers not lucky enough to enjoy income from oil leases and royalty payments set up small stills to ride the tide of local riches. Narcotics peddlers also plied a lively trade, without realistic expectation of arrest and prosecution.40 In response to complaints from influential local citizens, the State of Texas entered the scene. An assistant attorney general came to Mexia and held a meeting with law enforcement officials, at the Winter Garden, in an effort to gain at least minimal enforcement of state and federal laws. To his chagrin, the lawmen denied all knowledge of local infractions. In response, the state organized a task force of twenty Texas Rangers and federal prohibition agents that swooped on the area and carried out arrests, only to have local lawmen turn the suspects loose. Reaction from Austin was rapid: on January 12, 1922, Governor Pat Neff declared

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martial law in one justice of the peace precinct in Limestone County and two in Freestone County. He then sent the Fifty-sixth Cavalry of the Texas National Guard to support the renewed efforts of thirteen Rangers and additional federal prohibition and narcotics agents. One month later, the governor issued a second proclamation covering all of Freestone County, where moonshiners enjoyed local legal protection.41 The troops remained for forty-seven days, by which time Mexia had a new police chief, and other lawmen had apparently purged the ranks of their deputies of the worst grafters. The task force took full advantage of the legal privileges it enjoyed under martial law: it circumvented legal limitations on searches and seizures by civilians by having the troops seize liquor and bootleggers and present them to federal officials. Charges were filed in federal courts, avoiding local judges and prosecutors and juries. Troops presented other detainees and evidence to the Rangers, who made the formal arrests. The vagrancy statute was used liberally to give miscreants ‘‘sundown’’ orders to leave town. The strike force arrested 602 people, more than 80 percent of them on felony charges. In the end, the two oil boom counties were tamed, though the Rangers would return during a subsequent boom.42 While law enforcement officials campaigned against crime, wildcatter A. E. Humphreys converted his acreage position into real money. Confronted with Mexia’s strong production and no outlet for the field, Humble Oil rushed completion of the first pipeline to Mexia and then took advantage of its position by offering producers, including Humphreys, a ridiculously low price of 40 cents per barrel of crude. Magnolia, next in, raised the rate to 60 cents. Though smaller operators took the low prices for their oil, the wildcatter declined and built large tank farms to hold oil; he slowed development in areas in which there was no offsetting action. By the end of 1921, Humphreys and others had erected more than two hundred large tanks, the smallest holding 44,000 barrels of crude oil, in or near the field. Humphreys also became an oil buyer, first signing a contract to buy oil from smaller operators for $1.10 a barrel and then inking a sales contract with Prairie-Sinclair for $1.50 a barrel.43 Then he sold one-quarter of his company, including 40,000 bopd of production, sixty 55,000-barrel tanks, and a pipeline gathering system, to the Pure Oil Corporation, which looked to make a major entrance in Texas. Humphreys disposed of the remaining shares to Pure two years later, by which time he had extended his activity to the Currie and Powell fields. Pure subsequently built a refinery at Port Neches on

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the Neches River, between Beaumont and Port Arthur, with a capacity of 10,000 bopd.44 Humphreys’s spectacular successes led him and the major oil companies to view every discovery as a new bonanza. Thus, when he brought in a discovery well at Kosse in August 1922, the 10,000 bopd initial production seemed to indicate that the field was another Mexia. Drawing on his experience in Central Texas, Humphreys and the Texas Company placed huge orders for steel storage tankage and laid pipelines to trunk carriers. Other oil companies bid up close-in acreage to $1,000 an acre, and fifteen derricks were up in two weeks. Unfortunately for Humphreys, the Texas Company, and the other operators, Kosse proved to be a one-well field, producing from a crevice in the Austin chalk. Such was the eccentric geology in Central Texas.45 Humphreys’s wrong guess at Kosse did not cool off activity in Central Texas. The Powell field underlay shallow production, and after three years of drilling deeper, a 400 bopd well came in at the beginning of 1923. Completion of a second well by J. K. Hughes, a half-mile away, roused interest because it produced 8,000 bopd. As usual, Humphreys had secured prime position, holding five hundred acres in the middle of the defined field, but his scope was somewhat limited at Powell by the presence of big-time competition. Unlike earlier fields in the region, Powell was the site of extensive early activity by large companies. Humble, for example, abandoned its earlier verdict that production in the region was ‘‘not particularly significant,’’ and leased and drilled extensively, completing 183 wells, 178 of them producers.46 So the Powell field developed quickly, and 611 wells were producing by the end of 1924. Production was exceptionally prolific, achieving its acme in November 1923, with 356,000 bopd, enough to destabilize oil markets in the Mid-Continent and Gulf Coast regions during both 1923 and 1924. During the later months of 1923, more than half of all the crude oil carried by Texas pipelines came from the Powell field, which passed the daily record of the Cushing, Oklahoma, field and was surpassed only by the Santa Fe Springs and Long Beach fields, both in California. Some producers had a veritable glut of Powell oil; Gulf, for example had two wells on a single lease with a combined production of 24,000 bopd.47 What was good for Gulf Oil, however, was not good for the oil industry in Texas. Flush production at Powell came just as operators in the Mid-Continent and Gulf Coast areas were attempting to curtail production in the face of declining prices. The flood from this single field upset these efforts, driving high-gravity Oklahoma oil down to $1.30, high124

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gravity Texas oil to $1.00, and low-gravity Gulf Coast oil below that figure.48 Worse yet, the string of discoveries in Central Texas continued. The final notable discovery in the region was on the eastern edge of the city of Wortham in Freestone County, extending into Limestone County, where natural gas had been produced since 1912. Again, Humphreys led the pack, as his Boyd Oil company brought in the discovery well, a 2,500 bopd well, in mid-November 1924, in the center of a corridor of dry holes drilled by earlier operators. Two weeks later, Boyd Oil completed the confirmation well for 8,000 bopd. Humble again bought heavily, reputedly paying from $1,000 to $5,000 an acre for leases in promising territory. Crews rushed to complete wells, often taking shortcuts, such as not letting cement harden around casing, a source of Texas Railroad Commission complaints. After seven months, the field was drilled up; it reached its maximum production of about 25 million barrels of oil during 1924, falling to about one-quarter of that level during the following year as water invaded both edge and center wells in the field.49 The opening of sizable Central Texas production in the Woodbine sand brought re-evaluations of the formation wherever it had been identified. Early attempts were aptly summarized by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1917: ‘‘No commercial accumulations of oil and gas have been found in it in this state.’’ Louisiana had yielded good production from the Woodbine, but until the Central Texas discoveries that began with Mexia, Texans had missed finding oil in it. Once they found it, companies large and small leased extensively in counties to the Arkansas border. Humble, for one, spent heavily on an 11,000-acre block twenty miles north of the Powell field and, like the other explorers, drilled expensive dry holes in the continued search for additional Woodbine production. Kaufman and Van Zandt counties received considerable attention, and Humphreys made a location at Ripley in Titus County. Hog Creek Carruth leased 2,800 acres west of Lone Oak. F. Julius Fohs, Humphreys’s geologist at Mexia, mapped a structure in Dallas County, leading to an unsuccessful test to the Woodbine sand.50 The lure of oil in the Woodbine encouraged interest in East Texas, and Humble was among the large companies to acquire leases there, even though they were in no hurry to drill them. To the west of the Corsicana-Mexia area fields, a series of less important discoveries developed during the first half of the decade. The most significant, the Luling field, lay five miles north of the town of that name, forty miles southeast of Austin. An independent, Edgar B. Davis, THE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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an industrialist from Brockton, Massachusetts, organized the United North and South Oil Company in March 1921 to salvage an unsuccessful test. Drilling in the extensive Edwards limestone, Davis sought oil in an anticline, drilling six dry holes before he found it along a fault in August 1922. The discovery was a commercial and geological success, though the role of science in this discovery was clouded by Davis’s consultation with Edgar Cayce, the clairvoyant. In a state of trance, Cayce had described the underground geological structure for Davis.51 The discovery also flew in the face of accepted geological wisdom. As Humble’s chief geologist, Wallace E. Pratt, a skeptic when it came to looking for oil on faults, put it, ‘‘the hazards of exploration in faulted territory are already widely appreciated.’’ But, then, Pratt was not given to consulting Edgar Cayce. With Davis responsible for much of the development, the field drilled up rapidly, in an area 7.5 miles long and 3,000 feet wide, having 391 producing wells in the field by the end of 1924. Peak production, reached in July of that year, amounted to 47,000 bopd of lowgravity oil. The field, coming together with sustained production from the Central Texas area, yielded as much oil per day as the curtailed operations of the Gulf Coast, thus further disrupting efforts of producers in that area and the Mid-Continent region to curtail production to raise prices.52 By the end of the 1920s, there was still scattered wildcatting in Central Texas, but wildcatters made no significant new discoveries. As the Oil and Gas Journal described it in 1929, ‘‘The East Central Texas Field is one of the dullest of oil regions, outside of the daily routine of producing oil in the Mexia, Powell, Currie and Wortham pools, where the output is slowly but steadily falling off in the absence of any new production.’’ 53 Nonetheless, Central Texas activity had consequences beyond its reaches. Successful attempts to extend the Luling field took it over the line into Guadalupe County, setting off lively lease and royalty trading in that area also. The Guadalupe County seat, Seguin, a comfortable old agricultural center, shared the oil excitement and sported its own oil exchange. Oil excitement even produced the county’s first oil field town, Gander Slue, so-named and phonetically spelled by its early residents. Those who crowded into Gander Slue’s tents and shacks also presumably enjoyed the fact that the local moonshine was thought to have ‘‘an extra wallop.’’ 54 Activity near Seguin in turn led to the discovery of the Darst Creek field in 1929, with the Texas Company’s No. 1 Dallas Wilson. As

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oil flooded the market from other regions, holders of large leases in this Southwest Texas field agreed to a ninety-day moratorium on drilling, postponing the onset of major development until the end of the year. During 1930, drilling resumed and production mounted. Following precedents established in other parts of Texas, producers agreed to limit production. However, independents, including Harrison and Abercrombie of Houston, resisted the limitation, postponing its effective implementation for more than a year in what would become a prolific field.55 While spectacular new field discoveries were made in other sections of Texas, work-overs, deeper drilling, and flank drilling in known oil fields produced sharp increases in Gulf Coast area production. At Orange, Humble, Gulf, and the Atlantic Producing Company all extended the field by drilling deeper and extending drilling to the edges of their leases. Gulf’s No. 2 Leon, completed in 1922, initially produced 10,000 bopd. Atlantic’s No. 2 Hager was completed as an 8,000 bopd well. Deeper drilling and extensions also brought renewed life to Sour Lake and West Columbia during the 1920s. At West Columbia, the Texas Company deepened Abrahams No. 4 and increased production from 50 bopd and more than 5,000 barrels of water to 2,900 bopd and about 750 barrels of water per day. At Sour Lake, the second oldest major field in Texas, Gulf achieved the third significant extension of the old field when it leased a thousand acres to the west of the north extension of the field and brought in the No. 1 Thompson well, with an initial flow of 1,200 bopd. Yount-Lee extended production to the southwest in 1927, with a 2000 bopd well of 35-gravity oil. At Goose Creek, Simms-Sinclair completed a 35,000 bopd well, and Gulf completed a 12,000 bopd exten-

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sion. With the re-entry, pay sands were located in five new horizons. Humble’s re-entry at Goose Creek in 1922 brought initial production of 3,200 bopd, and three years later the well was still flowing 1,200 bopd.56 At Spindletop, more than twenty attempts were made to find deeper sands off the dome. Gulf attempted deeper drilling in 1918, without finding oil. Oilman and lawyer Marrs McLean and the Rycade Oil Company attempted to find oil on the flanks of the field during 1920 and 1921, without success. Their efforts, however, encouraged Miles Frank Yount, William E. Lee, and T. P. Lee of Yount-Lee Oil to take up leases that Marrs McLean had acquired from unsuccessful companies. Then they drilled two dry holes, Gladys City No. 1 and McFaddin No. 1. They persevered, however, and discovered flush flank production at Spindletop in 1925 with Yount-Lee’s No. 2 McFaddin, which made 1,500 bopd from 2,517 feet and launched the second oil boom at Spindletop. YountLee’s subsequent results, including a 6,000 bopd well at its No. 4 Gladys City and the 10,000 bopd No. 1 Davis well, brought daily production in the old field back to 101,000 barrels by the end of September 1925 and made the company the largest producer on the Gulf Coast in 1927. Production on the new leases averaged 375,000 barrels per acre, with Rio Bravo actually producing 2.5 million barrels from its two-acre lease during the first full year of production. Better yet for producers, Spindletop oil’s gravity tended to increase with greater depths, yielding crude with more light fractions. The Spindletop field achieved its historical high production level of 21 million barrels per year in 1927, when it produced 35 percent of the total Gulf Coast yield. Yount-Lee controlled the best acreage in the field and 65 percent of production in mid-1927.57 Though Gulf Coast producers could find enormous amounts of oil, they continually faced stiff competition from crude produced in other places because the oil they found was not the most choice to refine. A flood of Mexican crude, which was sold onboard at Tampico for 58 cents a barrel, hurt them during the 1910s and early 1920s. In 1922, shipments of low-grade California oil reached Gulf Coast refineries through the Panama Canal. As production from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Central Texas grew during the early 1920s, competition for steel tankage mounted, and the price of Gulf Coast crude dropped to as low as 65 cents a barrel at Pierce Junction, south of Houston. Gulf Oil had discovered crude at Pierce Junction in 1921 and—along with Humble, McSweeney & Snowden, and the Pierce Junction Oil Company—built more earthen tanks at or near that field to hold and process oil.58 Gulf Coast producers in other fields also built more earthen tanks. 128

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While re-entries continued to build regional production, Gulf Coast wildcatters made new field discoveries. Drilling deeper on the edge sands around Barber’s Hill, already a producing field, a wildcatter brought in an 800 bopd well of high-gravity oil in 1921, prompting an active drilling campaign. Mills Bennett, a successful Gulf Coast oilman, completed Japhet No. 1 in 1922, for 1,800 bopd of high-gravity oil, the best well in the field. Thereafter, the Texas Company drilled three failures, one of them to 3,460 feet, the deepest in the field at the time, and went on to drill another record-depth dry hole, in 1923, to 4,635 feet. By the end of 1923, oilmen had drilled 120 wells at Barber’s Hill, 22 percent of them productive. The field, developing slowly from 1916, produced nearly 800,000 barrels of oil during the first seven years of its life.59 Work continued on the Dayton salt dome in Liberty County, northeast of Houston. Persistent efforts to find oil on the dome, through step-outs, led to the discovery of the nearby South Liberty field in late 1924, with relatively deep wells and commercial production.60 In broadening Gulf Coast exploration, prospectors, particularly those associated with large integrated companies, made increasing use of science directed toward subsurface study. One area of science that was widely applied was paleontology, which might be described as a historical biological approach. By identifying and dating fossilized organisms found in drilling or from other sources, paleontologists could identify and locate underground formations. They could then correlate samples from different locations to deduce the shape of underground structures. Doing such analysis and correlation was tedious work, not uncommonly involving microscopic examination and classification of thousands of rock samples in terms of the microfossil organisms found. Except for the collection of samples, paleontological study was done in the laboratory. The tedium of this work, together with its indoor location, opened a window of employment opportunity for women with degrees in paleontological geology. Women geologists had trouble finding jobs doing geological mapping in the fields, since this was seen as rugged, unsuitable work for women. But sitting at a microscope in a laboratory was something women were considered capable of doing. Thus, in September 1920, University of California graduate Esther Richards began working in paleontology for E. T. Dumble of the Rio Bravo Oil Company, in Houston. In November, Alva C. Ellisor set up a laboratory for Humble, and the Texas Company hired Hedwig T. Kniker in the following year. Women continued to be significant in this area until the 1930s, when companies generally responded to the pressure of the Depression by reTHE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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sorting to nearly exclusively male hiring practices. Women were at a disadvantage, moreover, when geophysical techniques in prospecting became increasingly important, primarily because geophysicists worked in the field to locate underground structures.61 After 1920, prospectors made increasing use of the newly emerging specialization of geophysics to help locate deeper structures. The earliest techniques measured and compared gravity measurements from different points to identify subsurface geological formations. Shell sent two crews to the United States in 1922 with equipment, including torsion balances, to begin work. For the next two years, crews covered large stretches of the Texas Gulf Coast, measuring and mapping. Gulf Oil and Shell spent grandly to support plans for large lease plays. Marland Oil, an Oklahoma company, hired crews in Texas and in its home state to cover large spaces in relatively short periods of time. Among independents, Rycade, led by geologist Everette DeGolyer, spent heavily on the new exploration science. The hope of all prospectors, large and small, was that the new science would limit the risks of wildcatting, making it possible to identify the most promising leases to prove up with the drill. So, during 1924, a major seismic exploration campaign was launched, with one company taking out options on 2.5 million acres. Both seismic and torsion-balance equipment were purchased or rented, or services were hired, and most of the land in a one-hundred-mile-wide strip back from the Gulf was tested by one of these new devices. In all, 31 million acres were tested by the end of 1925. With data and interpretations on hand, the oilmen drilled shallow test holes to confirm theories and deeper holes when the additional data looked good.62 Everette DeGolyer’s Rycade Oil Corporation made the first successful demonstration of the new technology in Fort Bend County, in July 1924, with its discovery of the Nash dome, the first dome in the Gulf Coast region to be discovered through geophysics. Six months later, Gulf, using the seismograph, found the Orchard dome in Fort Bend County. Gulf continued to invest heavily in seismic exploration in the Gulf Coast area, finding the Fannette dome near Beaumont, the Hawkinsville dome in Matagorda County, and Starks dome. As useful as the gravity method of prospecting for oil seemed to be, however, scientists were aware that the data it provided was less precise than they needed to identify deeper and relatively complex geological formations. Thus, while the scientists applied gravity methods, they also experimented with new technologies, including refraction seismology, which was based on measurement of vibrations or waves created in the earth through the detonation of buried 130

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explosives. Gulf, Pure, Shell, and Humble supported extensive fieldwork, the latter two companies largely with their own personnel. Oilmen used the new technology to extend existing fields, and it produced some notable discoveries before reflection seismology came into use. Developed by Geophysical Research Corporation, Everette DeGolyer and John C. Karcher’s new company, reflection seismology could detect higher frequencies and, thereby, collect additional data. The technique’s developers also added equipment to record up to six separate channels simultaneously, permitting more precise comparison of ‘‘reflections’’ of energy transmitted through the earth from controlled detonations. With the development of reflection seismography, by the end of the 1920s, geologists had a full range of techniques to apply in their search for oil.63 For that reason, the later 1920s saw a dramatic rise in Gulf Coast discoveries. In 1926, scientific explorationists added Moss Bluff to the list, encouraging more exploration in the Gulf Coast region. The following year, geologists identified the Sugarland field; it was produced in 1927, after H. C. Cockburn’s discovery well, which he had located with the older and cheaper gravity geophysical technology. Humble Oil and Refining went on to develop Sugarland and followed an 800-barrel producer with twenty consecutive hits, building a major field. In response to the Sugarland discovery, large companies reshot the Gulf Coast area to locate deep and moderately deep salt domes. The cumulative scientific victories changed conventional understanding of the recoverable oil from the Gulf Coast area, which trade journals now described as ‘‘in an early stage of its ultimate development.’’ 64 Success also led to the retesting of areas written off earlier, including salt domes and non-salt-dome prospects, especially after the Texas Company in 1928 used seismic devices to discover the Port Neches field and Gulf in 1929 identified the Hankamer field in Liberty County. In 1929, companies claimed twenty-five geophysical discoveries in the Gulf Coast region of Texas and Louisiana, and scientists and technicians continued to refine both apparatus and theory to identify new types of formations.65 By 1930, the new geophysical technologies had gone beyond finding and outlining salt plugs to identifying geological structures in greater detail, a development ripe with consequences thereafter. Unfortunately, for the moment, it was one thing to locate a geological structure, thus narrowing the risk in exploration; it was another to establish the presence of oil and gas in commercial quantities. As before, only the drill would tell. At the Esperson dome, for example, torsion-balance THE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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work identified twin domes about three miles apart, but two test wells were dry. A showing had been found in Esperson No. 2, leading an independent, Harvey Smith, to pursue a hunch by trying a location 1,500 feet west of the No. 2 well. After Smith completed the well for 800 bopd at 3,306 feet, Cranfill-Reynolds, a partnership of two independents, went on to drill thirty-eight wells, only two of them dry. At Esperson, Smith’s willingness to risk a dry hole, after Union Exploration had already completed two of them, led to the discovery.66 Though the new geophysical technology would be indispensable in future decades, it must be remembered that its early record was mixed. The early discoveries, in fact, could have been made without the benefits of science, because, as a veteran industry trade reporter observed: ‘‘The seismograph and torsion balance machines were used simply to check such acreage as offered gas seep indications.’’ As technologies improved, however, they were used to locate domes or fields that did not have definite markers or surface indications.67 More daunting, most of the new geophysical discoveries did little to add to company reserves at the time. Gulf’s discovery at Fannette yielded only 50 bopd at 5,060 feet. Long Point’s discovery well also made only 50 bopd. Humble drilled at Raccoon Bend, where there was little surface or subsurface evidence of oil, largely because of persistent reports of gas in shallow water wells, but withdrew from the field. Harry Pennington, a Houston independent, read the scant geophysical data and decided in 1926 that it was worth blocking up cheap leases. He sold his block to Henry Staiti, of Houston, who drilled Thompson No. 1 as a shallow gas well to test the formation. With heavy gas production, Staiti cleared the titles on the block and drilled deeper, finding a 35 bopd well at 1,009 feet. Thereafter he sold the block to Humble, which drilled fourteen shallow tests, from 1,000 to 1,700 feet, getting ten gas wells and one small oil well. After two unsuccessful deep tests, Humble found a 300-barrel well at 3,282 feet. Humble’s discovery at Raccoon Bend was modest, with significant results to come only after re-entries at later dates, but it did support the investment in deeper dome drilling, contributing in this way to area development. Other efforts were less rewarding. Brookshire, Lost Lake, and Nash dome did little to justify the cost of the new science or to build confidence in the ability of geophysicists to find oil in commercial quantities.68 During the 1920s, many large oil companies adjusted their discovery strategy to fit with their recent experience. Though science had not lived up to all of its claims, it was useful in narrowing risks and increas132

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ing reserves by identifying promising old fields for re-entries through deeper drilling and work-overs. Given the often spectacular results obtained by extending and working-over old fields, companies that could afford to do so received larger returns on investment from purchasing producing properties than they did from wildcat exploration. Adjustments in strategies involved limiting wildcat activity to prospects that were thought to be large and in which science, limited as it was, would provide a special edge for the operator. Large integrated companies would supply their refineries by buying producing leases and, in some instances, stored oil. Much of the stored oil was held by smaller companies that lacked financial staying power and still held to the traditional independents’ success formula: get in early, develop leases quickly, and sell out before production declines. The two different strategies interfaced perfectly, as large companies looked to buy properties and production in areas they had viewed as overly speculative or in which they had been unable to lease extensively, while smaller operators looked to bank their gains and move on. Independents also re-entered old areas but often using a more ‘‘seat of the pants’’ approach. For example, after success at Pierce Junction, Hugh Roy Cullen drilled for oil in abandoned fields, often taking acreage that major companies had given up. He usually began by looking for signs of oil seeps off the once productive leases, then used torsionbalance and gravity-meter technology to narrow the field for exploration. At Blue Ridge, in partnership with Jim West, Cullen got five wells. After that success, he entered the largely depleted Humble field and devised a solution to the drilling problems that were posed by heaving shale and the tendency of the shale to absorb drilling fluids. His reentry and deeper drilling at Humble brought Cullen large reserves and the basis of enduring fortune. His success, like that of Henry Staiti and other independents, showed clearly that the field was still open to the independent, even as the major companies leased extensively and applied the latest science and technology. The lesson would be borne out again during the next decade by Cullen and other Houston wildcatters.69 A high level of exploration and development activity in the upper Gulf Coast fostered the growth of the petroleum-related sector of the regional economy. Oil service and supply companies expanded during the second decade of the century especially in the Houston area, where Clarence E. Reed’s roller bit company and Howard R. Hughes and Walter B. Sharp’s Sharp-Hughes Tool Company manufactured increasing varieties and quantities of drill bits. James Abercrombie’s Cameron Iron THE RISING TIDE OF OIL

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Humble Oil & Refining’s Baytown Refinery under construction, 1919. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

Works continued to design and manufacture new control devices, working especially to produce effective blowout preventers to help operators cope with the high gas pressures that were prevalent in Texas and Louisiana.70 The blue-collar payroll in oil-related manufacturing climbed as machinery and equipment plants and refineries expanded. In Beaumont– Port Arthur, Magnolia’s refinery grew from 50,000 bopd to 72,000. Gulf’s, opened in 1901 with a 6,000 bopd capacity, had expanded to 105,000 bopd by 1926. The Texas Company’s refinery expanded as well, employing 3,000 workers in 1926. Eight new refineries were built on the Houston Ship Channel between 1918 and 1922, representing an initial investment of $25 million and a daily capacity of 50,000 barrels of crude. The largest installation in the Houston area was Humble’s refinery at Baytown. Opened in 1920 to process 10,000 barrels of Goose Creek crude per day, it was expanded and modified for feedstock from Ranger and later revamped heavily to handle oil from the Panhandle and the Permian Basin. By the end of the 1920s, Humble’s plant processed 100,000 bopd with high yields of profitable gasoline. Like other refineries, it employed large numbers of African American and Tejano workers in unskilled positions— over the objections of white workers. During a general labor downturn in 1921, for example, unemployed drillers and 134

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roughnecks mounted a charge on the plant, without success. Resistance from white workers, taken with the prevailing patterns of discrimination, barred advancement of minorities into better-paying jobs. White union members at the Magnolia refinery in Beaumont lodged a complaint during 1921 that too many blacks were employed. Hughes Tool, in Houston, opened opportunities slightly, with about 10 percent of the skilled jobs held by blacks, who were organized into a union apart from whites.71 Other firms grew as Houston Ship Channel traffic mounted. The Houston Oil Terminal Company and the Houston Oil & Transport Company did most of the bunkering of fuel oil for ships in the turning basin. Houston Oil Terminal laid its lines over the city docks, securing a ten-year contract to do so. Houston Oil & Transport operated two tugs and four barges as part of its operation. Pure Oil in February 1924 opened a 10,000-barrel refinery at Port Neches, between Beaumont and Port Arthur, to process its crude from the Powell and Mexia fields. Other refining centers were slow during this period, but the proximity of

The Texas Company Building, Houston, 1920s. Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library.

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The Gulf Building, Houston, 1930. Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library.

the Houston refineries to export markets and domestic supplies led to growth there.72 Gulf Coast refining developed more extensive foreign connections, with growing volumes of imported crude reaching Texas refineries and increasing amounts of refined products shipped abroad. During November 1922, Gulf Refining Company received 2.7 million barrels of oil from abroad, largely from Mexico, and shipped 230,000 barrels of refined products to foreign ports. Imports from Golden Lane production in Mexico reached a peak in July 1922, when 533,000 barrels were received by Texas Gulf Coast refiners. Thereafter these shipments declined, falling to 142,000 barrels two years later. Exports from Texas, however, remained important to regional refiners. During February 1923, Gulf shipped 348,000 barrels of refined oil to foreign buyers. In March, the figure rose to 402,000 barrels of refined products. By that time, about one-third of Gulf Coast crude and refined products were shipped to foreign markets. In 1927, the Texas Company, Gulf, Humble, and other companies exported 2.5 million barrels of refined products a month. By 136

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the end of the decade, the volume of petroleum products moving from the Houston Ship Channel made the Port of Houston second only to New York in tonnage.73 The byword was ‘‘bigger’’ in the Texas petroleum industry during the third decade of the twentieth century. Developments in Central Texas and on the upper Gulf Coast expanded the scale and significance of the petroleum industry in the state. Science and technology became increasingly important, though geophysics still had a mixed record of successes and failures. Nevertheless, large companies had adopted the new techniques and adjusted their exploration and acquisitions strategies accordingly. As the decade advanced, the rising tide of production brought the Texas Railroad Commission into increased involvement in the industry, a trend that developed even more strongly in response to problems posed by new field discoveries in the Panhandle and the Permian Basin.

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OIL IN COW COUNTRY During the mid- and late 1920s, wildcatters located vast new oil and gas reserves in the Texas Panhandle and in the Permian Basin, two areas that had little attraction for either geologists or oilmen up to that time. In both regions there were indications of at least some oil and gas. On one stretch of ranch land in the Panhandle, in Carson County, there were gas seeps and scalds similar to those on the Gulf Coast. Oil seeps near Toyah, in the Permian Basin, prompted several wildcatters to try their luck before 1910. However, for a variety of reasons, even the most intrepid of risk takers hesitated to explore either area.1 In 1920, the Panhandle and the Permian Basin were still thinly populated and remote from centers of oil activity and markets, a million miles from nowhere, as the phrase had it. The Permian Basin and the upper Panhandle were cattle country, vast expanses of rolling grassland and mesquite scrub, occasionally broken by gulches, canyons, and escarpments. For the most part, both regions were carved up into huge ranches, hundreds and thousands of acres in extent, though there were wheat farms in the Panhandle and cotton farms farther south. Here and there, especially along the railroads, there were small towns, but, in many counties, the only sizable settlement was the county seat. The regions experienced climatic extremes, fierce heat in summer and, not infrequently, sharp freezes in winter. Normally, both were arid, the Permian Basin more so than the Panhandle, and they suffered severely during the drought years of the late 1910s.2 By 1920, hard times had led civic and business leaders to hope for the kind of oil-induced prosperity that existed farther east in Texas. Farmers and ranchers were enthusiastically receptive when visitors in business suits raised the subject of leasing their land.

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From the geologists’ point of view, however, there was not much to recommend either region, because many of the underlying formations were limestone. Geologist L. C. Snider wrote in 1919, ‘‘The Permian rocks of Texas, like those of Kansas and Oklahoma, have not yielded any oil or gas . . . and their nature is such that it seems improbable that any will be found in them.’’ In 1923, Humble Oil geologist Wallace Pratt, writing after both gas and oil discoveries in the Panhandle, thought that Permian limestone was likely to be ‘‘only a meager source of petroleum’’ and that geologists should advise clients eager to try the Panhandle to ‘‘think twice before investing there at present.’’ E. W. Owen, who tried to sell Humble some Panhandle leases at the time, recalled, ‘‘Although the price was cheap, I did not notice Mr. Pratt thinking twice before he said ‘No!’ ’’ Putting it succinctly, Owen remembered, ‘‘Permian was still a dirty word.’’ 3 While many wildcatters did not take geologists very seriously in 1920, there were practical considerations in the way of exploring either the Panhandle or the Permian Basin. Any number of locations on the Gulf Coast and in North and Central Texas looked more promising, and in those regions acreage was relatively easy to acquire and operating costs were modest. More important, if one found oil—gas not being what any wildcatter started out to find—there were no pipelines and few railroads in the Panhandle and Permian Basin to carry the oil to markets. Not surprisingly, then, inexperienced ‘‘amateur’’ oilmen and promoters willing to overlook practical problems played a significant part in the opening of the Panhandle and the Permian Basin to exploration and development. One such group of amateurs was a circle of Amarillo businessmen led by wholesale grocer M. C. Nobles and salesman T. J. Moore. In 1916, Nobles and Moore asked Oklahoma City geologist Charles N. Gould to evaluate some Oklahoma leases. When Gould condemned the acreage’s oil potential, the businessmen asked him if he knew of any likely oilbearing structures near Amarillo. Gould had done some Panhandle mapping in 1903–1905, so he agreed to try to identify some structures for drilling sites. He found what he labeled the John Ray dome on the R. B. Masterson and Lee Bivins ranches and, in the company of interested ranchers and businessmen, chose a test site. As he put it to them, ‘‘No one knows whether or not the Lord has put any gas or oil in the Panhandle of Texas, but if there should be any oil or gas in this part of the world, this would appear to be the best place to find it.’’ Later, one of the ranchers told Gould, ‘‘When you all made that little speech for we alls out OIL IN COW COUNTRY

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there in Masterson’s pasture, I couldn’t quite decide whether you all was a mighty smart man or a damn bluffer.’’ But Nobles and his friends decided Gould wasn’t bluffing, and they formed the Amarillo Oil Company to test the Gould site. The result was Masterson No. 1, completed in December 1918 for 15 million cubic feet of gas per day. Subsequent tests brought in more huge gassers, and so many ranchers wanted Gould to find domes on their land that he had to set up a branch office in Amarillo.4 Masterson No. 1 was, in fact, the discovery well for an enormous gas field, roughly five million acres in extent, stretching from Texas through Oklahoma and into Kansas and containing many wells capable of making an average of tens of millions of cubic feet of gas per day. Unfortunately for the investors, in the absence of hundreds of miles of pipelines to distant markets, there was far more gas than local markets could absorb. Worse yet, many early Panhandle wildcatters followed the common practice of letting gas blow into the air in the hope that oil would follow. This practice had resulted in oil production in the Ranger area, but it only wasted gas in the Panhandle. After a year, the results were uniformly discouraging: some sixty gas wells but not a gusher among them. Yet drilling continued because, given the size of the gas field, as the Oil and Gas Journal reasoned, ‘‘unless all logic fails, there lies somewhere within a hundred miles of it a great oil pool’’— certainly a generous margin for error.5 Hopes were finally realized in Carson County when Gulf’s No. 2 S. B. Burnett came in during May 1921 for 175 barrels of oil per day (bopd) at a little below 3,000 feet. The size of the discovery did not make pulses race, and the well had to be pumped, so there was no oil boom until larger gusher discoveries in Hutchinson and Carson counties in 140

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1924 and 1925 prompted a rush to drill. After the Dixon Creek oil discovery in Hutchinson County, activity reached frenetic levels, and oilmen spread out, finding crude in Gray, Potter, and Wheeler counties.6 By the time the Panhandle fields boomed, it was clear that in this region, unlike North Texas, large companies and operators with abundant capital and staying power would have telling advantages. Drilling to greater depths through problem formations, as well as higher costs of equipment and labor, made Panhandle wells relatively expensive to complete. Worse yet, when one had oil, payout on investment was slow, in part because of the chemical composition of the oil, which contained sulfur, making it more expensive to refine. Though it was high in gravity and could yield up to 55 percent gasoline, Panhandle crude was heavily laced with paraffin and congealed at temperatures below fifty degrees, making it difficult to move through pipelines during cool weather. The alternative was storing it, but that brought the expense of building tanks. In the face of this problem, the oil producer still had to produce from his wells, and he had to drill additional wells to meet lease obligations. These conditions put small operators in a cash-flow bind, and many responded by selling acreage in ten- to forty-acre tracts to raise funds. Major companies, such as Gulf, the Texas Company, Magnolia, Roxana (Shell), and Prairie, assumed a commanding presence, as did larger Oklahoma companies, such as Phillips and Skelly. Several of the better-financed Wichita Falls independents—W. W. Silk, Walter Cline, and Walter Priddy, for example—also played important roles in early development, but they were outpaced by larger companies in the longer run.7 Large or small, all operators found that the Panhandle was not an easy place to produce oil and gas. Perhaps the most difficult problem was transportation. The only railroad close to the new fields was the Santa Fe, and its nearest stop at the little town of Panhandle was some thirty miles or more from the nearest activity. Boilers, timbers, pipe— every bit of equipment—had to be trucked from Panhandle over dirt roads and even rougher terrain. The same was true for building materials for the company camps erected by Phillips, Marland, Gulf, Skelly, and others, camps made necessary by the impossibility of commuting from Amarillo to work. Until October 1926, when Santa Fe completed a spur line to Isom in Hutchinson County, all oil field equipment and workers made the trek from Panhandle. By July 1926, so much freight was arriving in the small town that it was backed up on sidings in Amarillo and Canadian, waiting for space on tracks at Panhandle.8 In mid-summer 1926, with a full-scale boom underway, it was difOIL IN COW COUNTRY

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ficult not only to bring supplies to the fields but to get petroleum out of them. A handful of small-diameter pipelines connected wells in Carson and Hutchinson counties to loading racks on the Santa Fe. But, because Panhandle crude congealed in cool weather, little oil actually moved in tank cars between late November and March. Instead, producers and purchasers ran oil into tanks and rushed to ship it out when weather permitted; there was still a backlog of stored oil as production steadily mounted in June and July 1926. Then, in early August, when daily production exceeded 50,000 barrels, oil shipments came to a dead halt because there was a bumper wheat harvest in the Panhandle. Facing the need to ship out the avalanche of grain in a few weeks, the beleaguered Santa Fe could find no room for oil. Purchasers responded by cutting back on runs, declining new connections, and cutting prices. In turn, producers scrambled for storage, steel tanks if they could find them, earthen tanks if they could not, and began to accept ‘‘distress’’ prices of $1.25 a barrel, 50 cents less than comparable Mid-Continent crude brought in places with readier market outlets.9 Panhandle producers, like those in the rest of Texas and the nation, responded to problems of market outlets and price cuts with political activity, bringing the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) into the transportation crisis. Thus, in late April 1926, the commission tried to head off the flood of oil that swamped the pipelines, storage tanks, and railroads and to lessen storage in earthen tanks by banning the shooting of wells to boost their production. But most Panhandle operators routinely continued to shoot wells, sometimes with hundreds of quarts of nitroglycerin, and often obtained dramatic rises in production by doing so. Operators, thus, rushed to protest the TRC ban, particularly when they were drilling offsets to producing wells; if they could not shoot offsets, other producers would drain oil from under their leases. Confronted with strong opposition, the commission backed down. In June, it decided that shooting was the operators’ option. The nitro went down wells legally again, and oil continued to flow into earthen tanks.10 The TRC had little more luck in June when it tried to curtail the waste of natural gas. Low reservoir pressure in Panhandle oil fields made it necessary for operators to pump their wells. The alternative many of them hit upon was to use gas in formations lying above oil sands to push oil out of the holes. By not casing and cementing off such gas, operators created a jet of gas that carried oil already part way up the hole to the casinghead; most operators then let the gas blow off. To the commission, this was waste, pure and simple, and the commission was required by 142

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law to stop it. Operators responded that they were using the gas to produce oil, that the gas had no value, and that it was not wasted. The commission responded that operators ought to cement in casing through gas formations, then suggested that they might at least cement off the deepest gas formations, but finally decided that cementing was another operators’ option. On the cementing issue, the commission was up against problems of economics, technology, and reservoir engineering; what might work for some wells would not in others, and the commission could not devise workable uniform rules for Panhandle fields. Once again, it wanted to regulate but could not find a practical way to do so.11 In August, the TRC moved to hold back production again, a flexing of muscle that belied its political weakness. In response to gridlock in railroad transportation, the commission told operators it would levy a fine of $5,000 on anyone who completed a well without adequate steel tankage or pipeline to take the production. Unlike its other attempts, this one generated little protest because every operator knew that there was no outlet for new production. Oilmen resorted to drilling to the top of the producing sands and halting operations. Some operators and Amarillo residents demanded that the commission exert pressure on the Santa Fe and on other roads. By the time the commission met to hear their complaints, however, the freight crisis was over. In short, while the TRC could go little further than operators would agree to go in the oil field, oilmen did not hesitate to push the commission to regulate the railroads.12 The shipping problems of Panhandle oil producers began to ease when major purchasers decided that the volume of production justified the construction of pipelines to refining centers. In September 1926, Prairie Oil and Gas began work on an eight-inch line to Ringling, Oklahoma. The following month, Humble, Magnolia, and Gulf announced plans to build ten-inch lines connecting to existing trunk lines farther east. To deal with the problem of congealing oil, Humble processed some of the paraffin out of crude before shipment, while Gulf and Magnolia experimented with heaters along their lines. Either way, Panhandle crude was expensive for purchasers to handle, a problem that kept prices relatively low.13 By 1927, when trunk lines finally offered reliable outlets for Panhandle crude, substantial progress had been made in building markets for Panhandle gas, both inside and outside Texas. The Amarillo Oil Company circle had worked on this problem since the discovery of the Masterson well. In 1918, they found Perry A. Little, a Buffalo, New York, OIL IN COW COUNTRY

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gas man, to work with them. They joined him to form the Panhandle Pipe Line Company and lay an eight-inch line to Amarillo during 1920. Amarillo Oil, however, could not begin to burn all the gas their leases could produce, so in July 1922, they made a deal with J. J. Hastings and Mission Oil to build a gasoline plant north of town. Four months later, they recruited the U.S. Zinc Company to build a processing plant and use their gas. Nobles and others tried to get the TRC to approve construction of a carbon-black plant in 1923, but the commission declined on the grounds that it might not have the legal authority to grant approval, thus stalling construction of the installation. Nobles and the rest of the Amarillo Oil circle were not quitters, but the volume of gas they had in shut-in wells on the Masterson and Bivins ranches was far more than even a growing local economy could absorb.14 When drilling escalated during 1925 and 1926, even more gas was available, but this natural gas produced with oil, ‘‘casinghead gas,’’ yielded a substantial amount of gasoline—up to a gallon per thousand cubic feet, when processed. That provided incentive for construction of gasoline plants, which Phillips, Skelly and other large companies proceeded to do. And, once the TRC decided that it did have authority to permit carbon-black plants, the companies burned residue gas from their gasoline plants. Western Carbon Company, a Phillips subsidiary, began operations in Carson County during September 1926, and by 1930 Panhandle plants manufactured two-thirds of the carbon black made in the United States. Carbon black had become as important economically as gasoline manufacturing in the region.15 These developments cut the amount of gas blown into the air in the Panhandle, but the chance to make more efficient use of it really emerged only with the construction of long-distance gas transmission lines and, as mentioned in the previous chapter, this development awaited solution of various technological problems in gas pipelining. The first was North Texas Utilities’ sixteen-inch line to Wichita Falls, opened in January 1926. In July, Lone Star Gas completed a line to Dallas and Fort Worth. In the next five years, lines opened to out-of-state markets— Kansas City, Denver, Wichita, Chicago, Omaha, and Minneapolis. Panhandle reserves provided the basis for growth of such companies as Pioneer Natural Gas and Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Company. Unfortunately for small producers, however, gas purchasers picked up their own leases, passing up uneconomical connections with small producers. Ultimately, their problems would pose the question of gas proration, one the TRC was not prepared to approach.16 144

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Some of the natural gas produced in Potter, Moore, and Hansford counties contained helium, considered a strategic material during the 1910 –1920 period because it could be used to inflate dirigibles, which, in turn, might have tactical military uses. Because gas from Petrolia contained roughly 1 percent helium, the Linde Air Products and Air Reduction companies set up plants in Fort Worth, processing gas brought in by Lone Star Gas during World War I. After the war, these installations closed, and the Navy Department built a new helium plant at Fort Worth. As Petrolia’s gas production declined, however, military planners in Washington grew anxious about future helium sources. When the Cliffside field in Potter County proved to have gas containing 1.75 percent helium, Washington moved to erect a plant seven miles west of Amarillo, to be designed and run by the Bureau of Mines. It opened in 1929 and became the world’s largest producer. In later years, similar plants were built in Moore and Hansford counties, two of them operated by Phillips. Although dirigibles are now obsolete militarily, the gas is still useful in some areas of medicine and manufacturing.17 As was the rule, regional oil activity spurred city growth, chiefly of Amarillo but also of other oil field towns. In the 1920s, Amarillo’s population grew from 15,500 to over 43,000. Late in the decade, twelveand fourteen-story hotels appeared on the new urban skyline, and the Santa Fe completed a new general office building. Between 1924 and the end of 1926, deposits in Amarillo’s four banks quadrupled, and bank customers jammed lobbies during business hours. Growing oil companies, notably Phillips and the locally organized Shamrock Oil and Gas Corporation, made the city regional headquarters, as did older firms like Magnolia, which had been so venturesome as to set up an office in 1919. In short, a cattle town became a bustling oil metropolis and maintained a regional preeminence it would never lose.18 The Panhandle boom of the 1920s made existing small towns near the oil fields grow and brought other settlements into existence. Panhandle and Pampa, for example, grew from sleepy railway stops to bustling oil towns. Panhandle’s spur to growth was its position on the Santa Fe Railroad, and when traffic slacked off as trunk oil pipelines handled crude and drilling slowed down, the town was increasingly pinched for cash. Pampa was luckier; it lured in a Cabot Carbon plant in 1927, and its economy grew on a broader base. To house workers, larger companies built camps amounting to towns in themselves. Phillips, for example, built an immense camp at Pantex, near Borger, which eventually became the town of Phillips. Similarly, Skellytown in Carson County grew OIL IN COW COUNTRY

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Oil fields, Borger. Photograph by Zinn. Webel Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

from the Skelly and Roxana camps into a town of several hundred residents, two refineries, and a carbon-black plant.19 By far the most notorious and colorful of the new settlements was Borger, in Hutchinson County. Borger came to include not only the town founded by A. P. ‘‘Ace’’ Borger but also an adjacent townsite, Isom, platted by J. F. Weatherly, who had originally sold land to Borger. A veteran of Oklahoma townsite promotion, Ace Borger began selling town lots in March 1926, and within a few weeks, the town had lumberyards, hotels, cafes, filling stations, and an impressive array of ramshackle wooden buildings, many of which burned down in a fire in June. It also had many speakeasies, gambling halls, honky-tonks, and brothels, since Ace was not choosy about those to whom he sold lots.20 More to the point, as a new town without law enforcement in place, Borger was well positioned to become the regional center for ‘‘victimless’’ crime, catering to mean and fun-loving people, and it developed problems with more serious crime as well. As retired gambler and ‘‘enforcer’’ William Franklin ‘‘Hotshot’’ Ash put it, ‘‘Everybody came down there from New York, Chicago, and Detroit. . . . They came down only 146

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to see what was goin’ on. They’d get all busted so they had to rob somebody.’’ The Texas Rangers staged a clean-up in 1927, inadvertently causing a sudden spurt in the population of Wink, an equally new and rowdy town several hundred miles south in the Permian Basin. In 1929, the shooting of District Attorney John A. Holmes prompted Governor Dan Moody to send in both the Rangers and the Texas National Guard and to put Borger under martial law. Though this second crackdown may have led some of Borger’s underworld to relocate, the East Texas oil boom a year and a half later did more to sober up the new community than law enforcement. The action in East Texas worked like a magnet for oil field boomers of all varieties, including members of the floating oil field underworld and their customers.21 All the while the Panhandle oil and gas fields were opening up, an increasing number of wildcatters were drilling in the vast reaches of the Permian Basin farther south. Before 1920, oil seeps from shallow depths and oil in water wells near Toyah and Fort Stockton encouraged tests in Reeves and Pecos counties. By 1920, there may have been as many as eighty tests underway in the area, but most of them yielded no more than oil shows. That was not enough to whet the exploratory appetites of well-funded large companies with their growing geoscientific staffs.22 Geologists knew little about the Permian Basin in 1920. Its vast stretches of plains and areas of shifting sand dunes offered little scope to

Main Street in Borger. George H. Baker Photos. J. Lindsay Nunn Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

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The Phillips Petroleum Company refinery and camp, near Borger. Photograph by E. J. Banks. Dr. P. J. Edmonson Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

the resourceful geological mapper, so geological thinking about the region had not advanced beyond speculation. The hypothesis with widest circulation had been developed by University of Texas geology professor J. A. Udden, whose study of the eroded Marathon Mountains in Brewster County led him to conclude that there might be a long underground structure extending from there through Pecos, Upton, and Reagan counties, with rock folding that might have trapped oil.23 Expanding on Udden’s suggestion, geologists R. A. Liddle and J. W. Beede in 1918 speculated that the ‘‘Marathon Fold’’ might extend through more counties, including Mitchell, Nolan, Sterling, Fisher, and, at the extreme end, Foard. Solid evidence, however, was scanty. As Liddle explained, beds of rock closer to the surface hid all but faint traces of the fold from view. However, Liddle suggested that the Marathon Fold could be like the Bend Arch in North Texas, and since the Bend Arch was the hottest 148

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arena of play at the time, that gave optimists a lot to think about. It also gave oil promoters a new angle to present to investors.24 Oil fever in the eastern Permian Basin had a powerful assist both from the Marathon Fold theory and, more important, from the Ranger area discoveries not all that far away. Thus, some Mitchell County ranchers and businessmen decided to drill, and a 1918 test by their ColoTex Company found an encouraging show near Iatan. Similarly, Colorado City lawyer L. W. Sandusky and local doctor P. C. Coleman pursued a ‘‘Marathon Fold’’ prospect near Westbrook on acreage Coleman put together. Eventually Sandusky interested a New York promotional venture, the Underwriters Producing and Refining Company, in drilling a test. Like the majority of promoters, Underwriters could say its test was on a ‘‘structure,’’ though the actual test location owed less to science than to a neighboring rancher’s wish to have offset production if Underwriters found oil. In June 1920, the test hit enough oil to prompt the Colorado Record to exult, ‘‘Struck the Golden Flood!’’ Unfortunately, whatever flood there may have been turned to a trickle when some overly enthusiastic application of nitroglycerin downhole caused parts of the well to cave in. Once this damage was undone, the well was a twenty-barrel pumper—no bonanza, but enough to encourage other Mitchell County wildcatters to keep trying.25 By the end of 1922, subsequent Mitchell County discoveries brought local production up to a commercially viable level. Wells were not gigantic producers, but they usually averaged about 75 bopd and held

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up well over time, something that could not be said of the gushers so often seen in the Ranger area. Much production was already close to the Texas & Pacific Railroad, and the Rio Grande Refining Company of El Paso bought the crude. At the end of 1923, the California Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California, bought Underwriters’ properties and undertook an aggressive development program.26 Thus, the Permian Basin entered the list of oil-producing regions, but its modest beginning caused no stampede. Veteran oilmen were still skeptical that the region contained large pools. It took a spectacular discovery in Reagan County to change their minds. As in Mitchell County, the way to the discovery of oil was initiated by greenhorns and promoters responding to Marathon Fold fantasies. In 1919, a young attorney, Rupert Ricker, received his discharge from the U.S. Army and returned to his hometown, the sleepy village of Big Lake. Not much occupied with legal business, Ricker had time to read geological speculation about the fold. How tantalizing it was to fantasize a fortune in oil under the dusty and desolate rangeland of Reagan and adjoining counties—a fantasy all the more compelling when he realized that a great deal of the land was owned by the University of Texas and, hence, available for wildcatting at remarkably low cost. In fact, one could obtain permits to look for petroleum at the rate of ten cents an acre. The state limited the amount of land that a prospector could lease to four sections in a locality, those sections to be at least two miles from other land on which the prospector took permits. With partners, however, one could evade the inconvenient restrictions of law and assemble a drilling block.27 Rounding up business associates, Ricker undertook to apply for a 674-section (431,360-acre) tract spanning Reagan, Upton, Crockett, and Irion counties. The snag in his plan was raising the $43,136 to pay for permits. Once he filed his applications, he had only thirty days to pay for the permits, which were good for one year.28 Ricker took the train to that mecca of oil promotion, Fort Worth, to peddle his deal, but he found no takers. After all, from any oilman’s point of view, Reagan County was in the middle of nowhere and not a drop of oil had been found near it. As the clock ticked on his applications, Ricker happened to run into Frank Pickrell, an old army buddy, and El Paso businessman-promoter Haymon Krupp, whose common bond was eagerness to get in on the oil game. Neither knew anything about oil, but that posed no problem because they intended to pick up leases and sell either the leases or interests in them to investors. With 150

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their focus on promotion rather than exploration, Ricker’s proposition sounded about as good as any other, and they bought Ricker out for $2,500, a far cry from what the young attorney had fantasized, but better than the total loss he faced. Pickrell and Krupp then organized the Texon Oil and Land Company with the usual hope of getting rich quickly.29 The ups and downs of Pickrell and Krupp’s promotion have been described by other writers and do not require repetition here. In brief, they discovered that one man’s dog of a deal did not turn into easy money just because someone else was promoting it. Krupp had to take out a bank loan to pay for the university land leases, and no one wanted to buy the leases or even shares. The promoters then fell back on the device of selling certificates of interest—in this case, a 5/10,240 share of the deal, and in order to make anything salable, they had to drill a well, which was not in their original game plan.30 Amazingly enough, on May 28, 1923, Texon’s test, Santa Rita No. 1, gushed oil, which presented a new set of thorny problems to Pickrell and Krupp.31 The promoters were not prepared to handle production, so the oil simply flowed from the well over the ground; it took the operators a month to get equipment and tanks in place to control and store production. More important, Texon had a negligible amount of cash, and there was no way it could develop its holdings on its own. There were major company oil scouts among the crowds that visited the well, but Pickrell, to his dismay, found that they were not eager to buy into the field. The major obstacle was where to drill additional wells in an area without obvious surface structures, where one flat acre looked much like the next. Texon’s well might be on the edge of a pool, and in that event, no one could predict which direction might be closer to center. Only time and more wells would resolve the issue, and that left Texon in a bind for money.32 Texon was rescued by Michael L. Benedum, a veteran Pittsburgh oilman, probably the best-known wildcatter in the industry and an active developer in North Texas. Ready to look at deals involving large sums and long odds, he decided to take over the Texon find and, with Texon’s promoters, organized the Big Lake Oil Company.33 The series of test wells that followed might have discouraged a less determined prospector: Big Lake Oil did not bring in a prolific well until the ninth try. When No. 9 blew in for 1,500 bopd in May 1924, and No. 11 for 3,000 bopd in July, Benedum knew that his long shot would pay off. Big Lake was indeed an oil field of major importance, the first in the Permian Basin.34 OIL IN COW COUNTRY

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Levi Smith, left, president of the Big Lake Oil Company, and Michael L. Benedum at Big Lake. San Angelo Standard-Times Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

Accordingly, wildcatters great and small became interested in the Permian Basin. Mike Benedum sent out geologists working for Transcontinental Oil, another Benedum company, to do surface mapping northeast and southwest of Big Lake, an effort leading to the discovery of the fabulous Yates field in 1926.35 Meanwhile, Fort Worth promoters and drillers picked up acreage in the region, often without regard for what science could reasonably show. Thus, Fort Worth printer-promoter Chester R. Bunker bought leases on the L. P. Powell ranch in Crockett County with the expectation of selling them at a profit. When the leases did not move, he gave away interests in the land’s future oil production (as yet undiscovered) to anyone who would buy a three-year subscription to his oil tip sheet. As luck would have it, the well Bunker’s World Oil Company drilled brought in a modest-sized oil pool in 1925. Bunker’s creative redistribution of properties thereafter landed him in court. His inability to manage the businesses he created drowned them in red ink, and he was convicted of mail fraud a few years later. Still, the measure 152

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of oilmen’s reassessment of Permian Basin potential was Bunker’s sale of his well and 2,500 acres to Humble Oil on the basis of oil shows alone, before the well was completed. None other than Jersey Standard’s Walter Teagle himself came to Big Lake to close the deal. Other large companies—Roxana (Shell), Gulf, and Marland—were as eager to jump into Crockett County as they had been hesitant earlier about Big Lake.36 In fact, the emergence of significant production in the Permian Basin put the larger, more scientifically oriented companies in something of a dilemma. Big Lake demonstrated the penalty for hesitation, for there Texon Oil and Big Lake Oil ended up with the lion’s share of an entire major oil field. But how did one decide how to lease in a vast region without engaging in pure speculation? By the end of 1925, even the slender direction offered by the Marathon Fold hypothesis had begun to look misguided. Bunker’s Crockett County discovery, and subsequent wildcatting, indicated a trend of pools from the southeast to the northwest, rather than the southwest to northeast assumed by the fold theory. Making a strenuous effort to accumulate information, major companies established regional geological offices and sent out surface-mapping parties. By the end of 1924, the California Company (Standard Oil of California), Gulf, Humble (Standard Oil of New Jersey), and Roxana (Shell) all had offices, and their staffs were joined by geologists working for

The Big Lake Oil Company camp at Texon, 1928. Charles Beyer Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

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Dixie Oil (Standard Oil of Indiana), Midwest Exploration (Standard Oil of Indiana), the Texas Company, and Marland in scouring the region for structures to map. Similarly, larger companies put their new and growing paleontological departments to work analyzing and correlating subsurface data gathered from tests already made. But that type of science involved a ‘‘catch-22’’ type of situation: before one could use subsurface data to locate drilling sites, one had to drill enough tests to provide subsurface information.37 The response of the larger companies to this quandary was based on the same operational feature so appealing to small independents and mail-order promoters: cheap acreage and lots of it. So much of the Permian Basin was owned by ranchers with much more land than money that landmen could often acquire leases on enormous stretches of acreage for little cash. Science might not be able to narrow the risk of drilling, but cheap leases brought the economics into line with the risk that large companies would tolerate. Thousands of acres could be acquired for ten years with the stroke of a pen and little capital. Hence, Gulf picked up large tracts in Crane, Ector, Ward, and Winkler counties, and other companies, such as Humble, Dixie Oil, and Marland, followed suit. Better yet, having leased, these companies often passed along some of the risk to independents by farming out acreage, giving away some leased land or an interest in the land in return for test wells. The independents, in turn, sold off part of their farmout to investors and raised money to drill.38 Such a symbiotic relationship between major companies and independents is well illustrated by the discovery of oil in Upton County in 1925. Surface mapping confirmed a structure in the southwestern part of the county, and the Marland and Dixie oil companies leased in the area. They gave J. P. Johnston and George B. McCamey, Fort Worth independents, a farmout in return for a test. The Fort Worth oilmen then sold parts of the lease to finance drilling the test, and in September 1927 they discovered a field roughly fifteen miles long that ultimately produced more than 100 million barrels of oil. Typical of the independent wildcatters of their day, Johnston and McCamey sold their holdings to the Republic Production Company less than a week after their find. They then picked up acreage from Roy Westbrook, a Fort Worth promoter, near a well he intended to drill in Winkler County on the Hendrick ranch. Here, rather than drill themselves, Johnston and McCamey subcontracted the work to the Eastland Drilling Company of Fort Worth, owned by the Donnelly brothers. With the discovery of 154

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yet another major field, they sold out promptly, this time to Roxana and Atlantic. Crude-hungry large companies thus secured productive acreage, and two independents got handsome profits. Even when a test on a farmout resulted in a dry hole, the farmout was often worthwhile in terms of the scientific data geoscientists could get from it, because its correlation with existing data extended geological knowledge of the basin.39 The later 1920s saw wildcatters bring in significant finds in Howard, Crane, Upton, Pecos, Winkler, Ward, and Ector counties, but in terms of petroleum history, the most noteworthy fields were the Yates in Pecos County and the Hendrick in Winkler County. These discoveries were important not only for their size but also for the part they played in the evolution of regulation to control production. Once Michael L. Benedum had turned his attention to possibilities in West Texas, as we have seen, he looked at additional prospects. Pecos County was attractive, not only because it contained part of Udden’s Marathon Fold, but also because there had been a number of tests and oil shows there during the past two decades. Benedum’s geologists, dispatched in the summer of 1923, found a promising structure south of the Pecos River on the ranches of Ira Yates and Mattie Monroe Smith, and Transcontinental leased roughly 9,000 acres on the strength of their report. At that point, however, Transcontinental was critically short of capital, so Benedum turned to his friend Otto Donnell, president of the Ohio Oil Company, for help. The two friends agreed that an Ohio Oil subsidiary, Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas, would drill tests on Transcontinental acreage in return for a half interest. Drilling of the first test, Yates No. 1-A, began on October 5, 1926. Twenty-four days later, when it reached 1,005 feet, the well erupted into a 95-barrel-an-hour gusher. Informed of this development, Ira Yates exclaimed, ‘‘Well, I’ll be damned!’’ He became even more enthusiastic when an army of landmen descended on his isolated ranch, offering ready cash for leases. Deepened in 1928, the Yates discovery well came to produce at the rate of 70,824 bopd, but this was bush league compared with Yates No. 30-A, which was capable of over 200,000 bopd.40 Because Ira Yates and other landowners in the field leased large tracts at a time, relatively few companies—among them the California Company, Roxana, Humble, Simms, and McMan— entered into development of the field. Development proved to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Yates wells were shallow, incredibly cheap to drill, and produced a staggering amount of oil, continuing strong over time. After OIL IN COW COUNTRY

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some months, moreover, large quantities of crude, perhaps coming from some of the wells’ casing failures, began to seep into shallower formations and into the Pecos River. That made it possible to find prolific production at depths as shallow as 200 to 400 feet, and in one instance at 10 feet, while oil was also skimmed from the river. Thus, by 1936, seepage accounted for an astounding 3.5 million barrels of Yates’s total production. On the other hand, development of the field was problematic. Drilling sometimes involved blasting drill sites into limestone cliffs; camps for workers were essential in the remote field; the crude was sour, laced with sulfur, and poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas was a hazard; and the field was miles away from the nearest railroad, over rough terrain. Worse yet, this gargantuan production, once out of the field, entered a market already bloated with crude. Most major companies had no pressing need for millions of barrels of sour Yates crude, with the exception of the Gulf and Texas companies, which were temporarily crude short. More immediately, doing anything with Yates required pipelines, and they had to be built across particularly rugged country in Upton County, where they connected with trunk lines like that of Humble or to loading racks on the Orient Railroad.41 Humble Pipeline and Illinois Pipe Line both offered outlets for the crude, but their lines could handle only a fraction of the daily potential production. Yates’s distance from markets, its relative inaccessibility, its limited outlets, and its gigantic potential combined to push operators toward voluntary limitation of production, and such a program was launched in September 1927. Each operator was allowed to produce a fraction of pipeline capacity calculated on the basis of potential production of the individual lease. Unfortunately, the initial scheme had a major flaw: eager to increase their share of pipeline outlet, operators drilled more wells on their leases, thus boosting total field production. So, in January 1928, producers agreed on a new plan, by which production would be determined by the amount of the producer’s acreage in the field. This scheme benefited large leaseholders, but operators with small leases complained bitterly about it. By the summer of 1928, discontent mounted sufficiently to force a third plan, in which the field was carved up into onehundred-acre production units, with each unit receiving a portion of pipeline outlet. This approach still left substantial advantage to large lease holders, but, since the holders of a fraction of a unit were allowed to produce the same amount of oil a full unit was given, small leaseholders fared somewhat better under this plan. Having agreed to it, Yates

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The drilling crew on the Ohio Company’s Yates No. 30A, a 200,000-barrel-perday well, in 1929. Permian Historical Society Collection, University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

operators asked the TRC to oversee the field’s operation and to appoint a field umpire.42 Yates thus set a precedent in Texas for what seemed like workable production limitation; operators agreed on a proration plan, and the TRC monitored the plan’s operation. To an industry facing increasingly overloaded crude markets and falling prices, the Yates scheme seemed a most encouraging development, one that demonstrated that the industry could solve its problems without outside intervention. Unfortunately, there was much about the Yates plan that proved deceptive to optimistic observers. True, Yates operators pinched back production, but not all were glad to do so. Gulf, for example, was reluctant to curtail production it needed as refinery feedstock, and large independent Simms was increasingly desperate for the cash Yates might have yielded. It was only the field’s isolation that made the plan work. In less isolated fields, the Yates model for voluntary limitation did not work. The Hendrick field in Winkler County, the next major regional discovery, showed the

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A crowd at Westbrook Oil’s No. 1 Hendricks well, 1926. Fort Worth Star-Telegram photograph. Abell-Hanger Foundation Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

weakness of voluntary schemes when many operators were able to find ways to get their oil to market despite transportation problems.43 The discovery of the Hendrick field, like that of Big Lake, owed nothing to geology and everything to the imagination and drive of Roy Westbrook, a Fort Worth printer who had a sideline selling oil leases to investors. Like Pickrell, Krupp, and so many other promoters, Westbrook knew that investors throughout the United States were ready to put money into oil even though they knew little more about the industry than promotional flyers told them. For $8,000, Westbrook acquired from lease broker J. W. Grant over 21,000 acres on the Winkler County ranch of Thomas G. and Ada Hendrick. By swapping acreage for drilling contractor George McCamey’s services, Westbrook arranged a test. McCamey, in turn, subcontracted the drilling to Eastland Oil in exchange for acreage, and work was thus done without the raising of additional capital. Westbrook then began to sell off his leases in fiveacre tracts; $50 got an investor such a lease, and investors all over the country purchased them. This sales technique meant that when Westbrook’s test came in for 120 bopd on November 8, 1926, the promoter had to scramble to buy back leases in order to put together a block attractive to a large-scale purchaser—in this instance, the Southern Crude Oil Purchasing Company (Stanolind).44 At the time Westbrook drilled his test, Winkler County was even 158

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more remote and underpopulated than Pecos County. Its ranchers grazed cattle amid shifting sand dunes and struggled to stay solvent. No railroads crossed the area, and its roads were tracks in the dunes that shifted with every sandstorm. Getting equipment and labor to the new field was challenging for the first oilmen on the scene, but Westbrook’s having carved his holdings up into small pieces guaranteed that there were legions of operators, large and small, at work in Hendrick early on. By December 1927, the average production of the field reached 50,000 bopd, an amount far outstripping existing pipeline capacity. But, instead of

A Crane County well, shot with nitroglycerine to stimulate production, late 1920s. Richard Donnelly Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

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trimming production to match outlets, Hendrick operators either invested in storage or laid pipelines to the Texas & Pacific, twenty-five miles away in adjoining Ward County. Once operators got crude to loading racks, the field’s largest purchaser, Southern Crude, could not make a pipeline proration scheme stick. Instead, what forced an alternative attempt at limitation was the appearance of water problems in the field: more and more wells began to produce large amounts of brine with their oil. As operators watched wells that had once made hundreds of barrels of oil per day start to spew hundreds of barrels of brine instead, engineering experts struggled to understand what was happening in Hendrick. Their best guess was that the field was producing too rapidly. If one believed the experts, the only way to keep all of the wells from drowning in brine was to limit production.45 Once it appeared that improper production practices lowered oil recovery, the TRC had statutory justification for intervention, and, in February 1928, operators’ representatives began a series of meetings with commissioners in Fort Worth. By the end of April, they had produced a proration plan in which the commission set field allowable production and supervised operations. It set the allowable at an estimated one-fifth of full capacity. Once again, oilmen were optimistic that proration could solve what was a national as well as local problem of overproduction.46 If one looked past the surface, however, it was obvious that there were many problems with a field-by-field approach to balancing production with demand. For one thing, while both Yates and Hendrick were cut back, many fields in California and Oklahoma continued to produce at peak capacity. Making operators live with reduced income in Yates and Hendrick did not stop the downward slide of prices, let alone raise them. Under these circumstances, one can understand how proration left West Texas operators frustrated; they could not make up for lower prices by producing more oil. More ominously, though the Hendrick plan was adopted by voluntary agreement, many Hendrick operators did not abide by it, nor could they be compelled to do so. Those who had pipeline access to loading racks continued to ship oil in excess of their allotted shares. Those who wanted to produce at full capacity continued to do so. Operators discovered that they could obtain injunctions against TRC directives by arguing that it had exceeded the legal limits of its authority—a foreshadowing of events to come in East Texas. The main problem was disagreement among producers, large and small, about whether production should be limited at all, and if so, on what basis:

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well potential, acreage, or a formula based on a calculation of both factors. Even the majors could not agree. Humble and Gulf ended up on opposing sides of the proration issue, first in West Texas and then in East Texas.47 These realities were an ill omen for the industry’s immediate future. On a brighter front, because so much Permian Basin land and the minerals under it were owned by the State of Texas, revenue from oil production produced ever larger revenues for the University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and the state’s public schools. When the leaders of the Republic of Texas considered how to support public education, they drew on their most substantial asset, public land, and decided that revenue from the sale and leasing of it would support education. As early as 1839, more than forty years before the University of Texas was established, the Republic’s leaders set aside fifty leagues (221,421 acres) of land for the funding of two colleges or universities. This original design was accepted by the framers of the state constitution of 1876, but with some reservations: in 1876 the University of Texas was still an idea, and the drafters apparently balked at the notion of dedicating valuable agricultural and timber lands in Northern and Central Texas to a school not yet in existence. Moreover, squatters had moved in on some of the best lands in these regions, and dealing with them would be politically sensitive, at best. Thus, the designated land was exchanged for one million acres of much less desirable land in arid western Texas—in Crockett, Irion, Pecos, Reagan, Schleicher, Terrell, and Upton counties. This land was, as one author described it, ‘‘fair-topoor grazing land.’’ 48 It had no timber, was too arid for small farming, and had no special mineral resources that anyone was aware of. In short, in 1876, the western lands were about as close to worthless as acreage could be, and the swap angered supporters of a state university. Thus, when the university was founded, in 1881, they pressured legislators to provide more support, and in 1883 the legislature divided the remaining unsold public land between the University of Texas and public schools and asylums. The additional lands acquired by the university lay in Andrews, Crane, Culberson, and Winkler counties and was no more desirable than that granted in 1876, but there was at least twice as much of it. Proceeds from land sales would, supposedly, support the university. More commonly, income from leasing to ranchers at the usual rate of ten cents an acre provided a trickle of regular income, a grand total of $40,000 in 1900. Until 1895, the Texas Land Commissioner managed

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the holdings. Between 1895 and 1929, the University of Texas regents controlled the land surface, but minerals were still handled by the Land Office.49 Once the discovery of oil at Spindletop touched off widespread oil fever in Texas, it seemed obvious that the state might benefit from private prospecting on public land, but there was no procedure in place for the leasing of state land. The legislature created one with the 1913 Permit and Lease Act, but this measure was modeled on the highly flawed federal public lands leasing plan, suitable for hard-rock minerals but not for petroleum. Under the federal scheme, prospectors were limited to small tracts; they began by obtaining permits to prospect, and if they found oil, they could apply for leases on the drilling tract. This was the pattern of the 1913 Texas law: prospectors could get permits on only two sections of land, too small an area to support wildcat drilling. Worse yet, since the state retained mineral rights under much of the land sold after 1895, as well as the surface acreage leased by ranchers or farmers, users of land surface had little incentive to cooperate with oilmen. Both owners and lessors incurred surface damage without the offsetting compensation of lease bonuses and royalties. Modifications of the permit plan in 1917 allowed oilmen to explore larger areas, but other problems remained unresolved. For example, though the legislature directed that lessees pay surface lessors ten cents an acre annually for surface damage, those who leased minerals on state lands were still likely to be greeted with a show of dogs and shotguns.50 In 1919, with oil exploration at a frenzied pitch in many parts of Texas, legislators tried to modify the permit system again, to encourage additional prospecting on state lands. It was at this point that the methods of permitting exploration on lands dedicated to the university diverged from those dedicated to funding public schools. By virtue of the 1919 legislation, on university lands prospectors could lease tracts of sixteen sections, an area large enough to justify rank wildcatting. Following a successful test, the holder of permits could apply for a ten-year lease. The university would receive one-eighth royalty on produced oil and one-tenth royalty on natural gas produced and sold. These were the conditions under which Pickrell and Krupp made their successful discovery at Big Lake.51 The Big Lake discovery was the first major find on university lands and completely revised the university’s fortunes, bringing it from a struggling institution with a few inadequate buildings to a splendidly endowed institution. In 1925–1926, for example, revenue produced by Big Lake 162

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production brought the Permanent University Fund over $3,800,000. Additional rich discoveries made on other holdings in the late 1920s, like the Church and Fields field in Crane County, further enriched the school. Thus, even in the depths of the Depression, income from university lands amounted to over $100,000 a month. In 1929, the legislature took management of minerals away from the Land Office and gave it to the university regents, who were then free to devise a system for leasing and receiving royalties. By virtue of oil development, the University of Texas became one of the most heavily endowed schools in the nation.52 The university’s windfall did not go unnoticed by the supporters of Texas A&M, and in 1930 they reminded legislators that the founders of Texas had envisioned two universities and that the constitution of 1876 referred to an agricultural and mechanical college. In response, the legislature mandated transfer of one-third of the income of the Permanent University Fund to Texas A&M. Management of minerals, however, remained with the university regents.53 As a landowner entitled to receive royalty and rentals, the University of Texas after 1929 had ample incentive to promote oil exploration. Before 1919, however, the situation of a person who bought public school land was quite different. On much of this land the state retained ownership of any oil and gas found under the surface, which meant that the state would receive all of the royalty income from production. To create more incentives for surface owners to cooperate in exploration and development, the legislature modified the way public school lands would be treated. By virtue of 1919 legislation, the state called all public school land ‘‘mineral land,’’ in which the state retained ownership of oil and gas. Surface owners were agents of the state in leasing, and, to compensate them, the state ‘‘relinquished’’ fifteen-sixteenths of oil and gas royalty. This part of the measure led to its being termed the Relinquishment Act. Lessors had to lease for at least ten cents an acre, plus royalty; the state was entitled to ten cents an acre rental and one-sixteenth royalty. Here was an incentive for farmers and ranchers to keep their dogs penned and their shotguns on racks in the parlor when oil company landmen came to call. It was also ample ground for litigation.54 If the 1919 act treated surface owners of public school land well, by the same token it disadvantaged public schools, for it surrendered fifteen-sixteenths of the minerals previously allotted them. Doing so raised questions about the constitutionality of the measure, because it was argued that the framers of the Constitution of 1876 clearly intended the wealth from public school lands to go into the Public School Fund. OIL IN COW COUNTRY

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In any event, the discovery of the Yates field, which included Runnels County school land, made the question pressing, since Ira Yates and others had leased to oil companies on the basis of the 1919 law. Six cases were argued, first and most notable being Greene v. Robison, specifically aimed at testing the constitutionality of the Relinquishment Act. In 1928, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the act simply made landowners the state’s agents, not owners of fifteen-sixteenths of oil and gas. Since many landowners had acted on the understanding that they owned the oil and gas, this left them owing the state substantial sums, an outcome that, understandably, left them unhappy. An attempt by the legislature to actually give landowners the fifteen-sixteenths was ruled unconstitutional. In 1933, the legislature adopted a plan by which landowners would reimburse the state. Thus, what would have been a costly giveaway was reversed and public lands were developed to support public schools.55 While oil development in the Permian Basin benefited schools, it did even more to bring people and dollars to the region. Existing towns such as San Angelo, Big Spring, Midland, and Odessa boomed, while completely new settlements such as McCamey, Crane, and Wink grew in a matter of weeks. San Angelo, because it was the nearest regional center to Big Lake, was initially the center of oil supply and management. Once action shifted westward, however, the advantages of site moved as well. Odessa came to be the leading center for service and supply, in part because of its location on the Texas & Pacific Railroad and in part because Ector County Commissioners launched a program of building roads to the oil fields. Construction of both a large modern office building and the spacious and up-to-date Scharbauer Hotel helped make Midland the successor to San Angelo as the regional management center, and from the late 1920s, the city grew as oil company personnel and independent operators relocated there.56 Nor was the only growth in towns. Out in the country, oil companies built camps for workers and their families in and near oil fields. As elsewhere, the camps were necessary because decent housing and good roads were scant, but the camps were also directed toward employee retention by offering the amenities of suburban life in the middle of nowhere at rock-bottom prices. Near the Big Lake field, Benedum’s Big Lake Oil Company, for example, built Texon, a model company camp that had schools, water, electricity, a theater, a library, a hospital, a clubhouse, a swimming pool, a golf course, and a rose garden. Camp housing commonly offered well-built two- or three-bedroom bungalows 164

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The new Petroleum Building overshadows the old Midland County Courthouse, 1929. Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

with hardwood floors and front lawns, and the companies did repairs and maintenance, which included painting exteriors according to uniform color schemes—usually any color as long as it was white. Camp residents had to leave the settlements to shop, and depending on camp size and location, their children rode buses to schools, but otherwise the camps were self-contained communities. Beyond the confines of the camps and out on individual leases, companies provided less comfortable quarters. Pumpers and their families were usually the affected occupants, since, in the days before lease automation, pumpers had to live within easy distance of the wells they monitored. In short, whether in camps near the fields or quarters out on the leases, oil development brought about the population of previously empty rangelands.57 Permian Basin oil production also prompted extensive pipeline construction from the region to distant refineries. Humble built the earliest trunk line, from Kemper Station, near Big Lake, to Comanche County, where the line entered the trunk line to Humble’s Baytown refinery. As Permian Basin production mounted, Humble linked Kemper Station to its installation at Ingleside, near Corpus Christi. In 1927, Gulf OIL IN COW COUNTRY

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began a line from its Midland tank farm to Lufkin, where it tied into the trunk line to Port Arthur. Later the same year, Magnolia built a line to De Leon, where it linked with a line to Beaumont. In fact, most Permian Basin pipelines led to the Gulf Coast. The major exception was the PasoTex line of Standard Oil of California, which ran to the company’s refinery in El Paso. Despite the vast construction of the late 1920s, however, a tremendous volume of Permian Basin crude was shipped by rail. Lack of adequate pipeline outlets for regional production would continue to be a problem for regional producers through the late 1940s.58 By the end of the 1920s, the vast cattle country of the Panhandle and Permian Basin was opened to the petroleum industry, and hitherto near-empty grasslands began to sprout bustling cities and towns. Newcomers from other parts of Texas and other oil regions in the Southwest arrived in large numbers in both regions, a sign of the direction of future growth. But before that growth went very far, it would experience a period of setback in the early 1930s. The main reason for the downturn was, of course, tied to the broader fortunes of the petroleum industry. An oil and gas bonanza had indeed opened up in the Panhandle and Permian Basin, but in the first half of the 1930s, it was a bonanza that no one wanted. The reasons lay in East Texas.

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THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS He was an unlikely wildcatter, this aging, polite, and well-spoken man whose considerable personal charm and predilection for quoting Shakespeare did not obscure the reality that he had never struck it rich. He walked with back bent, as though searching for something of value others missed. He cadged meals of cheese and crackers from country grocers. His business stationery varied with whatever hotel he had last been able to afford. He supported a wife and children in Oklahoma but spent little time with them. He moved from place to place, picking up cheap oil leases and occasionally drilling a test. He came close to what later emerged as important discoveries but never drilled quite near and deep enough. He raised capital by trading leases and by offering widows dreams of romance and riches if they bought what he was selling. So many widows, so many shares of fortunes yet to be: he did not keep careful reckoning of either. By 1925 he made a one-desk office in Dallas his base of operations. From there he began to assemble a block of leases in Rusk County in East Texas. At that point there was no reason for anybody to expect that Columbus Marion ‘‘Dad’’ Joiner was about to change the history of a state and an industry.1 The main appeal of an East Texas venture for Joiner seems to have been economics. Earlier, he picked up leases on a half-section in Rusk County from an Oklahoma syndicate, apparently intending to sell them off in smaller tracts. But once he arrived in East Texas and saw how easy it was to acquire additional acreage, Joiner seems to have decided to assemble a more extensive block around his initial holding. To say that most Rusk County landowners were ready to deal would be a massive understatement. Suffering from the combination of highly volatile commodity prices and drought years, small farmers in East Texas had missed

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out on the economic rise of the region during the early twentieth century, and they hoped for income from oil leasing and, even better, from production. Like farmers in so many other parts of Texas, they believed in the ‘‘farmers’ sand,’’ that formation just under their fields that could be tapped for a bonanza if only a wildcatter drilled deeply enough. But, as of 1925, no one had. No wonder Joiner was able to buy Rusk County leases on very reasonable terms, which he did over the following two years. The land he leased included a 975.5-acre tract belonging to the widow Daisy Bradford, whose farm was between Overton and Henderson, near the middle of Joiner’s block. He promised her that if she would accept a lower royalty—three-thirty-seconds rather than one-eighth— he would drill on her land.2 Though it is unlikely that Joiner actually bought his East Texas leases because he believed he would find oil, there was reason to believe that there might be oil in East Texas. Geologists knew the Woodbine sand ran through the region, and the Woodbine yielded major production at such places as Mexia and Powell. Both the Texas Company and Humble tried their luck in the East Texas Woodbine sand during the 1920s, and Humble had over 30,000 acres under lease in the region in 1930. In 1929, Pure Oil brought in the Van field, some twenty-six miles northwest of Tyler in Van Zandt County, for profitable though unspectacular production, and this field became noteworthy as the first in Texas to be operated as a unit, by one operator, Pure Oil. At the time Joiner launched his project, however, there were good reasons to assume that East Texas would not be a target for serious prospectors, especially for major oil companies. Both the Panhandle and the Permian Basin saw prospectors open up dazzling new areas with giant field discoveries, and in Oklahoma, the Seminole City field came in. There were far more promising places for wildcatters than East Texas. As for looking for more oil in the Woodbine, the formation had a mixed record. At Mexia and Powell, it produced strongly at first, but production had not held up well and expensive water problems were common. Moreover, since the Woodbine underlay a vast area, prospectors faced the problem of where to drill. The search for promising structures—anticlines, fault traps, or salt domes— had not paid off, despite dozens of tests from Corsicana to Texarkana. Geologists had not ruled out East Texas possibilities, but neither science nor the drill bit refuted the argument that there were probably better prospects elsewhere.3 Not that such geological reactions bothered Joiner, for, as far as he was concerned, geology existed to help him persuade potential investors 168

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to buy leases. To that end, his association with A. D. ‘‘Doc’’ Lloyd, ‘‘M.D., Ph.G., C.E.,’’ aka Joseph Idelbert Durham, was exceptionally useful. A man of many aliases and wives, Lloyd was the sort of person usually described as ‘‘colorful.’’ He stood six feet tall, weighed at least three hundred pounds, could out eat and out drink almost anyone, and had enough energy for two men half his age. Highly intelligent, he had tried a variety of occupations ranging from pharmacy and chemistry to running a patent medicine show before settling into pseudogeology, at which he excelled.4 The pseudogeologist advanced a line that had the flavor of science in support of what promoters had to sell, blending quasi-scientific jargon with vivid images of underground lakes and rivers of oil. Lloyd’s ‘‘reports’’ told investors that it was possible to locate these riches by studying the color of surface rock, soil, and vegetation, as well as by drawing lines on a map that connected oil-producing areas and then drilling where the lines intersected. Once brought into Joiner’s project, however, Lloyd focused his rich imagination on ‘‘structures.’’ He assured potential investors that four large anticlines, a salt dome, and a fault line lay under Joiner’s acreage and that ‘‘producing oil and gas sands in the fields now developed in the region surrounding the Joiner well yield large gushers.’’ All this prose was a product of Lloyd’s superlatively creative imagination. Joiner was happy to introduce Lloyd to East Texans as ‘‘one of the greatest living scientists,’’ but when it was time to pick a drill site, he passed up the one Lloyd suggested to drill on Daisy Bradford’s farm. Ironically, had he drilled where Lloyd suggested, Joiner would have been closer to the center of the field.5 In August 1927, Dad Joiner spudded in his well on the Widow Bradford’s farm. His was a classic example of a ‘‘poor-boy’’ operation, a test conducted with little capital, common among the small and underfinanced oilmen of the 1920s and 1930s. Locals eager to see him discover oil found the material for a derrick and became an off-and-on workforce— off when they found odd jobs with bosses who could pay them, on when the jobs ended. Joiner traded some of his leases for rusted drill pipe and old machinery, as well as for two small boilers, one from a defunct cotton gin. To fuel the boilers, the rig crew burned green brushwood, trashed tires, and virtually anything combustible. Needless to say, paydays often came and went without checks, and the junk equipment broke down frequently. In February 1928, Joiner had to abandon the first hole at a little below 1,000 feet because pipe stuck in the hole. The following year a similar accident ended his second test at about 2,500 feet. THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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In May 1929, Joiner’s crew spudded in Daisy Bradford No. 3, but if one knew the history of the preceding tests, one would expect no more of this one.6 With constant breakdowns and an intermittent workforce, it took Joiner more than fourteen months to reach promising shows of oil. Major company oil scouts, even when they were given oil cuttings from the well, assumed that Joiner had salted the well to bamboozle investors. Nevertheless, in early September 1930, he reached nearly 3,500 feet and on September 5 the well delivered a brief spurt of mud, oil, and gas. Speculation in Rusk County leases skyrocketed even though the Joiner well had produced no oil. Locals were ready to celebrate, but oil scouts remained skeptical. And then, on October 3, much to their astonishment, the well came in, showering oil over the derrick and all the trees downwind. It looked like Dad Joiner had finally struck it rich.7 No doubt Dad Joiner had gotten something, but the pressing question was what. As with Texon Oil’s Santa Rita well, one wildcat well miles from other production posed the question of where to drill next. There was, of course, no way to know whether Joiner had stumbled on something big or if his find was limited to a one- or two-well field. There was also doubt as to the value of his discovery when the well settled down to production of 250 barrels of oil per day (bopd), not a big well by the standards of the time. More tests would tell.8 The first tests, to the east of Joiner’s well, were discouraging, but on December 13, Deep Rock Oil brought in a 3,000-barrel well a mile west of Joiner. Three days later, H. L. Hunt brought in a small producer south of Joiner. From these tests, one might reckon that Joiner’s well was probably on the eastern edge of a pool. By the end of December, however, East Texas possibilities were far more exciting as, on December 28, poorboy operator Ed Bateman of Fort Worth brought in No. 1 Lou Della Crim for 22,000 bopd thirteen miles north of the Joiner well and near Kilgore. A month later, on January 26, 1931, John E. Farrell, W. A. Moncrief, and Eddie Showers brought in their No. 1 Lathrop, also thirteen miles north but near Longview, a well potentialed at 20,000 bopd. While at this point no one could tell if there were three small fields or one truly colossal one, it was certain that the East Texas Woodbine sand was capable of enormous oil production. That was enough to turn what had been frenzied lease trading into an all-out drilling boom, the most intense in Texas history.9 The field Joiner found was enormous, both in extent and capacity. Forty-two miles long north to south and between five and twelve miles 170

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wide, it would sprawl over Rusk, Gregg, Upshur, Smith, and Cherokee counties. Drilling down to 3,500 to 3,600 feet commonly found a sand capable of producing thousands of barrels a day. The oil was high gravity and free of sulfur, the kind most in demand at refineries, and it had an excellent yield of gasoline, 33 to 37 percent. Better yet, the field was not that far away from refining centers in Texas, at Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Houston, and in Louisiana and Arkansas. Dozens of small refiners soon set up plants in the field itself, as well.10 The ease with which one could market production was an attraction for oilmen, but the chief allure of East Texas was the opportunity to produce an enormous amount of oil at rock-bottom cost. With East Texas’s small farmers eager to lease, it was easy to find cheap acreage. Moreover, leases were often carved into scores of small drilling sites; one fifteen-acre tract was divided to hold six tests. Because production was shallow and there were no unusual problems in drilling, operators could get by using antiquated, makeshift equipment, and most did. Rather than spend for steel derricks, many oilmen put up old-fashioned wooden derricks. With so many men out of work because of the Depression, East Texas soon swarmed with cheap labor, both experienced and completely green, ready to take jobs for minimal wages. An experienced roughneck, THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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Dad Joiner, left, shakes hands with Doc Lloyd, right. H. L. Hunt, wearing a straw hat and smoking a cigar, is in the second row. Joiner’s driller, Ed Laster, is to Hunt’s left. Hunt Oil Company.

for example, was willing to sign on for $5 a day. As Gerald Lynch recalled his decision to go to East Texas, ‘‘I was broke as a convict, needed a job, and East Texas was booming. I headed for Kilgore.’’ By the time an operator added up all his costs, he could complete a well for $26,000, and ‘‘poor boys’’ often made do on much less.11 Because costs were so low, an East Texas operator had a good chance of making money even as oil prices skidded downward, especially as many major companies were happy to shop for producing leases in a field of such prolific wells. No wonder that to struggling independents coping with low prices, East Texas was a magnet. As usual, to make big money it helped to be on the scene early, and one of the first active independents was Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, who cut a large profile in the oil industry and in domestic politics thereafter. Hunt had already made a small fortune and valuable connections during the 1920s when he developed properties in the El Dorado and Smackover fields of Arkansas. He sold some of his properties there for more than $600,000 in 1924 and searched for new areas to develop. After looking 172

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at Kansas, Oklahoma, and North Texas, Hunt and P. G. ‘‘Pete’’ Lake, an Arkansas businessman, bought royalty interests and leases in the emerging Van field. Hunt found no oil at Van, so he continued to scout the oil regions of Arkansas and Louisiana, all the while keeping an eye on rank wildcatting in East Texas on the Woodbine sands.12 Among the wildcatters Hunt tracked was Dad Joiner, and Hunt discussed Joiner’s wildcats with a geologist friend in Shreveport. When Daisy Bradford No. 3 was nearing completion, Hunt learned through another friend, an oil field equipment salesman, that Joiner was conducting a drill-stem test. With characteristic determination, Hunt drove to the test site, arriving just as the test was completed. On the strength of it, he bought a twenty-acre lease nearby and continued to watch the well. Watching along with him was a small army of scouts, most of whom were less optimistic that Joiner, described by the Tyler Journal as ‘‘the brokest man in these parts,’’ had anything impressive.13 Hunt, however, believed the oil in the Joiner well was a sign of a much larger pool. He drilled his own test south of the Joiner discovery, and it came in for small production in mid-December 1930. Better yet, confident of eventual bonanza, Hunt put in a three-mile pipeline from the Joiner area to Friar’s Switch on the International & Great Northern Railroad. Within a few months, Hunt’s Panola Pipeline had all the crude it could carry and a buyer for it, Sinclair Oil.14 Joiner held almost four thousand acres in leases on a group of small farms when his well came in, but the old wildcatter had been characteristically sloppy about the paperwork, obtaining a ‘‘cured’’ title to only 2.5 acres. He had already sold some of his leases and had committed commission payments to Verne Joiner.15 The property designations in that ‘‘cotton forsaken country’’ 16 reflected the relatively low land values, and paying for clearly defined property lines had never been worthwhile. One of the tracts was described as follows: Beginning at the Southwest corner of an old survey made for Mary Wright on a large dead White Oak on the bank of the Flat Fork of Teneha marked R, witness a small red elm marked A. B.; Thence North with Mary Wright’s old line 570 varas to a Walnut tree on the road leading from the Risingers old place to a large pine standing on the road marked A. B.; Thence North at 735 varas to the Northwest corner and a stake . . . South 30E. 3 varas West [to a pine tree] marked M.; Thence West 590 varas, Northeast 5 varas and a pine . . . North 75E. 4 varas, Northeast 5 varas THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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and a pine North 75D varas [to a tree] marked W. A., thence South 1700 varas to the bank of the Teneha Bayou corner on a White Oak four feet in diameter marked W. A. Thence down the said Bayou, the channel, the line to the beginning, containing two hundred thirty-four (234) acres, more or less.17 With some inkling of the tangle of East Texas titles and of Joiner’s characteristic neglect of legal fine points, Hunt set out to find Joiner after the oilman left his successful completion. Hunt found him at the Baker Hotel in Dallas, where Joiner was keeping an uncharacteristically low profile. After some negotiation, Joiner wrote a lease inventory in longhand on a hotel notepad, indicating a total transfer of interest in 3,915 acres but excluding 472 acres he retained in the area. As an appended note indicated, ‘‘the above listed lands have not been actually surveyed.’’ 18 Their contract required a cash payment of $24,000 and four laddered payments totaling $45,000, which Hunt made by selling an interest in his acquisition to Pete Lake. An additional sum of $910,000 would be paid in production payments. Notably, Hunt assumed the burden of defending the titles to the leases he acquired, a task that would take nearly a decade. Joiner then used the proceeds from the lease transfer to pay off some of his creditors and other claimants, and he borrowed an additional sum from Lake to acquire additional leases in East Texas. The old wildcatter stuck with the action.19 When the contract was signed, it was quite possible that Hunt had made the deal of the century, paying slightly less than one million dollars for leases in the heart of a prolific oil field. In fact, the acquisition was ridden with litigation and complications, taking time, money, and patience to endure and unravel. Thus, when Hunt began to verify the leases in the contract, he discovered that some of the tracts, including fifteen acres on the W. W. Wilson farm, had already been assigned by Joiner to someone else. An additional eight acres on the Bradford farm had been sold to two ladies, so Hunt permitted Joiner to exclude them by paying them $588.20.20 Meanwhile, Joiner used Hunt’s pledge of production payments to pay off creditors, claimants, and members of his family, turning Hunt into something akin to his private bank for nearly five years. Early on, Joiner paid notes due to three creditors, $14,000 in all, with pledges of production payment income. Thereafter, he paid off litigious members of his family with drafts on Hunt, conveyed production income to seven ladies in 1935, and borrowed money to support a grander lifestyle, with more drafts on Hunt. By the time Hunt completed 174

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Demolition in Kilgore to clear a drilling site, 1931. Mitch Mayborn Collection, Drilling magazine, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

the payments, Joiner had sold 63 percent of production payments due under the original contract, leaving a tangle of contracts, judgments, and releases that were not settled until 1935. Resolution of title disputes required four more years.21 Even as lawyers and accountants worked at resolving the legal tangles of the Joiner contract, Hunt moved quickly to develop his new properties, completing 145 wells in East Texas by March 1933. Some of his properties were prolific. The No. 2 Claude Ashby, for example, came in at 3,000 to 4,000 bopd in 1931. Others were less so, bringing Hunt eventually to sell properties to Stanolind and other major companies to complete the development of his holdings.22 Up-to-date in his use of technology, Hunt sided with those who wished to avoid reservoir damage from overly rapid and careless field development, and he was outspoken in his advocacy of production limitation by proration. He was equally progressive in his stand on responsible management of oil field brine produced with East Texas crude, and he later took a leading part in organization of the East Texas Salt Water Disposal Company.23 Eager to get in on the hottest action, oilmen and oil field workers, THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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Rigs in the center of Kilgore, 1930. East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas.

Mule teaming in the East Texas Field, 1930s. Pam Meador Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

farm boys and the down-and-out, waitresses and teachers, lease hounds and lawyers, oil field gamblers, bootleggers, taxi dancers, and prostitutes all headed for East Texas, leaving the streets of Odessa, Breckenridge, Borger, and Wink deserted. In the bleak winter of 1931, when prosperity was a distant memory in many places, East Texas offered money and 176

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excitement. As in so many other booming areas, the flood of newcomers completely overwhelmed small communities’ capacity to house them. Early birds snapped up spare bedrooms and converted sheds and garages. Others had to resort to hastily built one-room cabins and boarded tents. Near Kilgore, squatters parked in what was known as ‘‘Happy Hollow,’’ where they lived under tents, in cardboard boxes, and under flattened pieces of metal—as one observer recalled, ‘‘a miserable looking place.’’ Some newcomers found beds for a night when a Longview hotel converted its banquet room into a cot house; others simply slept out in the open, come what may. Bathing was not easy; enterprising barbershops and laundries installed showers where 35 cents bought hot water, a small bar of soap, and towels the size of a washcloth. Thirty-five cents would also buy a meal at one of the shack cafes where the press of customers was so great that one entered by the front door but had to leave by the back. Savvy oil field veterans looked for boardinghouses serving home-style cooking.24

African American pipeliners in East Texas, 1930s. J. A. McVean Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

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African American employees at the Tyler Iron Foundry, 1930s. East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas.

As boomers arrived from all over, Tyler, Longview, Gladewater, and other towns in or near the field grew rapidly. Tyler attracted most major companies as a base of operations, but even tiny settlements like Arp, whose location on the Missouri-Pacific Railroad made it a convenient loading point for equipment, grew to bustling size. Activity also created brand-new settlements like Joinerville, which was located on the highway near No. 3 Daisy Bradford and became a service and supply center.25 The epicenter of action, however, was Kilgore, situated squarely in the field. A sleepy settlement of some five hundred people before the boom, by mid-1931 Kilgore had new dance halls, honky-tonks, and a vast number of hamburger stands, as well as big-city traffic. Fifteen trains north and fifteen south went through town every day, bringing hordes of newcomers, and Kilgore’s unpaved streets were jammed with automobiles. Traffic was so thick by February 1931 that a visiting journalist reported it took him two hours and forty minutes to drive through downtown—in a place that had barely had a downtown a year earlier. Kilgore was especially hectic because oilmen drilled right in the town 178

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itself. Across from the train station, for example, lay a tract that had forty-four derricks on it. One barber recalled that he was cutting a customer’s hair when a group of men walked into his shop, drew a red X on the shop floor, and announced that they would drill a well on the spot. Two real estate promoters laid out a townsite adjacent to the business district; not surprisingly, they named the streets after notable oil fields. On a more modest level, one entrepreneur built six privies on a downtown lot and charged customers ten cents a visit. In all, Kilgore’s action went on virtually around the clock, in rhythm with oil field work.26 Simply getting from place to place was not easy. Many roads were little more than dirt tracks, and the early months of 1931 were rainy, which turned the tracks to mud. Before long the roads were all but impassable to trucks and autos, while heavy oil field equipment and supplies had to be carted in by mule- and horse-drawn wagons. These often traveled over fields rather than mire down in impassable roads, but canny landowners charged for passage. Often impassable roads led workers to live near well sites, but when they did, buying groceries for their families became a major project. At a Sinclair camp five miles from Kilgore, homemakers pooled their shopping lists and sent a six-mule wagon into town. It took all day to make the trip, buy groceries, and return.

The Humble Oil & Refining Company baseball team, East Texas, 1930s. East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas.

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A Humble Oil & Refining camp in East Texas. Jack Nolan Photograph Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

Mud jokes became staple fare: ‘‘Come quick. There’s a man out here buried to his shoe tops in mud and he can’t move.’’ ‘‘Why can’t he get out on his own if he’s just in to his shoetops?’’ ‘‘Hell, he fell in head first!’’ 27 To oil field veterans, the first six months of the East Texas boom were much like most other booms, although somewhat grander in scale. However, for oil industry observers, by June 1931 there were clear signs that East Texas was plunging an already unstable industry into disaster. The giant discoveries of the late 1920s in Texas, Oklahoma, and California had already put more crude oil on the market than demand could absorb at a price that would sustain activity. Major purchasers had hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude in storage, and some had begun to cut back what they bought. Crude prices had already fallen to the lowest level in years, a drop of 78 percent from the previous year. Now there was East Texas, producing over 350,000 bopd from over 700 wells, and production was still climbing. For the petroleum industry, a bad situation had turned into catastrophe.28 Even worse, when concerned observers considered what might be done to keep East Texas from plunging prices to even lower levels, the only options appeared to be either arriving at a voluntary agreement among all producers or getting the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) to

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limit production. For a variety of reasons, the likelihood that either option would work was minimal. Because so many operators had rushed into East Texas, picking up tracts that were, in many instances, relatively small, by mid-1931 the field had hundreds of present and prospective producers. Most of them counted on producing as much oil in as short a time as possible to stay in business, and the odds against all of them agreeing to limit production after any formula and sticking by an agreement were so long as to be laughable. But, in the unlikely event that some such voluntary agreement could be reached, it would be vulnerable to legal challenge under antitrust law as a combination in restraint of trade, a device to raise prices. In any event, the experience with voluntary limitation in the Hendrick field, where oil was not nearly so marketable, showed that those not wishing to honor an agreement would simply do as they wished—not an encouraging precedent.29 Looking at what the TRC might be able to do was equally discouraging. Not only was the commission ill equipped in terms of staff and expertise to manage the development of a giant oil field, but two recently enacted laws complicated its regulatory work. In 1929 amendments of relevant 1919 statutes, the legislature restricted the definition of ‘‘waste’’ that the commission was to prevent. The amendments reflected ambiguity in conservationist thinking; everyone could agree that oil leaking out of tanks or gas burned at the wellhead was wasted, but there was a wide range of opinion beyond this consensus. Conservationists, for example, said gas produced with oil and allowed to escape into the air was wasted, while some industry spokesmen countered that the gas had been used to bring oil to the wellhead. The most controversial topic, however, concerned petroleum sold at rock-bottom prices during oil gluts, oil so cheap that no one thought twice about using it for any sort of fuel need, oil that might cost more to produce than it would fetch on the market because production was considerably in excess of market demand. Conservationists condemned this situation as ‘‘economic waste’’ of petroleum and argued that prices ought to be high enough both to reflect the value of the oil and gas and to discourage indiscriminate use.30 However, as soon as the possibility of acting to raise oil prices was advanced, it conjured up the old bogey of combination in restraint of trade. In terms of oil industry history, this revived tales of the old Standard Oil and what it was said to have done to oil prices. Thus, when the legislature acted on ‘‘waste’’ in 1929, it specifically barred TRC action

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to prevent ‘‘economic waste,’’ action aimed at raising or maintaining prices. That could include limiting or prorating production in a specific field, as had been done in the Yates and Hendrick fields.31 The 1929 legislation was problematic, however, not only because it reflected divisions and ambiguities in the thinking on conservation, but also because its context was shaped by divisions in the oil industry about what to do about excess production. These divisions would profoundly shape the mounting controversy over East Texas. One response to the problem was to limit production voluntarily. A second, that taken up by the Independent Petroleum Association of America when it formed in 1929, lay in targeting imported oil and pushing for a protective tariff on crude imported by large companies. A third response was strictly laissez faire, letting the market take its course and letting prices go where the free market took them, which was essentially what happened. What position industry members took depended on a mixture of business strategy and ideological outlook. When controversy escalated, the opponents of limitation and regulation often identified plans for production limitation as the ploys of major companies, suggesting that they would hurt independent oilmen. This position was taken by the Independent Petroleum Association of Texas (IPAT), though it was not completely consistent in opposing limitations. On the other hand, many Texas independents, like Robert R. Penn and Ed Landreth, were members of the Texas Oil and Gas Conservation Association (TOGCA), which pushed for regulation to limit production. By the same token, there were large crude-short companies, like Gulf and the Texas Company, that were never in the proregulation vanguard.32 The 1929 legislation amounted to a victory of sorts for those leaning toward a free market, but ambiguity in the understanding of waste left an opening for proponents of regulation to continue to push for their goal. In 1930, the legislature passed a measure that, in practical terms, swore at the amendments of the previous year. Here the context was that of purchaser response to glutted crude markets and millions of barrels of oil in storage. Humble, Prairie, and others began to cut back takes in selected areas, leaving producers without a market. In business terms, the cutbacks were only common sense; why should Humble pay for more oil when it already had as much production and oil in storage as it could use? In political terms, however, the purchasers courted retribution, and it was not long in coming, in the form of a Common Purchaser Act, passed in March. The measure directed that oil purchasers that were common carriers (e.g., pipelines) or affiliates of common carriers 182

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had to purchase oil ratably, without discrimination between producers or fields. It also named the TRC as the enforcement agency. That meant the commission would have to apportion state oil production among all fields and prorate production in individual oil fields among all producers, a task it was totally unready to assume. However, any action taken by the commission under this measure would likely face court challenge by virtue of the 1929 legislation because the Common Purchaser Act was clearly aimed at bringing production into line with demand. Sure enough, when the commission issued a statewide proration order in August 1930 to carry out the Common Purchaser Act, Danciger Oil & Refining immediately won an injunction barring proration of its Panhandle production. In other fields, most operators simply ignored the commission and produced as they wished.33 Looking at the booming East Texas field in 1931, one could be at least skeptical that the TRC could limit production and prevent a collapse of crude oil prices. The commission made no attempt to set a figure for field production under the Common Purchaser Act until April 1931, an understandable delay given the newness of the East Texas field. The limit was set at 90,000 bopd to rise by 15,000 bopd every two weeks until it reached the limit of 130,000 bopd in July. However, many operators made no attempt to obey the orders, and they found support for their defiance among East Texas land and royalty owners. Rallied by Tyler newspaper editor Carl Estes, the East Texans were unwilling to let a state agency put the brakes on the oil development they had sought for many years.34 As East Texas oil wells gushed, crude prices tumbled. As early as March, the field’s producers were selling crude at distress prices of thirty-five to forty cents a barrel, a price less than half that required by producers in Oklahoma and North Texas to break even. In early June, East Texas crude dropped to twenty cents a barrel, and many major purchasers simply stopped posting prices. On July 8, Humble Oil, one of the field’s largest buyers, dropped prices to a dime a barrel; the following day, several other majors cut to six or seven cents. On July 10, the Oil Weekly reported that an East Texas operator had sold 40,000 barrels at two cents a barrel, ‘‘probably the lowest price ever paid for oil thus far in the twentieth century.’’ It is worth noting that a barrel of oil thus sold for only one-seventh the cost of that trade journal’s price of fifteen cents! Indeed, East Texas crude was so cheap, it had begun to displace imported crude in American markets; no one could produce and ship crude from Venezuela for two cents a barrel.35 THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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By this time, even some producers originally hostile to proration began to think that something should be done, but oilmen could not agree as to what or by whom. Should production be placed under government regulation, as independents such as Robert R. Penn and Charles Roeser advocated, or should there be a voluntary agreement, as independent Tom Cranfill suggested? And how would limited production be prorated or divided among producers— on the basis of acreage, or number of wells, or well potential? The TRC’s April order allotted production in part on potential and in part on acreage, a solution that pleased no one, but oilmen could not agree on an alternative. Indeed, a substantial number resisted any limitation whatever by the commission and took their opposition to court.36 Though scores of oilmen went to court to head off TRC regulation, the landmark decision for East Texas was Alfred MacMillan et al. v. Railroad Commission of Texas, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas and heard by judges Duval West, Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr., and Randolph Bryant in June 1931. A month later, the judges ruled for MacMillan, finding that the commission had not proved its case that limitation of production was necessary to prevent physical waste of petroleum. In particular, Judge Hutcheson, a feisty Progressive Democrat, saw production limitation as nothing more than an attempt to fix prices, which was how he interpreted any effort to avoid economic waste, and Texas law specifically barred TRC action for that purpose. The scientific experts brought by the commission to the court to testify about diminished reservoir pressure and increasing water intrusion as a result of uncontrolled production did not produce sufficient evidence to convince Hutcheson that their testimony was more than speculation. Indeed, it would have been impossible for them to do so. Proving the commission’s case depended on precise measurement of pressure at the bottoms of wells, and, as of June 1931, the technology to do so was not yet available.37 The MacMillan case, along with the oil operators’ continued disagreement over East Texas production limitation, kept the TRC in a legal and operational limbo from which it seemed unlikely to emerge. It also encouraged those who wanted a regulatory alternative, in the form of a new conservation commission that would replace the TRC and have regulatory authority over all natural resources. Talk of a new commission grew louder in March 1931, since the TRC did nothing to control mounting East Texas production. Governor Ross Sterling recommended to the legislature the creation of a new regulatory body. Opposition from 184

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East Texas politicians, however, blocked all but a ‘‘study’’ of the proposal, and thus nothing was done. Before the regular legislative session ended in May, supporters of regulation tried an alternative strategy: failing a new commission, they tried pushing a measure that would set aside the economic waste restrictions on TRC authority and allow control of production to match market demand. This initiative, too, got nowhere.38 The catastrophic depths to which prices had fallen by early July, along with pressure from proregulation oilmen, led Sterling to call a special session of the legislature to focus on conservation issues, especially those relating to oil. The session convened, but, once again, oilmen divided on whether there should be a new conservation commission and whether it could legally limit production to market demand. There were majors and independents, large and small operators, on both sides of these questions. During the first week of August, however, the opponents of more regulation triumphed, and the bill to create the new body went down in flames. In the wake of the MacMillan decision, legislators had decided that the only petroleum waste they could stop was physical waste—which they prohibited in every conceivable way, shape, and form in the Anti-Market Demand Act. In short, practically, the legislature got nowhere. Worse yet, the new statute did not take effect immediately, and some operators assumed that its passage set aside existing orders. This perceived hiatus in regulation led some oilmen to abandon all restrictions, and East Texas production leapt to 1 million bopd.39 With both the TRC and the state legislature unable to cope with the East Texas crisis, a growing number of oilmen pressured Governor Sterling to take action. In Oklahoma, Governor William H. ‘‘Alfalfa Bill’’ Murray had reacted to plunging oil prices by invoking martial law to shut down the Seminole and Oklahoma City fields. Now many East Texas oilmen urged Sterling to follow Murray’s example. Meeting in Tyler on August 14, fifteen hundred operators protested against other producers who were running more oil than TRC orders allowed. The operators asked for martial law to enforce the shutdown of East Texas, and they asked the sheriffs of Gregg, Rusk, and Smith counties to request troops. The group also warned that East Texas was on the brink of ‘‘actual destruction of property and a reign of lawlessness.’’ In short, if one believed this rhetoric, tensions mounting from flooded crude markets and record low prices were about to erupt into riot and insurrection.40 Whether or not East Texas was on the brink of widespread violence—a matter difficult to determine at this distance in time—Sterling THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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Texas National Guardsmen at Kilgore. East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas.

acted, and on Sunday, August 16, he proclaimed that there were East Texas producers ‘‘in a state of insurrection against conservation laws [and] . . . in open rebellion against the efforts of the constituted civil authorities,’’ a situation threatening riot and breach of the peace. He ordered the Fifty-sixth Cavalry Brigade of the Texas National Guard, some 1,300 men commanded by Jacob F. Wolters, to shut down the field on the following day, August 17. Notwithstanding prior rumors of riot and mayhem, no one resisted the troops, and the only incidents were more comic opera than insurrection—as when a guardsman walked into the Kilgore post office wearing a Colt .45 and accidentally shot a hole in the floor. Postmistress Annie Barker simply walked up to him and disarmed him, ending the incident.41 Clearly, sending drugstore cowboys into East Texas was no longrun solution to the field’s problems, but recognizing that put the ball back in the TRC’s court. However, despite the far-reaching prohibitions of oil and gas waste in the Antimarket Demand Act, the commission was little better equipped to enforce regulation in September 1931 than it had been in March. On September 2, the commission ordered that 186

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production be limited to 225 bopd per well. Two flaws immediately appeared in this move. First, a per-well allowable both encouraged more drilling and favored oilmen with large tracts, thus inadvertently encouraging more production. Second, even with troops in the field, the commission was ill prepared to enforce its order. Its investigators faced the initial problem of navigating the muddy tracks in the field to inspect leases, and, worse yet, it was common knowledge that some investigators were ‘‘on the take.’’ By October 5, field production once again exceeded the maximum set by the commission. A week later, the commission’s control was further weakened when Eugene Constantin, J. D. Wrather, and the Brock-Lee Oil Company obtained a temporary federal injunction halting enforcement of proration orders. This led Governor Sterling, backed by Wolters’s troops, to assume responsibility for production control in the field, and he even lowered allowables without consulting the TRC. Meanwhile, Constantin and other opponents of control not only argued that Sterling was exceeding his constitutional authority—after all, his use of the National Guard was on a far different scale from earlier roundups of bootleggers and thugs—but also that his objec-

A Kilgore meeting protesting proration. East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas.

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tive was fixing prices—the old antimonopoly cry. Ultimately, in February, 1932, Judge Hutcheson ruled for Constantin, and the TRC again had to resume responsibility for curbing East Texas production, a job it could not perform. Operators who wished to ignore its orders did so.42 Thus, a huge quantity of ‘‘hot oil,’’ oil produced in violation of TRC orders, continued to find its way to buyers and refiners. Some producers waited for night to pump oil from tanks to tank trucks or railroad tank cars. Others constructed hidden pipelines to small refineries, or, alternatively, tapped someone else’s pipeline and sold stolen oil. There were all sorts of schemes for circumventing commission investigators: valves turned to shut position, for example, that were not in fact the valves controlling oil flow; pipeline bypasses that fed oil into hidden tanks; or gas that was released unflared so that investigators would not be aware of a well’s presence from the flare. One operator ‘‘produced’’ oil from what was in fact a dry hole; another located the flow controls for his well in his bathroom. Producers or purchasers who found others stealing their oil not uncommonly took the law into their own hands, pumping cement into illegal gathering lines or using dynamite on a thief’s property. Meanwhile, the TRC continued to issue orders—nineteen of them during 1932—that many operators ignored and that the courts declared invalid. In desperation, Governor Sterling called yet another special legislative session, and on November 12, 1932, it passed what was known as the Market Demand Act, defining as waste any oil produced in excess of market demand and opening the way for the TRC to act to prevent it. Not surprisingly, given the recent past, the new law did little to stem the flow of oil. And, a month later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Sterling could no longer keep National Guardsmen in East Texas as ‘‘peacekeepers.’’ 43 Early in 1933, the Texas Oil and Gas Conservation Association led another attempt to replace the TRC with a conservation commission, an attempt that failed when Charles Roeser of the Texas Oil and Gas Conservation Association got into a fist fight with legislative opponent Gordon Burns. Legislators might attack one another verbally but they were not about to accept an assault on one of their own by an outsider. By this time, many supporters of regulation had abandoned hope of effective state action and were looking to the federal government for remedy. The same divisions of opinion that stood in the way of state action, however, stood in the way of federal intervention. Those who wanted federal help were not united as to the form it should take, and there were die-hards like J. R. Parten, James Abercrombie, Hugh Roy Cullen, and 188

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Jim West who were dead set against most schemes for regulation but most strongly against direction from Washington. Proposals for federal intervention also rallied the defenders of the Railroad Commissioners, who quickly translated the controversy into one over states’ rights. The most eloquent spokesman in this debate was Ernest O. Thompson, who joined the TRC in 1932 and would become its dominant member. Nor did it help the cause of federal intervention that Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes wanted to be an ‘‘oil czar’’—to concentrate industry decision-making in his own hands—and would be satisfied with nothing short of that control. Divisions between all parties concerned in the East Texas controversy guaranteed that little would be done.44 What was done took place under the auspices of the National Industrial Recovery Act, passed in June 1933. Section 9c of this act forbade interstate or foreign commerce in hot oil, and in September, fifty federal agents arrived in East Texas to crack down on hot oil runners. Federal agents required purchasers and shippers to swear that their oil was produced legally. It did not take long for purchasers and shippers to realize that only fifty federal agents could not check on every oil shipment, and affidavits were filed ‘‘signed’’ by Frank Roosevelt and Harold Ickes, Julius Caesar, and the ‘‘Guess Who Oil Company.’’ In fact, through most of 1934, as much hot oil reached markets under the noses of federal authorities as had done before they arrived. What slowed the torrent was the institution of a new Federal Tender Board in late October 1934. Oil could not be shipped interstate without a tender, and those who evaded regulation faced arrest, injunctions, and prison terms. It was the threat of hard time that finally slowed the hot oil runners. By December, 1934, the amount of hot oil reaching the market was estimated at 10 percent of what it had been three months earlier.45 Well before then, the courts had begun to uphold production regulation. In March 1932, the Texas Court of Civil Appeals upheld the TRC against Danciger Oil & Refining’s injunction, deciding that production in excess of market demand caused physical waste and that restriction of production was not necessarily price fixing. In May the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Oklahoma’s market demand regulation in Champlin Refining Company v. Corporation Commission of Oklahoma. But for East Texas, the landmark decision came in Amazon Petroleum Corporation v. Railroad Commission of Texas in February 1934, in which none other than federal judge Joseph C. Hutcheson upheld TRC proration orders. There was finally enough evidence of reservoir behavior in the East Texas field to convince Hutcheson that regulation was not merely price THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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fixing in disguise. On the other hand, in Panama Refining Company v. Ryan, which challenged the authority of federal agents in East Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the enabling section, doing away with federal prohibition of hot oil in interstate commerce. In response, Congress passed the Connally Hot Oil Act in February 1935, to prohibit interstate or foreign shipment of oil produced in violation of state regulation. This prohibition was to be renewed every two years until 1942, when it became permanent. In short, by the end of 1935, legal thinking had come to uphold the general practice of production regulation by state authorities. It had taken six years of legal wrangling to establish that.46 In terms of petroleum industry regulation, the great East Texas boom is thus a landmark because it resulted in a confirmation of the regulatory powers of state agencies over production at the wellhead. In Texas, the TRC emerged from six years of challenge and struggle with its authority in the field greatly enhanced, and it withstood moves to supplant it with another agency, thus maintaining its regulatory role in this area. The commission came to be dominated by Ernest O. Thompson, whose political skill and rhetorical ability proved more than a match for Washington bureaucrats like Harold Ickes, and who would continue to lead the commission for decades. Paradoxically, however, East Texas also set a precedent for federal involvement in the oil field, a precedent which, taken with World War I experience, paved the way for comprehensive wartime direction from Washington between 1942 and 1945. Thompson and other members of the TRC, however, did not quietly accept this federal involvement. The TRC’s power to control production in the largest oil-producing state and to limit it to market demand also gave the commission a profound influence over petroleum prices and industry economics throughout the whole United States. In Texas, the commission shaped the business economics of producers large and small and the economic prosperity of large producing regions through its power over field and well allowables. East Texas brought all of this about. Before leaving East Texas, it is worth considering another problem of the boom era, one with dimensions more apparent in hindsight than they were at the time. East Texas brought in a gigantic amount of crude oil, but it also caused production of a staggering volume of oil field brine. The production of salt water with oil is a common phenomenon, and disposal had long been a problem in Texas Gulf Coast fields. In drier places, the accepted and responsible way of dealing with brine was to 190

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run it into shallow earthen pits and let it both seep into the ground and evaporate. Gulf Coast humidity and rainfall generally ruled out this method, and in the early days of Sour Lake and Batson production, operators usually let brine run into nearby creeks and rivers. However, this practice prompted lawsuits from rice farmers whose fields were damaged by brine. The farmers succeeded in getting Jefferson County courts, for example, to prohibit brine discharge into streams from the beginning of March through August, when water levels were so low that the brine would be relatively undiluted. Operators responded by storing brine in earthen tanks during the dry season and discharging the tanks’ contents when fall and winter rains raised stream levels. By the 1920s, operators in some fields had formed saltwater disposal companies that gathered, stored, and pumped brine to water courses where it was released when rivers and streams ran high. Such disposal companies operated in Sour Lake, Powell, Vernon, Salt Flat, and other fields during the 1920s. Operators in Gulf Coast salt-dome fields also experimented with cavity wells, exceptionally porous parts of the underground strata, into which they pumped brine. Although these other methods of disposal were employed, reinjection of brine was not common at the time.47 None of the usual methods of handling brine fit East Texas conditions, and brine problems grew pressing as early as the summer of 1931. Simply letting brine run into the Neches, Angelina, or Sabine river watersheds was unacceptable because it was 350 times more saline than the legally accepted maximum of ten grains per gallon for discharge into watercourses. Moreover, many cities and towns, notably Beaumont and Port Arthur with their refineries, took water from the Neches. East Texas did not have porous underground formations that would permit cavity wells, and in the humid climate of the area, evaporation did little to reduce stored brine levels. The remaining option, storage during dry seasons, required extensive earthen tank systems because there was so much brine. The investment required for this option was prohibitive when crude was selling for pennies a barrel, and tanks were stop-gap at best because brine could seep into underground sources of potable water.48 Casting about for a solution, some oilmen concluded that the only answer lay in somehow discharging East Texas brine into the Gulf of Mexico. One school of thought suggested a canal dug to the Gulf. However, a canal capable of carrying the projected volume of brine would have to be at least two hundred miles long, thirty feet wide, and three feet deep. Worse yet, were the canal to flow by gravity alone, it could not THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS

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be plotted on a straight line but would have to meander through twists and turns following the topography of the region. Another school argued for a pipeline to the Gulf, a line that would need to be six feet in diameter. Given the corrosiveness of brine, however, such a pipeline would either have to be constructed of redwood or of cast iron. In any event, with oil selling at ten cents a barrel, canals and pipelines were no more practical than massive storage. And so, to cope, individual operators built earthen tanks or simply let brine run as it might. The more enterprising built terraced systems of earth pits, hoping for some evaporation. Mineral salts on the sides of these tanks were so thick that they looked like snow.49 By late 1937, the field was producing 100,000 barrels of brine a day, and because water pressure was the driving force in the East Texas field, reservoir pressure had dropped as water was withdrawn. A year later, the company supplying water to Port Arthur had to shut down its pumps because of the high levels of salt from East Texas brine in the Neches River. Both the State Health Department and the Game, Fish and Oyster Commission investigated the problem, and in March 1939, state officials met with oilmen in Austin to discuss the problem. By this time, Sun Oil had conducted a successful experiment in returning brine to the Woodbine sands; the cost per barrel of this method of disposal, however, was beyond what most operators could afford. Thus, an effective resolution of the problem was postponed.50 For all the problems the East Texas boom caused, it had a profound effect upon the fortunes of the many individuals who ‘‘made’’ it. The boom meant jobs for thousands of workers and families who otherwise might have struggled even harder to survive during the grimmest years of the Depression. It made the fortunes of numerous oilmen lucky enough to get in early and make intelligent decisions. It was also the arena in which the complicated and controversial system of limiting production to market demand evolved. It was a colossus among booms, and it had a colossal effect on Texas and on the petroleum industry. The industry, in particular, was never the same after East Texas.

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SURVIVAL AND GROWTH In the story of oil activity outside East Texas during the 1930s, a number of elements play leading roles. Business strategies of independents and majors—the former surviving in the face of low crude oil prices, the latter adapting to the new realities of state regulation—had a profound effect on discovery and development. Improvements in geoscience applied to exploration, in particular the use of reflection seismography and the gravimeter, created attractive new prospects in many thinly tested areas and in some old areas. Progress in drilling and well-completion technology—for example, the introduction of acidizing in North Texas and the Permian Basin, and the development of effective methods of drilling through heaving shale on the Gulf Coast—meant new horizons became economically feasible to drill and produce. Electric well logging permitted more accurate subsurface analysis. For all the tribulations of the 1930s, the decade was a tremendously vital time in the history of oil throughout Texas, not only in terms of the industry, but more especially in human terms. Hundreds of thousands of persons’ lives and fortunes were affected by what happened in the oil fields. The growth of legions of communities whose economies were squarely tied to oil is a measure of the impact of oil on Texans’ lives. For oil fields outside of East Texas, the impact of Dad Joiner’s discovery was, generally speaking, disastrous. Prices had been sliding and activity declining in places like North Texas, the Panhandle, and the Permian Basin even before Joiner’s discovery, and the opening of East Texas was a knock-out punch in these regions. North Texas stripper wells could not compete with East Texas gushers; Panhandle and Permian Basin sour crude had no attraction to buyers who bought highgravity, sweet East Texas crude for prices as low as a dime a barrel. Once

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large quantities of East Texas ‘‘hot oil’’ reached refineries, bootleg gasoline from East Texas displaced locally produced gasoline in regions like North Texas. There was no way Wichita Falls refiners could compete with those who bought their feedstocks for pennies or simply stole it. Nor could the production of natural gasoline plants in the Panhandle compete with East Texas gasoline in markets elsewhere. As a result, in 1932, Panhandle natural gasoline output was less than half what it had been in 1930. Of forty-nine natural gasoline plants in the Panhandle in 1930, only thirty-four were still running in 1936, and their output was less than half what it had been at the beginning of the decade. Permian Basin well completions fell from 647 in 1930 to 199 in 1932, and discoveries that would later prove to have opened up prolific fields—like the December 1929 discovery of the Deep Rock field in Andrews County and the September 1930 discovery of the North Cowden field in Ector County—remained unconnected to pipelines for three to four years. For that matter, an estimated 13 percent of the region’s oil leases were relinquished by oilmen. With crude oil selling for less than drinking water, many Permian Basin operators could not hang on to their properties.1 The calamitous effect of East Texas oil production was not limited to the industry but also took its toll on oil communities elsewhere, as is demonstrated by what happened to Odessa. In mid-1930, bustling Odessa had a population of over 2,400, more than three times the population of all Ector County in 1920. The City of Odessa had incorporated in 1927, and city tax rolls carried property assessed at $1.6 million. The school district had built a new high school and was planning an athletic park; downtown had a fine new hotel and a movie house. But once the East Texas field came in, oil people packed their bags and moved out. Odessa’s bank failed in April 1931. So many taxpayers were delinquent that the city had trouble paying on its bonded debt, and it had to cut off the new hotel’s water for nonpayment of water bills. The school district cut staff salaries 10 percent and borrowed money to pay operating expenses. Abandoned buildings became hobo hotels. Meanwhile, outside the city limits, Ector County ranchers faced a period of severe drought, and many had to sell their herds. Their economic desperation explains why some ranchers tried to gouge a $1.50 per rod right-of-way across their lands from Humble Oil when it wished to extend its pipeline from the Penwell field to North Cowden. Humble balked; the line was postponed, thus delaying economic recovery; and ultimately, the land was condemned at fifty cents per rod. Odessa’s recovery did not begin until area activity picked up in 1934.2 194

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Traditionally, independent oilmen had responded to low prices by finding and producing more oil. That was how they reacted to the sliding prices of the later 1920s, with unfortunate results for the petroleum industry, and that was what East Texas operators did. Oilmen in regions like North Texas, the Panhandle, and the Permian Basin, however, could not adopt the usual strategy. For one thing, the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) set low field allowables in those places, and for another, major companies cut purchases to the bone. Working together, these two realities meant that even had an operator produced more than his wells’ allowable production, he probably would not find a buyer for his extra crude. In fact, those who made discoveries learned it was no easy matter to get a pipeline connection for legal oil, let alone for hot oil. Independents adapted to the prevailing conditions of the 1930s by cutting costs. Desperate farmers and ranchers, eager for oil-royalty income, were often willing to lease their land without bonuses or rentals, hoping luck would bring a bonanza discovery on their land. Having picked up acreage for nothing, the independent tried to sell some of it to other operators for ready cash. He might also barter part of his prospect for equipment or services. He bought old equipment and used drill pipe and casing. As for labor, he offered workers food and rudimentary housing rather than wages. The food was usually beans, hence worker references to such operations as ‘‘bean jobs.’’ As for the housing, it might be shacks or tents, but as one young roughneck found in southern Ward County, it might turn out to be a piano box. The young man shared the box with another roughneck, and one slept while the other worked a twelve-hour shift. As he recalled, ‘‘I don’t believe I ever worked in a worse position in my life.’’ 3 Large integrated companies responded to hard times in a number of ways. They cut crude purchases, and they held off making pipeline connections to new fields, especially if the oil was sour with sulfur. They tried to lower exploration risks by applying geoscience. Since proration brought limits on what any one well could produce, companies that could afford to drill more wells did so and looked for new fields; many wells in many fields was one way to adjust to proration. By the mid- and later 1930s, major companies faced the expiration of ten-year leases in which they had invested during the 1920s, and usually they had to drill on the leases in order to hold them. To lessen their costs, the major companies offered farmouts to independents, and the later 1930s thus became the golden age of the farmout, especially in the Permian Basin. Commonly, in such deals, the majors kept a one-eighth overriding SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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royalty. To sweeten the deal for the independent, they offered dry-hole money.4 When major companies offered farmouts, their top priority was testing the acreage that geoscience had identified as promising. Their labs continued to analyze and correlate well samples from the wells, but they came to rely less on fossil classification and more on correlating rock formations through data obtained in electrical logging supplied by drillers. More important, they began to make extensive use of geophysical prospecting aids—the torsion balance, the gravimeter, the magnetometer, and, particularly, refraction and reflection seismography. These techniques had proved useful in locating buried salt domes on the Gulf Coast during the 1920s, and now they were put to work identifying subsurface structures in North Texas and the Permian Basin. In both places, geophysical techniques could indicate the presence of structures of which there was no surface sign. Of course, whether the structures trapped oil could only be known by drilling.5 Major companies, as well as independents who could afford to do so, also tried drilling for deeper pays. This strategy led to new activity in North Texas, beginning with the discovery of deeper production in the KMA field in Wichita County. Opened by independents J. A. Kemp, M. Munger, and R. E. Allen in 1919, this field produced modest amounts from 1,200 to 1,750 feet. By 1930, North Texas oilmen were reasonably sure that there was oil at greater depths in this and other fields, but economic conditions did not support the expense of deeper drilling. Nonetheless, a group of Wichita Falls oilmen, including Ralph O. Harvey, Sr., Joseph J. Perkins, W. W. Silk, and John F. O’Donohoe, organized the Deep Oil Development Company in 1930. This group, cutting across existing business circles, hoped both to find oil and to revive the local economy. As Silk put it, they wanted to help ‘‘put the town on its feet again.’’ In 1931 they brought in deeper production in both Archer and Wichita counties, the latter discovery being in the Strawn formation of the KMA field at about 3,800 feet. Unfortunately, as they thus competed head-on 196

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with East Texas, their discoveries did not bring immediate prosperity to Wichita Falls or to them. Worse yet, shooting these deep limestone formations with nitroglycerin, the conventional method of well stimulation, was not cost effective in a time of record low crude prices.6 The introduction of acidizing, using large volumes of hydrochloric acid downhole to open tight limestone formations, turned the situation around dramatically. First used effectively at Breckenridge in 1932, acidizing was the key to profitable production in many deeper pays in North Texas and elsewhere, and by the end of 1933, it was an accepted practice. It proved especially effective in Archer and Wilbarger counties and in the Permian Basin, at McCamey, where in 1933 a group of independents revived production from abandoned wells and opened up field extensions. In short, acidizing facilitated prolific production from deeper formations. At the depths of the East Texas debacle, this breakthrough did not bring much relief, but by 1935, when the worst economic effects of the East Texas boom had passed, going for deeper limestone pays in the region was highly attractive. Starting in 1935, for example, deeper KMA development escalated, reaching a feverish pitch in 1937, when east and west extensions of the field led to an increase of 801 wells in one year.7 To find deeper North Texas pays, prospectors increasingly used geophysics, particularly reflection seismography, to identify subsurface features. By the end of the 1930s, this survey technique had been applied with considerable success throughout the North Texas producing region, with notable discoveries in eastern Archer County and southeastern Wichita County, as well as Clay and Montague counties. Farther west in the region, seismic techniques were less effective than subsurface analysis of well cuttings and data from well logs. Carrying out seismic work was expensive, moreover, so major companies dominated in exploration tied to the technology. For example, Sinclair Prairie Oil used seismic work to bring in the Walnut Bend field in Cooke County in 1938, finding production at 4,900 feet where it had been located earlier at about 2,000 feet.8 Many other North Texas operators, however, continued to favor seat-of-the-pants techniques, simply drilling deeper where there were surface oil and gas shows or where earlier drillers had found noncommercial oil and gas. Sometimes, these nonscientific efforts paid off, often they did not. Wise County, for example, long tantalized prospectors with its frequent shows of oil in water wells and shallow tests. During the early 1920s, two tests in the eastern and west-central parts of the county resulted, respectively, in a substantial show of oil and a large SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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volume of gas above 2,000 feet. Neither test, however, found commercial production. The sites were re-entered during the 1930s, but deeper drilling failed to find production, a result that would not be reversed until even deeper drilling was accomplished in the 1950s.9 Compared to most other regions, the Panhandle was relatively quiet during the 1930s, although operators continued to find huge gas wells. Phillips, for example, brought in a well of record size in Moore County in April 1936. The No. 1-66 Moore had initial production of 192 million cubic feet (MMcf) of gas per day, a volume that could have filled the largest pipeline from the field. In fact, during the 1930s, Panhandle producers faced the same problem they had faced in the previous decade: the Panhandle could produce far more gas than pipelines could take. That created a tangle of problems for the TRC, but, as in East Texas, when the commission acted, federal judges intervened.10 According to an 1899 law, an operator of a gas well who could not sell his gas for use as ‘‘light, fuel, or power’’ had to shut it in within ten days of discovery. By contrast, an oil well operator could produce and sell or use casinghead gas, gas produced with oil, as he wished. In the context of Panhandle gas development, that meant gas discoveries had to be shut in until there was a legal outlet for them. Meanwhile, with the discovery of oil, casinghead gas was available and on the market. The TRC allowed casinghead gas to be used to produce natural gasoline and carbon black. By law, the commission could not permit gas from gas wells to be put to such use, but gas well operators could sell their production to gas pipeline companies as fuel.11 Unfortunately for gas well operators, the pipeline companies that moved into the Panhandle acquired their own production, and the flow from just a few wells was often so enormous that the long-distance marketers easily supplied their lines without incurring the expense of laying gathering lines to other producers’ leases. That not only left the other gas well owners without market outlets, but now the pipeline companies could drain gas from under shut-in wells. Short of losing their investments, operators of shut-in wells had several options: to break the law and sell their gas for illegal use in natural gasoline or carbon-black plants; to pressure the TRC to find a way to permit the legal use of their gas; or to get the commission to require the pipeline companies to take production. Alternatively, they could push the legislature to change the law. In the end, they tried all of these possibilities. Clearly, if the TRC stuck within the letter of the law, operators of shut-in gas wells would see others produce and profit from their gas, but 198

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what choice did the commission have? When F. C. Henderson, Inc., tried operating a natural gasoline plant with feedstock from previously shutin wells, federal judge Joseph Hutcheson said the company’s action was illegal, and this opinion left no room for the commission to maneuver. In 1931, the legislature amended the Common Purchaser Act to give the commission authority to require gas purchasers to buy without discrimination among producers. The Panhandle pipeline companies responded with a lawsuit to keep the commission from enforcing the law, and then the federal courts invalidated that part of the act and upheld the complaints of the pipeline companies.12 Responding to political pressure from operators, in 1932 the commission tried to restrict all of Panhandle gas production so as to force the pipeline companies to take gas from other producers. The commission argued that if shut-in operators were to avoid losing their gas through drainage, the commission would have to let them sell their gas to gasoline plants, even though that practice would be wasteful. Federal judges continued to rule against the commission. When the legislature gave the commission specific power to allocate gas production, the federal courts continued to block application of the statute. After these reversals, the commission permitted gas well operators to sell to gasoline plants. This meant that, once natural gasoline was stripped from the gas, many millions of cubic feet of it were blown away. No doubt about it, this was waste, but the federal courts left the commission with no alternative.13 By 1935 there were twenty-nine carbon-black plants and forty-one gasoline plants stripping Panhandle gas with TRC permission, and it was obvious that a revision of the 1899 statute was long overdue. Accordingly, the legislature finally passed a measure offering gas well owners direct relief. Sweet gas could not be used to make carbon black, but it could be used for chemical manufacture, repressuring oil reservoirs, and manufacture of natural gasoline, as well as for light, fuel, or power. In the manufacture of natural gasoline, the residue was to be returned to the producing horizon. Sour gas could be put to all these uses and to the production of carbon black. Moreover, the 1935 act specifically gave gas proration authority to the TRC. Thus empowered, the commission divided the Panhandle gas field into east and west districts and set up a proration scheme based on well potential and acreage. Almost immediately, the commission was back in federal court, losing finally on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The TRC would continue to receive these reversals until 1945.14 Farther south, in the Permian Basin, the 1930s emerged as a period SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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of spectacular discoveries, but the early years of the decade were bleak as regional activity stood at a low level. Drilling had, in fact, fallen off in 1929, when major purchasers’ interest in sour, relatively low-grade Permian Basin crude waned. Still, prospectors playing ‘‘trendology’’ or ‘‘yardstick geology’’ laid rulers on maps to join the Yates and Hendrick fields and hoped that drilling in between would find shallow production. As luck would have it, some of their hunches paid off, especially in southern Ward County, where, by 1932, the Shipley, Bennett, and Grandfalls fields had come in at depths above 3,000 feet. Such modest production could not compete with East Texas, so poor-boy operators found it easy to get farmouts from major company leaseholders for development wells. Elsewhere in the area, financially strapped landowners often agreed to waive rental and bonus payments if independents would test their leases. The poor boys moved in, keeping costs low and settling for prospects that could be drilled with used tractor engines and salvaged drill pipe, generally above 5,000 or 6,000 feet.15 At the other end of the spectrum were major companies conducting deep tests in the Permian Basin. The play was launched in November 1928 by the Big Lake discovery of high-gravity oil in the Pre-Permian Ordovician formation at 8,520 feet by Group One Oil Corporation. Not only was this crude highly desirable from purchasers’ perspectives, but production from the discovery well, No. 1-B University, was dazzling— over 2.6 million barrels in three years. This find prompted those who could afford it—by and large, the majors—to undertake deep drilling in Pre-Permian formations in other places. Even so, during the early 1930s, the cost of deep drilling had to be weighed against prevailing low crude oil prices. Prospectors discovered that drilling to Pre-Permian formations was challenging. Gulf drilled J. T. McElroy No. 103 to 12,786 feet, a record, but it took all of 1934 to drill between 8,600 and 11,000 feet. Few independents could have taken on so costly a test. Worse yet, No. 103 was dry! 16 A tremendous amount of the Permian Basin exploration and development of the 1930s took place as a result of major company farmouts to independents. The majors’ willingness to give leased acreage to independents increased as deadlines neared on a vast amount of acreage leased in the mid- to late 1920s for ten years or the life of production. Majors and larger independents did not wish to see leases lapse, especially when both geological thinking and geophysical surveys indicated a fair chance for oil discovery in so many untried parts of the region. In the event of production, majors also wished to share out the poten200

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tially enormous cost of field development, and many farmouts thus required independents to carry out development if exploration proved successful. After 1934, then, the pace of exploration and development escalated sharply in the region, creating abundant opportunities for independents and resulting in the discovery of giant fields and hundreds of millions of barrels of reserves. Among the most notable fields were the Harper (1933), Goldsmith (1934), and Foster (1935) in Ector County; the Keystone (1935) in Winkler County; the Means (1934) in Andrews County; the Wasson (1936 –1937) in northwest Gaines and southwest Yoakum counties; and the Slaughter (1936) in Cochran, Hockley, and Terry counties. Hundreds of independents took part in Permian Basin exploration in the 1930s, but the majority of them were from Fort Worth. Of this group the best-known, and among the most successful, were Sid W. Richardson and Amon Carter, both of whom enjoyed fabulous success taking farmouts. Richardson had worked his way up in the oil business, while Carter was the successful publisher of the Fort Worth StarTelegram when he decided to try oil. Both men, however, were adept at industry networking, and both were able to raise funds that let them undertake deeper drilling that was beyond the reach of poor-boy operators. Both were also exceptionally astute businessmen; Richardson liked to say, with down-home folksiness, ‘‘I’d rather be lucky than smart, ’cause a lot of smart people ain’t eatin’ regular,’’ but there was more to his success than luck.17 SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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Sid W. Richardson, 1950s. Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

Born in Athens, Texas, Sid Richardson came to booming North Texas in 1911. He hauled pipe and worked on rigs, eventually landing a job as landman and scout with Gulf. In his spare time, he made deals on his own and by 1919 had amassed a small fortune, about $100,000. Then came the crash of 1921, which wiped him out. He was down but not for long because his family provided funds to get him back on his feet again. He did reasonably well until the East Texas boom, when, like many small independents, he drowned in red ink. Once again, however, he received backing from friends and relatives and tried his luck in northern Ward County, in the Estes field, and in Winkler County, in what became the Keystone field. With his nephew Perry R. Bass as his partner, Richardson got a farmout from Pure Oil and in 1935 completed a 250-barrel well there. Richardson had been canny enough to acquire numerous other tracts in the area, so the development of the Keystone field provided additional cash for his operations. With it, he jumped into the early development in Hockley County and other plays. By the end of 1940, Richardson owned 125 producing wells and was on his way to becoming one of the richest men in America.18 Amon Carter had been investing in oil deals for at least a decade 202

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when he participated in the discovery of the vast and prolific Wasson field in the mid-1930s. He had, for example, been one of Roy Westbrook’s backers in the Hendrick field. Carter had made a substantial fortune in publishing, radio, and manufacturing, but he really struck it rich, like Sid Richardson, with a development farmout from Pure Oil in the Keystone field in 1935. He followed up by taking a farmout in Gaines County from Continental Oil in return for a test and obtained additional leases from the same company on highly advantageous terms. Carter then sold some of his acreage at $50 an acre to pay for the first test, which came in for 333 barrels of oil per day (bopd) in June 1937. His test on a second block brought in an even bigger well, as did his extension on a third tract. Better yet for Carter, in 1940, his developmental drilling activity brought in two additional pays in the Clear Fork formation. A giant field, Wasson was a bonanza for Carter.19 Operators like Richardson and Carter made fortunes in the Permian Basin because they secured highly advantageous farmouts from financially strapped large companies and brought in a tremendous amount of oil in prolific fields with a number of pay zones. Even so, producers in

A Roxana Petroleum Company (Shell) seismographic crew in the Permian Basin, 1928–1929. Lionel Buckley Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

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The Slaughter Field gasoline plant. Elwood M. Payne photo. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

fields such as Wasson or Slaughter in the late 1930s commonly faced delayed payouts for a variety of reasons. One was price: sour, corrosive Permian crude was not snapped up, and it brought among the lowest prices in the nation; only Rocky Mountain crude and some heavy Pacific Coast oil ordinarily sold for less. Then there were the normal fluctuations of national crude supply, as when the discovery of the rich fields in southern Illinois pushed most other prices down at the end of the decade. In addition, TRC proration sharply limited production, and wells capable of hundreds of barrels a day were pinched back to a small fraction of their potential. Worse yet, the commission began to limit the number of days per month wells could produce. Such restrictions, however, reflected purchasers’ lack of interest in Permian oil, as did purchasers’ slowness at extending and enlarging pipeline systems to developing fields. In the Wasson field, for example, for two years there was only Humble’s six-inch line, and some producers carried crude by tank truck to Andrews for shipment. In short, the astute operator could make money in the Permian Basin during the late 1930s, and many did so, but it was never easy to get rich quickly.20 In Texas, as in other parts of the United States, the 1930s were hard 204

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for farmers and ranchers. As drought and crop failure plunged farm families into bankruptcy, and as New Deal programs resulted in evictions of tenant farmers and sharecroppers, a tremendous number of country people went on the road in search of opportunity. Among the places where they found it were the oil fields of Texas. Although the work was hard and occasionally dangerous, the pay in the oil fields was relatively good—at least compared with what one could make on the farm. The skills many farm boys had—basic mechanical knowledge, ability to drive trucks or teams, simple carpentry—adapted to the oil fields in roughnecking, roustabouting, trucking or teaming, and rig building. Farm boys were young, generally healthy, and accustomed to working in all kinds of weather. Moreover, when oil exploration and development came to places like Archer or Andrews or Ward counties, effectively industry came to the countryside and acted as a powerful lure to local boys like Ward County rancher’s son Edd Cox, who went to work skidding rigs. Many a farm boy had a story like that of Clell Reed: I was raised in the cotton patch down in Mills County. I had made a crop of fifty acres and one bale of cotton, and he [his father] said, ‘‘Son, you’d better go to the oil field like your three brothers.’’ They were in the oil business, working for oil companies. So I had a football sweater and a pasteboard suitcase, about two or three dollars in my pocket, and I set off. I hitchhiked to McCamey in 1930, in March. Reed got a job with Humble Oil, and he stayed with the company for the rest of his career.21 Nor were farm boys the only people drawn to oil by opportunity. Many college graduates found that the industry offered more chances for advancement than their originally intended careers. Ralph O. Harvey, Jr., for example, studied to be a cotton broker, graduated during the depths of the Depression, and emerged as a drilling contractor during the late 1930s. Similarly, W. D. Noel took a degree in business administration at the University of Texas in 1935, went to work for Humble and Gulf, then went independent in 1940. With his partner, E. G. Rodman, he would later prosper in natural-gasoline manufacturing and petrochemicals.22 The growth of the Texas oil industry during the 1930s also drew women to oil communities, though they seldom found work in the fields. Oil companies began to hire women scientists during the 1920s, SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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but during the Depression they preferred male employees, and the modest gains women had made in the 1920s were thus eroded. However, increasing numbers of women found jobs as secretaries, stenographers, and bookkeepers in company offices. Women also ran boardinghouses in company camps. Growing communities offered jobs for teachers, waitresses, nurses, telephone operators, sales clerks, beauticians, cooks, and laundresses. In Longview, Wichita Falls, Midland, and other larger towns, black women found jobs as teachers and domestic workers. Racial discrimination still barred African Americans and Tejanos from the economic opportunities that Anglos had access to, but oil booms offered racial and ethnic minorities more chances to get ahead in life than their rural homes had provided.23 By the late 1930s, towns like Wichita Falls, Midland, and Odessa were growing and prospering once again, but what was perhaps even more impressive was the movement of oil field population into areas in West Texas that had been very thinly settled. In 1930, for example, Andrews had a population of 200; it was the county seat and the only sizable population center in Andrews County, which had a total population of only 736. By 1940 the population of Andrews had risen to over 600, and there were about 2,000 people in the county. Many of them lived in oil company camps like Humble’s Means field camp, eight miles north of town. Between 1935 and 1950, there were at least thirty-eight oil camps in the county, and all of the major companies had them. The need for nearby groceries and post offices created new settlements, like Frankel City near the Fullerton field, Goldsmith in Ector County in the Goldsmith field, and Sundown in Hockley County near the Slaughter field. Such small towns almost always had their share of cafes and bars, as well as oil field supply houses; those like Goldsmith, which was near a number of fields and many camps, even had movie houses.24 Thus it was that arid, windswept grassland came to be dotted with scores of bustling small communities, camps, and towns. The people in them were part of the broader movement of rural people to urban industrial life. In Texas, however, they did industrial work in rural surroundings. In another region of the state, Southwest Texas, major development began near the end of the 1920s. It slowed in response to activity in East Texas and the resultant decline in prices but resumed during the 1930s as science, technology, economics, and regulation converged to prompt widespread exploration and development. For example, the Saxet oil field near Corpus Christi was discovered in 1930 and was already a gas-producing field. By the end of the decade, oil was being pro206

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duced from thirty different sands, a feat that had not been possible until electrical well logging was applied to identifying the many lenticular sands in this and other fields. By the end of the decade, the Saxet field contained 492 producing wells.25 Another major find was made at Greta, in Refugio County, in mid1933, but that find was based largely on old-fashioned trendology. The field was drilled quickly, with 210 wells completed within eighteen months of the discovery. Even with markets glutted with Texas crude, producers developed the Greta field, in part, because the TRC allowed additional production from a second horizon at 5,900 feet, making the economics of production more attractive than they were in single-horizon fields.26 Refineries continued to follow production. By 1933, there were eleven in the region, the largest operated by Humble at Ingleside and San Antonio, Magnolia at Luling, and the Texas Company at San Antonio. Smaller plants were run by Grayburg Oil, Pioneer Oil and Refining Company, and Texas Petroleum Products Company in San Antonio. Elsewhere there were plants run by Houston Oil Company at Viola (Corpus Christi), Misko Refineries at Mirando City, Rado Refining and ProducSURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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Tejano Magnolia (Exxon/Mobil) pipeline workers in Southwest Texas, 1930s. J. Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Wright Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

ing Company at Laredo, Phoenix Refining Company at Pettus, and Valley Refining Company at McAllen.27 The grandest lease play ever carried out on privately owned land in the United States came in Southwest Texas during 1933, when Humble Oil and Refining signed for one million acres of the King Ranch. At the time, science provided additional support for Humble’s gamble, and the heirs of Mrs. Henrietta M. King were desperately short of capital, in the face of estate taxes and the collapse of the cattle market. After the Texas Company, Gulf, and Shell all declined to participate with Humble, the company went it alone on the twenty-year lease, which carried an annual rental of $127,824, the conventional one-eighth royalty, and a low-interest loan of $3.5 million to the trustees of the ranch. The company followed up with two additional leases on related properties and then set out to acquire leases on more spreads, amassing nearly two million acres between Corpus Christi and the border. Humble developed the new King Ranch leases methodically, completing core drilling in 1936 and reflection-seismic work two years later, then stopping to assess the results before it undertook extensive drilling. When it did, it brought in the giant Borregas field, completing seven oil discoveries, ten gas discoveries, and fifty dry holes by the end of World War II.28 208

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Oil field technology, especially advances in geophysics, came to have additional impacts on regional activity. The point was made clearly in 1934, when Hugh Roy Cullen’s Quintana Petroleum Corporation used a gravity survey to locate on a geological trend that included the Refugio, Greta, and McFaddin fields. Quintana discovered the Tom O’Connor field, the major Southwest Texas discovery of the decade, as it covered an area three miles wide and ten miles long on the Vicksburg Fault zone. By the end of the decade, 902 wells had been completed in the field. Renewed drilling boosted prolific production again after World War II, by which time the field was producing from ten horizons. Wells also became more economical as engineers perfected multiple completions, including quadruple completions in the Saxet field.29 Extensive exploration and drilling took place in Duval County during the 1930s, as well. Major oil producing areas were the Government Wells fields, identified during the late 1920s, and Loma Novia, discovered by Humble Oil and Refining in 1934. Operations in these fields were possible, even while oil prices were low, because wells were relatively shallow and inexpensive. In the South Government Wells field, for example, wells were completed in fifteen days or less, including the three days required to permit cement to set before production began. By mid-year of 1935, there were seven hundred wells in the Government

Drilling on Salazar No. 4 in Duval County. Gilcrease Oil Company of Texas E. L. Aimes Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

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Wells and Loma Novia fields and thirty-seven active rigs still drilling. Operators could complete wells for $8,500 in the Duval County fields, making them attractive even before oil prices began to rise with the end of the decade.30 The Sam Fordyce field, in Hidalgo and Starr counties, was another significant discovery of the period. As in the Duval County fields, completions were quick and cheap, often under $9,000 per well during the late 1930s. Like Tom O’Connor, the field was surveyed by magnetometer, then explored and, after one dry hole, found to underlie more than two thousand acres. Its location stimulated geophysical searches and core drilling in the lower border area, paying off largely after World War II.31 By the end of the 1930s, other significant fields, including Plymouth, Seven Sisters, Corpus Christi, Placedo, Flour Bluff, Sun, and Benavides, extended production through the area, and Southwest Texas was a major petroleum province in the United States. In addition to the major fields, Duval, Jim Wells, and other counties contained dozens of lesser finds, all of which boosted activity and production in the region. The Seeligson field, completed at the end of 1937 by Magnolia, extended into Jim Wells and Kleberg counties and produced from forty productive sands, divided into 150 separate reservoirs.32 Magnolia Petroleum pursued a prospect in Jim Wells and Brooks counties, beginning in 1934, when it hired a torsion-balance survey, following it with correlationreflection seismographic surveys in 1937 and a dip-reflection seismograph survey and another correlation-reflection survey in 1938. The discovery well, begun during the final year, produced 165 bopd of exceptionally high gravity distillate and nearly 6 MMcf of natural gas per day, and it led the company to plan further development of the new La Gloria field.33 Like every other oil-producing part of Texas, Southwest Texas had its boom towns. Freer boomed during the late 1920s, after the discovery of commercial production in the Government Wells field, only two miles south of where the townsite was laid out. Workers and their families struggled along in the absence of basic amenities, such as city water, until the 1960s; they used water hauled from San Diego, twenty-five miles away. In the absence of a sanitation system, residents used privies or dug cesspools; local drunks fell into the latter on a regular basis, adding to the mayhem of local life and of Freer folklore. As in all boom towns, housing was scarce, inspiring some cot-house operators to haul in old street cars in which they rented space for parts of a single day. 210

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The Texas Rangers carried out exemplary arrests in Freer during 1934, when a dozen of them swept into town.34 Alice, in Jim Wells County, grew especially after the discovery of the Bentonville field in 1936. Lease hounds crowded the Alice Cafe, and more than sixty service companies had located on the edge of town by 1945. Housing was scarce until the slowdown at the end of the decade. Even with the construction of 214 houses and apartments in 1939 and 124 units the following year, shelter for workers and their families was still hard to find and expensive. In response, Magnolia built a company camp when it moved workers from Mirando City.35 The increasing flood of oil brought substantial development to the port of Corpus Christi. Beginning in 1929, shipments and storage grew steadily as Humble, the Texas Company, and other shippers moved increasingly high volumes for shipment or processing. Storage reached 8.5 million barrels by 1939, and activity expanded to Harbor Island and Ingleside. With the construction of Humble’s new cracking plant at Ingleside, in 1937, Southwest Texas acquired its first sizable refinery. Coastal Refining built a smaller cracking installation at Port Isabel to process oil from the Sam Fordyce field, and Corpus Christi Refining opened a small cracking plant before the war. In addition, there were scores of small skimming plants, such as the Chapa Refining Company, Laredo, which had a maximum daily capacity of 100 barrels. Construction of these facilities accelerated after the development of the Saxet field, cushioning the blow of the Depression locally.36 Though the region was pocketed with small fields, the lion’s share of production at the end of the 1930s came from large fields. More than half of the TRC allowable in the region for 1938, for example, came from the Saxet, Greta, Tom O’Connor, Government Wells, and Loma Novia SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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fields. Loma Novia alone produced one-tenth of all of the oil in the district.37 What had once been a region dominated by wildcatters working small fields became an arena for the new science and technologies and for the large companies that had learned to apply them, in large measure on the upper Gulf Coast of Texas. During the 1930s, new discoveries on the upper Texas Gulf coast added significantly to regional reserves and demonstrated the current strengths and deficiencies of the relatively new geophysical technologies. The decade began with the most significant geophysical discovery to that time. Drilling in 1931 on a farmout from Gulf, Cullen and West located the Thompson field in Fort Bend County and launched a technology-based regional play that ran to the end of the decade.38 As significant as this find was, it amounted to a prelude to the gigantic Conroe discovery. Houston oilman George W. Strake walked over an area twenty miles northwest of the old Humble field dome and studied surface outcroppings. In 1931, his application of old-fashioned trendology flew in the face of the extensive torsion-balance and refraction surveys that large companies had made of the area before most of them abandoned their leases. His unorthodox approach, the condemnation of the area by orthodox science, and the Depression all made it exceptionally difficult for him to secure financing. As Strake put it, ‘‘You couldn’t stand a banker on his head on a Main Street corner and shake $1,000 out of him.’’ Without conventional financing and lacking scientific support for his theory, Strake leased 9,300 acres, traded leases for materials, used cordwood harvested on the leases to fire three large boilers needed for deep drilling, and raced to meet his deadline during 1931, spudding in only a few days before expiration of his leases. Strake’s initial well, No. 1 South Texas Development Company, was a disappointment, yielding 100 barrels of distillate and 15 MMcf of gas per day. The distillate was too small a quantity to process, though it was of 54 gravity, and there was no connection for transporting the natural gas. Strake, however, had met the terms of his leases and proceeded with a second well, which came in about six months after the first. That second well’s impressive production was 1,200 barrels of 38-gravity oil per day, and Strake’s fortune was made. He had made the biggest discovery on the Gulf Coast in thirty years, covering more acres than the combined shallow salt domes of Texas and Louisiana. With his find confirmed, Strake reorganized his holdings and sold substantial properties to Humble, which had been providing free paleological analysis of his drilling cuttings while his two 212

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George W. Strake (third from left, front row) and associates at the Conroe discovery well. The Strake Foundation.

wildcat wells were going down. One year after the confirmation well was completed, ninety rigs were running in the field, limited only by operator-accepted twenty-acre spacing restrictions.39 Strake’s discovery prompted additional reflection-seismological work near Tomball, in northwest Harris County, where Vacuum Oil Company (later Magnolia) conducted torsion-balance and refractionseismographic work in an area that previously had yielded only one dry hole. For all practical purposes, the least elegant technique had actually identified a probable field, so much so that the TRC provided a spacing program before the discovery well was drilled. However, it was not until the calculations were verified through reflection seismography that drilling was undertaken on Humble and Magnolia leases, which led to the discovery of oil at 5,566 feet. A large field, covering about 13,000 acres, Tomball was not a prolific oil field, but it did contain significant gas reserves and thus served to enhance the acceptance of the new reflection-seismology technology, which, in turn, led to additional finds after a few more failures.40 Near Old Ocean Lake, Everette L. DeGolyer and J. C. Karcher remapped an area and leased extensively in 1933, after Humble had abandoned it because seismological tests were unpromising. DeGolyer and Karcher had identified the formation with reflection seismology in 1933 but encountered dry holes and unmanageable high-pressure gas, which led Humble to sell its interest to Abercrombie and Harrison. They went SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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on to find condensate and some oil in the Frio sand in 1934 and four additional pay zones during 1936 and 1938. At Old Ocean, Abercrombie and Harrison confronted the same blowout and other safety problems that had bedeviled Humble while drilling in high-pressure gas formations. Falling back on Abercrombie’s valve and control systems plant, they devised new enhancements of control systems that allowed them to develop their properties successfully.41 The new geoscience also yielded the discovery of the prolific Hastings oil field in a deep-seated salt dome, twenty-five miles southeast of Houston on the Brazoria-Galveston county line and only 2.5 miles from the Manvel field. Developed largely by Stanolind and Standard of Kansas in 1934, the new field was located largely on the basis of a torsionbalance study combined with a reflection-seismographic survey. When fully developed, Hastings covered about 5,600 acres and contained more than six hundred wells.42 Science also paid off in 1935 at Anahuac, in north-central Chambers County, where geophysics and technology were essential to the discovery. Despite rumors of oil and gas seeps in water wells, wildcatters took little interest in the area because there was no surface dome. The leases were surveyed repeatedly by Humble (three different times) and Pure from 1925 to 1929 with magnetometer and refraction techniques. With reflection seismology’s growing success record for depth penetration in East Texas, Humble applied that technology upon reentering Anahuac in 1933. The company leased 14,000 acres and finally discovered a productive Frio sand at 7,088 feet in 1935. The extent of the field, 7,600 acres, and its thick producing sand gave Anahuac major field status by the end of the decade.43 Similarly, Humble employed reflection seismology to reexamine a Harris County area three miles northeast of the Hastings field. The company had failed to find commercial production in 1929 using torsionbalance crews and failed again in 1933 using refraction seismology. Improved seismology, however, brought in the Webster (Friendswood) field in 1937. Like the other deep dome fields, Friendswood was extensive, covering more than 4,200 acres, and produced prolifically.44 Much of this deeper production yielded large volumes of condensate and gas. In 1929, Stanolind, Amerada, and Humble completed extensive tests near Katy, thirty miles from the center of Houston, and located a massive natural gas field, rich with condensate. With the temporary glut of crude on the regional market, however, the Katy field would not be substantially developed until the end of the 1930s, when the condensate was valued for enriching gasoline to produce aviation 214

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fuel.45 The new gas fields both boosted the new exploration technologies and fostered the development of drilling and production technologies. In Raccoon Bend, Sugarland, Conroe, and other prolific gas fields, Humble and other producers installed extensive gas separation plants to extract the most valuable components and then reinjected waste gases to maintain pressure in the formations, extending the scope of petroleum engineering in the industry.46 The application of seismic prospecting techniques gave a new boost to offshore drilling. Minor drilling ventures off the shores of Texas had taken place since the second decade of the century, beginning with platform drilling in Black Duck Bay at Goose Creek in 1917. Gulf Production Company completed some wells there with substantial production, including its No. 14 at Goose Creek, which was completed on wood piles to 3,000 feet and initially produced 1,200 bopd. During the 1920s, flurries of offshore activity continued. In 1926, for example, Jake Jarman and J. L. Minahan of San Antonio moved in material to drill on submerged state land, not far offshore from Humble’s producing wells on the north side of the Kingsville field.47 No one brought in anything big, however, and there were many more appealing leads to follow on land. In the early 1930s, prospectors began extensive seismic work offshore, largely in response to activity in Louisiana and speculation about geological formations off Texas. In 1933, Amerada carried out seismic exploration off Brazoria County, and the Salt Dome Oil Company and the California Company did geophysical studies on sixty thousand acres of Galveston Bay, operating out of Barbour’s Cut at Morgan’s Point. Amerada worked with a fleet of ten boats and a party of forty, including seventeen seismologists and assistants, twelve boat handlers, and several mechanics and cooks. Operating in the marine environment, scientists took special precautions to minimize damage to marine life. They drilled shot holes to seventy-five feet, for example, to reduce the shock from the firing of their explosives. The first drilling pier was adopted in coastal Texas in 1935, when Stanolind Oil and Gas Company installed piers for its No. 1 State on Turtle Bayou, south of its No. 1 Middleton discovery well in Chambers County. The company had worked the area with torsion balance and reflection seismograph in 1934 and 1935. By September 1935, the state had leased tracts in and around Turtle Bay to three major oil companies and one independent. Then, the offshore Creole field, 1.25 miles from the shore of Cameron Parish, Louisiana, was found by reflection seismograph and its first wells completed in SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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Texaco’s Port Arthur works, 1937. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

1938. Following this discovery, the Texas coast received much more attention. In 1938, Humble drilled into a shallow salt dome one mile off McFaddin Beach, Jefferson County, but found only three dry holes.48 Another offshore Gulf of Mexico dry hole was drilled at Sabine Pass, Texas, in 1939, a year after the initial Gulf well off Louisiana. Although dry holes discouraged further drilling, geoscientists acquired relevant experience that would be put to good use in later decades.49 In any event, by the end of the 1930s, considerable technological advances had been made in offshore operations. Controlled directional drilling made it possible to complete multiple wells from single locations, and the use of submersible drilling barges in open and protected waters lowered costs still further on multiple-well and site completions. The development of diesel electric power brought additional economies and more rapid completions.50 Thus, the preconditions for future developments were in place. During the 1930s, the refinery capacity of the upper Gulf area continued to expand in response to the availability of cheap feedstocks. At 216

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the beginning of the decade, eight plants along the Houston Ship Channel had a combined capacity of 194,000 bopd, and there were nine marine terminals on the Ship Channel by the middle of the decade.51 The larger refineries had also added new technologies to apply cracking techniques, to obtain gasoline from the residue that remained after more conventional processes had extracted gasoline from crude oil.52 Refinery expansion had impressive results. By 1936, the Texas-Louisiana area refined about 25 percent of the crude run to stills in the country, and its cracking processes produced a little more than 25 percent of the cracked gasoline yield in the United States. Moreover, the plants on the Texas Gulf Coast operated at 82 percent of capacity, the highest in the nation. The growing plants also ventured into new petrochemical processes using refinery gasses: olefins, ethylene, propylene, and butylenes that were handled in the new cracking processes, and methane, ethane, propane, butane, and sometimes hydrogen that were obtained in conventional refining systems. In Port Arthur, Gulf Refining built a 5,000-barrel solvent refining plant, a 1,000-barrel solvent dewaxing plant (acetone-benzol) and a 950-barrel dewaxing plant using methyl-ethyl-ketone. Humble built a large gas polymerization plant at Baytown and laid a new eightinch pipeline to bring natural gasoline, butane, and propane to the Baytown plant to be cracked and polymerized in the new ‘‘poly’’ plant. Humble also enlarged its sulfur-dioxide solvent refining process at Baytown. At Houston, Shell expanded its plant with a new iso-octane plant that took refinery gasses, polymerized them chemically, and then applied hydrogenation processes to produce a motor fuel of 100-octane rating. At Port Arthur, the Texas Company added a 3,000-barrel solvent dewaxing process (acetone-benzol) unit. As the rest of the nation was still struggling with economic depression, the downstream sector of the petroleum industry in Texas was gearing up to enter a new age.53 Workers made major gains in labor union organization during the Depression through the Wagner Labor Relations Act and support from the Roosevelt administration. Among the refiners, Shell and Sinclair signed agreements with the Oil Worker’s International Union, but the organization lost elections at Humble’s plants in Baytown and Ingleside, where company unions represented workers. Humble and Atlantic Refining cut their work days to eight hours, then continued to scale back hours to a low point of twenty-four per week, except for clerical and technical employees. The objective of this scale-back was employee retention; in effect, the companies shared work among workers, and it affected workers in the field as well as in refineries. Refinery workers were SURVIVAL AND GROWTH

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hard hit by the cutbacks in hours and by labor-saving economies, but Humble and other companies reduced rent on company housing and expanded accident and death benefits during the same period. African American employees of refineries, almost entirely limited to low-skill and low-pay jobs, formed parallel unions that secured them some additional benefits but, at the same time, locked them into jobs at the bottom of the pay scale. At Hughes Tool, a similar situation largely blocked African Americans’ access to skilled jobs.54 In oil as in other industries, resistance on the part of white workers contributed to the limitation of economic opportunities for African Americans, and prevailing patterns of discrimination continued. During the 1930s, the dramatic development of East Texas captivated the attention of journalists and industry observers. Subsequent historians have understandably been inclined to give much more attention to East Texas than to other regions. True, what happened elsewhere was inescapably influenced by East Texas’s impacts on markets, prices, and regulation. Even at the height of East Texas oil fever, however, important discoveries took place in other parts of Texas. Moreover, new regions grew in importance, albeit slowly, and technology made important breakthroughs in both upstream and downstream operations. East Texas had the limelight, but other areas moved toward future expansion at a healthy rate; they were upstaged but far from standing still.

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TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR In 1940, Texas was by far the most important petroleum-producing state in the United States. It provided close to half a billion barrels of crude oil in 1940 —36.5 percent of all domestic oil and twice the volume of California, the next largest producing state. The East Texas field was the largest in the country, producing more oil in 1940 than the combined production of Louisiana and Arkansas, even under stringent limits on its production. Texas, of course, did not produce nearly the amount it might have in the absence of proration and field shutdown days. That regulation made the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) the most important industrial regulatory body in the nation, with decisive influence over national crude oil prices. Nor was the commission afraid to flex its political muscle. When Humble Oil reacted to flush production in Illinois by a general price cut in August 1939, the commission retaliated by shutting down Texas fields for fifteen days and persuaded the regulatory agencies of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico to follow its lead. Not surprisingly, Humble backed down and restored prices.1 In 1940, Texas was also the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, supplying close to a trillion cubic feet per year. The Panhandle alone provided other states with over 200 billion cubic feet of gas. Part of Texas’s gas went to make the state the nation’s largest producer of natural gasoline and carbon black; over 80 percent of the latter came from Texas plants. Part of Texas’s gas went to fuel Texas refineries, which supplied 80 percent of U.S. gasoline. In any event, over half of all the natural-gas consumers in the country burned Texas gas. As with oil, however, Texas could have produced far more gas than it did; lack of market outlets meant that gas in many fields was simply blown off into

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Ernest O. Thompson, third from left, and Olin Culberson, right, both members of the Texas Railroad Commission, confer with producers, 1949. Frank W. Lake Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

the air. Still, along the Gulf Coast alone, industrial users bought over 100 million cubic feet (MMcf) of gas daily.2 By 1940, the value of oil and gas produced in Texas was greater than the value of all crops raised in the state. Agriculture still employed a larger number of workers, but roughly a quarter million Texans worked in some phase of the petroleum industry—in drilling, production, marketing, natural gas, gasoline plants, carbon-black plants, equipment and supply, wholesaling and retailing. The industry paid an estimated half of all state and local taxes. Moreover, about two-thirds of all Texas counties contained oil and gas, and over a quarter of the state’s total area was leased for oil and gas. That meant petroleum brought income not only to people within the industry but also to mineral-rights owners and landowners throughout the state. In a scant half-century, the petroleum industry had become the dominant economic force in Texas.3 For all that there were big players in the upstream industry, in 1940 small producers vastly outnumbered them. Large companies controlled slightly over half of allowable production. Humble, Gulf, Stano220

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lind, Magnolia, and the Texas Company were, in order, the five largest producing companies. But there were more than 3,500 operators with allowables set by the TRC, and of that number 93 percent produced less than 1,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd). Two-thirds of them produced less than 100 bopd. These figures help explain the political influence of ‘‘little guys’’ when questions involving well spacing and stripper production came before the commission. There were many small producers, in fields throughout the state, and they were not reticent about pressing their interests before the elected commissioners.4 Large or small, Texas oilmen in 1940 faced some challenging problems generated by circumstances beyond their control. Perhaps the most serious problem was lack of market outlet for what many oil and gas fields could produce. Outside East Texas, during the 1930s there was scant incentive for oil and gas purchasers to undertake large-scale pipeline construction programs. Thus, when giant new fields were discovered in the Permian Basin and in Southwest Texas during that decade, pipeline outlets for them remained inadequate, handling but a fraction of potential production. That meant low well allowables and many field shutdown days. Similarly, after an encouraging spurt of long-distance gas pipeline construction during the later 1920s and early 1930s, construction of major gas lines halted. A depressed national economy did not support big construction projects. In effect, industry planners, whether producers, purchasers, or regulators, were attuned to reduced demand in 1940, and this would make it difficult to readjust to the entirely different situation of acute wartime need. In 1940, Texas oil was ill-prepared to go to war. Illinois fields, for example, continued to flood the domestic market, resulting in low well allowables and field shutdown days in Texas as the TRC worked to keep Texas production in line with market demand. More to the point, war in Europe increasingly disrupted industry operations. The fall of France and the British blockade in mid-1940 closed French and Mediterranean markets, and exports of Texas crude fell by almost 17 million barrels. War also hit export markets for gasoline; at the beginning of 1940 refiners guessed that war would boost gasoline exports immediately, and, guessing wrong, they ended up with large surpluses to be stored by the end of the year.5 When refiners cut back, they needed less of the heavier, often sour crudes many Texas fields yielded. The TRC responded by cutting back allowables; in the Permian Basin, they were cut by as much as 20 percent. Conditions deteriorated further in 1941 when the United States loaned Great Britain TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR

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twenty-five tankers, and it became difficult to ship Gulf Coast crude to Atlantic Coast refineries. West Texas fields were hit doubly hard by this development, since Atlantic area refiners were among the best customers for sour West Texas crude. As Atlantic refiners tried to adjust by using tank cars, there were too few available to ship crude out of the West Texas region.6 Once the United States went to war in December 1941, oilmen throughout the country faced a variety of federal regulations that affected every aspect of business. One of them was price regulation. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) froze prices for petroleum and products at October 1941 levels, but there was no corresponding control of costs. Indeed, a variety of developments—labor shortages, dealing with government red tape, and delays in obtaining materials, for example— drove costs sharply upward. Yet another source of Washington regulation was the Office of the Petroleum Coordinator (OPC), later the Petroleum Administration for War (PAW), headed by Harold L. Ickes. This agency promptly divided the nation into five districts, Texas being in District 3. It then set priorities and controls over essential supplies and equipment use in Conservation Order M-68, issued on December 23, 1941. Designed to conserve metals crucial to the military effort, this regulation had the effect of controlling access to materials based on type of operation underway. For example, operators drilling wildcat tests had readier access to drill pipe and casing than those putting down development wells in established fields.7 Unfortunately for both the petroleum industry and the war effort, the regulations in Conservation Order M-68 tended to discourage exploration and production. A wildcat, for example, was defined as a test not less than two miles from a producing well; this excluded tests for deeper pays or tests in areas of small traps. The order mandated 40-acre well spacing for oil wells and 640-acre spacing for gas wells, even though not all reservoirs warranted development on that basis. On the Gulf Coast in particular, salt domes normally had multiple pays, most efficiently tapped by closer spacing. Worse yet, pumping equipment was allocated on the basis of one well per ten surface acres, but in many fields wells were much closer, particularly in older fields or fields with multiple horizons. Ironically, the logic behind these regulations reflected not only the desire to conserve essential defense materials but also old conservationist goals of keeping more oil in the ground— counterproductive under the circumstances.8 Because Texas had a regulatory agency, the TRC, in charge of pe222

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troleum conservation, state regulation of drilling, production, and transportation continued even as the PAW and other agencies assumed wartime regulatory control. Indeed, as William R. Childs has pointed out, the TRC continued to regulate much as it had in peacetime, with little immediate change in day-to-day operations.9 It did respond to disruptions in transportation from wartime conditions, which meant cuts in allowables in some fields, but it continued to base its field allowables on estimates of demand from such sources as purchasers and the Bureau of Mines, notwithstanding PAW recommendations. As federal authority over petroleum was defined, where there was a state conservation regulatory agency, all PAW could do was recommend production levels, a situation TRC chief Ernest O. Thompson found entirely to his liking.10 Long at odds with Harold Ickes, Thompson was no more inclined to take direction from that source in war than during peace, but the two men kept an uneasy truce, at least until 1944. Indeed, they came to share a common cause against the OPA, and both officials pressed the OPA for higher crude prices to stimulate exploration and keep marginal wells from abandonment, and both met repeated refusal. By virtue of its control over petroleum prices, the OPA, rather than the PAW, was the most substantial challenger of TRC power. If Thompson did not succeed in prodding the OPA to support exploration and production through higher prices, he did move the TRC to adjust allowables with a view to the same end. In January 1942, the commission inaugurated a sliding scale of allowables for discovery wells, allowing deeper and, hence, more costly wells higher allowables. For the first six months of production or until more than five wells were drilled in a field, a discovery enjoyed a higher allowable—as much as 480 bopd for an 11,000-foot well, for example. Again, with prices in view, the commission did not abandon field shutdown days; in July 1942, oil fields in Texas on average produced only twenty-two days.11 The TRC’s regulatory power was augmented during wartime by two cases involving the Harris County Bammel field, and because events there reflected wartime demand for natural gas by Houston industry, they are worth mention. Houston oil operator H. M. Harrell, who had discovered a condensate field on 3,200 acres he leased, constructed and operated a plant to remove liquids from produced gas, thereafter recycling the stripped gas back into the producing formation to maintain reservoir pressure. As a conservation-minded process, this recycling had the commission’s full blessing. Problems arose, however, when another operator, F. M. Corzelius, drilled an 80-acre tract in the field that Harrell TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR

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had had to let go because of his failure to meet a lease obligation. Corzelius produced gas from this tract and extracted some liquids, but, rather than recycling gas back to the formation, he built a pipeline and sold gas still containing a volume of extractable liquids. Corzelius broke no law; he was selling gas for fuel for which there was a ready market and hence that gas was not wasted. Harrell, however, had a grievance in that what Corzelius did would lower reservoir pressure and make it less likely that he, Harrell, would recover as much gas from his own leases. Because his correlative rights in field production were not upheld, Harrell moved to enjoin the TRC from letting the Corzelius well operate. The legal question involved was whether the commission could uphold correlative rights when there was no waste and the operator was observing current rules.12 As this legal tangle worked through the courts, events in the field took a dramatic turn when casing on Corzelius’s well sprang a leak in 1943—not surprising, given the inferior casing available during the war. When the TRC ordered Corzelius to plug the leak, he pumped water and mud into the well, whereupon the well blew out, cratered, and caught fire. Here was a situation in which no one could deny that an enormous amount of natural gas was being wasted. By 1944, the original well had created a crater several acres in extent. Of course, the commission directed that Corzelius shut in his wild well, but that was easier said than done. Corzelius drilled six other wells to reduce pressure in the original well, but they blew out and caught fire, as did five of Harrell’s wells. When gas from blown-out wells migrated through shallow rock formations, area water wells got charged with gas, blew out, and caught fire also. All of Corzelius’s efforts having gone awe-inspiringly wrong, the commission asked Harrell to act as its agent and kill Corzelius’s well— which he did—whereupon Corzelius sued the commission for stepping beyond its legal powers.13 In the end, after a lengthy sequence of legal decisions, appeals, and reversals, the courts upheld the TRC. Though the situation was unusual, the commission had acted to prevent waste, both by directing Harrell to kill the well and by taking it upon itself to protect correlative rights, even when obvious waste of gas was not taking place. Giving the commission the right to intervene, even in the absence of waste of gas, left the commission with more control over gas production than it had over oil production.14 In addition to problems generated by regulation, especially federal regulation, manpower shortages also hit the industry hard. Defense in224

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A pumper making his rounds with horse and buggy, 1945. Bubley photo. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

dustries began to hire large numbers of workers before Pearl Harbor, and in regions where gasoline surplus and transportation dislocations brought production cutbacks and drilling slowdowns, laid-off workers left the oil fields for defense plants. Once the United States went to war, however, the draft began thinning the ranks of oil field workers still further. Oil operators began to hire high-school students and men too old for the draft as substitutes, but the new hands lacked experience and endurance on the job. Less efficient workers led to less efficient operations, and drilling contractors in particular found that the time it took to drill reasonably ordinary wells increased sharply. Gasoline rationing also hampered field operations, as both field workers and those in service and supply coped with traveling long distances on less gasoline. Refineries at Beaumont, Orange, and Port Arthur faced labor shortages; Washington ordered forty-eight-hour work weeks to meet operating needs.15 How much regulations and shortages affected exploration and production varied considerably among regions. In most, they meant an imTEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR

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mediate decline in wildcatting, development, and producing wells; production levels were less affected by Order M-68 than by lack of pipeline or other outlets to markets. As the United States entered the war, it could be assumed that East Texas production would go a long way toward meeting defense needs. Moreover, in 1940, the Hawkins field in Wood County came in, offering the prospect of additional reserves in the region. Even before the United States actually went to war, however, East Texas production dropped as an increasing number of once prolific wells made more and more water and were plugged and abandoned. Then came federal regulation. The number of wildcat tests dropped from 142 to 107. East Texas production declined 8 percent, and well abandonments nearly tripled. Throughout the East Texas district, development fell by 71 percent in response to PAW regulations on spacing and materials. In the Hawkins field, Humble postponed an extensive development program for lack of materials and in response to TRC allocation regulations. Over all, the district’s production declined by 3 percent. The following year production rose 11 percent in the district and 6.5 percent in the East Texas field, but well completions dropped and abandonments increased. However, because the TRC raised allowables in response to completion of the ‘‘Big Inch’’ pipeline, production rose in the field and in the district. The most important field development of the war years was that of the Carthage condensate and gas field in Panola County; by 1945, this field had been shown to stretch over 275,000 acres, about half of the county, and it contained gas reserves of 6 to 7 trillion cubic feet.16 The most significant wartime development for East Texas was unquestionably the completion of the Big Inch, a twenty-four-inch crudeoil pipeline capable of moving 300,000 bopd from Longview to Norris City, Illinois, and then on to refineries in the Philadelphia and New York areas. Construction of the 1,340-mile line began in August 1942. By February 1943, the leg from Longview to Norris City was in operation. By August of that year, East Texas oil was arriving in Philadelphia, and by September it reached the New York area. For the rest of the war, eastern refineries were amply supplied with East Texas crude. At the same time, in February 1943, construction of the ‘‘Little Inch,’’ a twenty-inch products line 1,475 miles long from Beaumont to Linden, New Jersey, got under way. The capacity of the Little Inch was 235,000 bopd, and it was operating by early 1944. Operation of these transportation systems ensured outlets for Texas crude and products despite shortages of tank cars and the sinking of tankers by enemy action.17 226

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Laying the Big Inch line. Library of Congress photo. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

Curiously, one long-term East Texas problem was finally resolved during the war years, that of what to do with all the brine the field produced with its oil. Clearly, producers needed some cooperative arrangement to handle brine economically, and in January 1942, the East Texas Salt Water Disposal Company was incorporated. The firm gathered and processed brine, which it then reinjected into the Woodbine formation along the western edge of the field. Not only did this method solve the disposal problem, it also helped restore reservoir pressure. By April 1943, more than 137,000 barrels of brine a day were reinjected— disposal on a grand scale. East Texas development was thus a landmark not only in regulation but also in responsible management of production.18 As in East Texas, much of the oil in North Texas was sweet, relatively high gravity crude that yielded high-octane products, so it was in demand despite problems generated by wartime dislocation. Activity levels were high at the beginning of the war as wildcatters searched for production at depths ranging from 4,000 to 6,000 feet, going to the Ellenburger formation. New pools tended to be small, especially in the area around Stephens and Eastland counties, and traps were often lenslike. With wartime regulation, the number of wells completed during 1942 TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR

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The first weld on the Big Inch. Mitch Mayborn Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

fell to about 500 as compared with about 1,600 in 1941. In particular, the PAW’s forty-acre spacing rule and its definition of a wildcat well did not work with North Texas geology. Revised regulations in May 1943 allowed closer spacing depending on depth of wells, and this improved operating conditions sufficiently so that both well completions and production increased modestly.19 But the same red tape and shortages that plagued operators elsewhere also hit North Texas oilmen. Of all Texas operators, those in the Panhandle and Permian Basin were most handicapped during the war. In both places, the best wildcatting prospects were at substantially greater depths, and scarcity of materials stood in the way of deep tests. Panhandle activity had not been lively even before comprehensive federal regulation, but on February 24, 1942, the OPC prohibited use of materials to complete or deepen gas wells in Carson, Collingsworth, Gray, Hansford, Hartley, Hutchinson, Moore, Potter, Sherman, or Wheeler counties—which effectively ended gas well drilling! At the same time, the forty-acre spacing rule hit oil well drilling, so well completions fell 55 percent. The liveliest areas of industry growth in the region during the next two years were natural 228

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gasoline and carbon black. In 1943, the Panhandle produced 8 million barrels of natural gasoline and 350 million pounds of carbon black. Phillips upgraded its Borger refinery in 1941 to make 100-octane aviation fuel, and in 1943 it completed a synthetic rubber plant there, as did B. F. Goodrich. Panhandle field activity picked up again after the PAW, in response to extremely heavy demand for Panhandle gas both locally and out of state, lifted its ban on drilling gas wells. In an all-out expansion, 417 gas wells were completed in 1945. Better yet, from a producer’s point of view, federal authorities permitted a rise from an average price of 1.27 cents to 4 cents per thousand cubic feet, which encouraged additional development. At the same time, however, low Panhandle crude prices discouraged new completions and reconditioning of oil wells, despite strong demand.20 Dislocation in European markets and transportation in the early years of the war in Europe hit Permian Basin operators harder than those in any other region. In 1940, most Permian Basin production was sour crude, suitable for refining into relatively low octane gasoline, but there was both a surplus of that product and diminished exports to Europe. Gulf Coast refiners responded by cutting their takes of Permian crude; indeed, Humble shut down its pipeline from the Permian Basin to its Ingleside refinery at Corpus Christi. Flagging sour-crude markets led the TRC to cut regional allowables by almost three-quarters of a million barrels. This cut, coupled with diminished pipeline takes, acted as a brake on development. Overall activity dropped, and many workers left for jobs in defense plants and other oil fields. Still, development rates remained high in newer fields like Wasson and Slaughter, and wildcatting in older Permian and Pre-Permian (Devonian and Ellenburger) formations remained attractive, especially as there was promise that deeper formations held large reserves.21 Then came Pearl Harbor and price controls, as well as restricted access to materials and equipment. Unfortunately for Permian Basin producers, the OPA froze oil prices at October 1941 levels, which reflected low demand for regional oil; prices for Permian sour crude were among the lowest in the nation. Federal spacing regulations did not hurt Permian Basin operators as much as North Central Texas producers because forty-acre spacing had been the practice in many regional fields developed during the previous decade. However, development programs were curtailed by federal materials and equipment prioritization, as was wildcatting for deeper formations. With scarce and inferior pipe and casing, it took longer to complete tests. Worse yet, drilling to the Devonian TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR

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and Ellenburger formations required drilling through exceptionally hard rock (chert) in many areas, which wore out drill bits rapidly and slowed work. With skilled and experienced workers already scarce, the region’s workforce after 1941 was pruned by the draft. Thus, between 1941 and 1942, the number of wells completed fell by almost 50 percent.22 The inefficiency of operation under wartime regulation in the region was obvious in the experience of the largest drilling contractor in Texas, Carl B. King. King had drilled in the Ector County North Cowden field before the war, and wells drilled by the same firm in the same field to the same depths during the war took over two-and-one-half times longer to complete. Since King could afford the most modern, up-to-date equipment, what less-well-funded operators did was even more timeconsuming. The longer it took to drill, the more costly the test, and in one year, 1943, that and other circumstances led to a rise in drilling costs of 20 percent. But, because of price controls, increased costs could not be offset by higher prices.23 Caught between rising costs and frozen crude prices, many operators simply postponed wildcatting and development. As one of those oilmen, W. D. Noel, recalled, ‘‘During this period of time the only priority that we had was keeping the wells that we had producing. . . . We did no drilling at all from the early part of ’43 . . . until after the war was over.’’ Postponement is reflected in the pattern of discovery and development of deeper pays in many fields where initial discovery took place before 1942. For example, Midland independent George Abell assembled acreage in northern Pecos County in 1936, working a subsurface-developed prospect. Initial production came in 1940, and seven levels of production were found in 1941, some with crude of desirable gravities, about 32 to 38 degrees. There was every reason to believe deeper drilling would find even more pays, but there was no progress in that direction until 1946. A decade later, the field produced from sixteen distinct pays, and most production was high gravity, just the kind in critical need during the war years.24 Under adverse wartime conditions, the largest companies had the best chance of bearing the additional costs of wartime exploration. For that reason, major companies and well-funded independents made the most significant Permian Basin discoveries during the period. Phillips, for example, brought in the Embar field in Andrews County in May 1942, and Magnolia and Humble brought in the Dollarhide field in the same county in June 1945. Atlantic Refining found Devonian and Ellenburger production in the Block 31 field in Crane County in November 1945, and 230

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Shell and Cities Service discovered the TXL field in Ector County in December 1944. These finds tapped lower Permian and Pre-Permian Devonian and Ellenburger formations. Similarly, both Amon Carter and Sid Richardson discovered prolific deeper production in the Keystone field in Winkler County during 1943, but both men were spectacularly successful independents with abundant capital. Such discoveries showed that the Permian Basin had tremendous potential as a higher-gravity, sweet-crude producing region, to be realized when the economics of deeper drilling were more favorable.25 As it was, notwithstanding wartime need, existing Permian Basin production was well below capacity, primarily for lack of pipeline outlets. Fields like Wasson and Slaughter, for example, could have produced many times what they did during the war, but there was simply no way existing pipelines could have carried that amount of crude. Worse yet, federal regulators controlling the supply of pipe and other construction materials were initially reluctant to approve West Texas projects. Substantial improvement took place in 1944, when Magnolia gained permission to build a 333-mile line from Midland to Corsicana, and Stanolind a 383-mile line from the Slaughter field to Drumright, Oklahoma; both lines were in operation by the end of 1944. Completion of these pipelines helped set the stage for all-out postwar boom in the region, but during the war years, the prospect of boom was distant.26 Producers in the upper Texas Gulf Coast often benefited from wartime adjustments. The proximity of the fields to refineries, for example, placed a premium on meeting greater need for feedstocks by producing fields in the region to capacity. Thus, the TRC raised allowables, and the TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR

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Conroe, Hastings, Friendswood, and Thompson fields each produced over 10 million barrels during 1943, while older fields like Barber’s Hill, West Columbia, and Hull made over 1 million barrels each year. Supplying Big Inch with crude not only resulted in a greater demand for regional production but also required substantial rearrangement of crudeoil pipeline transport. Before Big Inch, Texas crude generally flowed to refineries in Beaumont–Port Arthur, Orange, Port Neches, Houston, and Corpus Christi. Once the pipeline to Illinois was in operation, a great amount of oil from the upper Gulf Coast, East and Central Texas, and the Permian Basin was sent to the East Texas intake of Big Inch. In turn, Gulf Coast refiners not only drew on regional fields near them but also took Southwest Texas crude by barge from Corpus Christi to Houston and Beaumont area refineries.27 As was the case in the rest of Texas, activity slowed down drastically in Southwest Texas during World War II. Initially, the drop in activity resulted from the loss of foreign markets for the crude oil that had been shipped through Corpus Christi. With exploration severely curtailed, there were no significant discoveries in the region during the war, apart from extensions of producing fields, including the Seeligson. At the beginning of 1943, only five rigs were running in the whole region, two of them drilling for Humble in Jim Hogg County on a proven field, and three drilling development wells for Continental in the Rincon field of Starr County. Both companies drilled to fulfill lease obligations.28 In line with developments in the rest of the state, the economics of exploration in the region worsened with the war as oil prices were frozen, materials became scarce, and drillers resorted to older and inexperienced men to fill out their crews. Companies with major stakes in leases in the region continued geophysical work, at a reduced level. Magnolia undertook extensive gravity surveys to evaluate its holdings and succeeded in defining the producing area of the La Gloria field. Atlantic Refining continued its interest in near-in offshore prospects, sponsoring a reflection survey in a part of Corpus Christi Bay. During this survey, men used shallow-draft motor boats and skiffs, in the absence of more conventional craft, and even completed some of the work on foot in shallow water. In the end, their data pointed to further prospecting on Mustang Island, not in the bay.29 By the end of 1943, expanded pipelines and tanker outlets had improved markets for Southwest Texas crude oil. As a result, drilling increased and geophysical crews appeared in larger numbers to accumulate data. The next year brought the highest level of activity since 232

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The Humble Refinery in Baytown, 1946. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

1937, with production at an all-time high and drilling up 22 percent over 1943. A new wartime project, the Tennessee Gas and Transmission Company gas line from Nueces County to West Virginia opened in the fall with a capacity of 200 MMcf of natural gas per day, providing an outlet for the growing gas production. With the new outlet, nonmajor operators reevaluated prospects that had seemed likely to produce much gas but little oil, drilled 15 percent more wells, and built inventories of prospects to be drilled when materials and money became available.30 Additional construction in South Texas increased the size of the industry in a number of sectors. Most of the refineries added capacity during the war, receiving high priority for scarce materials. During 1943, Sinclair-Prairie completed an oil pipeline from Corpus Christi to the Houston area, the first oil pipeline out of Southwest Texas. Later in the year, the Defense Plant Corporation converted a gas line from Refugio to Houston for oil use, creating another major outlet; the actual conversion was carried out by Humble Oil and required digging up the gas line to reweld joins of pipe. Thus, by the time the war ended, the region’s major problem, inadequate transportation, was alleviated. Operators TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR

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A butadiene tank and fractionating unit, Humble Baytown Refinery. C. C. Rister Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

made additional plant investment to rebuild old gas recycling plants in South Texas to allow for the fractionation of isopentane, n-butane, isobutane, and propane. Before 1943, all of the pentanes had been sold as ‘‘distillate’’ with little of the valuable butanes isolated. At Bishop in Nueces County, a factory processed the butanes and propanes recovered by the gas recycling plants at La Gloria in Jim Wells County, bringing the first petrochemical installation to the region. The pipelines, expanded refineries, and development of petrochemical capacity would figure largely in the postwar history of the petroleum industry.31 World War II was the great watershed for petrochemicals in Texas and everywhere else. Before 1940, apart from carbon black and isopropyl alcohol, coal was the source of most chemicals produced from hydrocarbons. During the 1930s, the refiners began a long-term effort to make efficient use of refinery gases that once had been disposed of by burning, were later used as fuel in the refining process, and, finally, were processed to produce better gasoline. Despite the refiners’ efforts, during the 1930s less than 1 percent of industrial organic chemicals originated 234

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from petroleum.32 Standard Oil of New Jersey undertook experiments with the manufacture of synthetic rubber from refinery gasses, in cooperation with the German firm I. G. Farben, which had worked largely with coal-based technologies.33 To this point, a relatively small proportion of refinery gasses were being converted into products.34 The war stimulated a major change in the petrochemical industry because of emergency needs for vast quantities of aviation fuel to supply the Army Air Corps and for new explosives, drugs, and large quantities of synthetic rubber. Shell and Humble operated toluene installations to produce TNT, and Shell began to produce aviation fuel on the eve of war, in 1939.35 When Asian sources of raw rubber were lost to the Japanese in 1941, America’s war effort required construction of vast syntheticrubber plants and of the petroleum-tied chemical works that would supply them with butadiene and styrene, the two critical ingredients. Construction and expansion of these wartime operations became the base for the rapid growth of the petrochemical industry in Texas. Union Carbide, for example, built a large chemical plant at Texas City, near refineries with feedstocks. Wartime construction strengthened the manu-

A carbon-black plant near Wink. Photograph by Pinkerton. Abell-Hanger Foundation Collection, Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, Texas.

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facturing base of the Houston region economy, as the area had more than one-third of the refining capacity of the United States and manufactured half of the petroleum war products.36 By the end of hostilities, Sinclair, Humble, and Dow were manufacturing butadiene, and Monsanto was producing styrene, which General Tire and Goodyear bought for their synthetic-rubber plants in the Houston area.37 Butadiene was also produced in East Texas and in the Texas Panhandle. By the end of the war, petrochemical plants on the Texas Gulf Coast were producing vast quantities of basic petrochemical compounds, including naphtha, ethane, propane, and butane, and methane was obtained from natural-gas separation processes. The Gulf Coast combination of existing industry installations and abundant high-grade feedstock, along with a skilled industrial labor force, abundant regional capital, federal loans and subsidies, and pressing wartime need, resulted in a tremendous growth in this part of the petroleum industry. At the close of World War II, the Texas petroleum industry had completed a half-century of explosive growth driven largely by exploration and production. The growth affected the lives of all Texans, directly and indirectly. Beyond question, the petroleum industry was the state’s most important industry, and in the national arena, Texas was the most important player. There was every reason to look ahead to a bright future for Texas oil. Indeed, in the short run, there was a plethora of promising exploration and development prospects that war had postponed and that now could be pursued. A bright future also lay ahead for natural gas. Wartime needs not only expanded intrastate markets for gas and condensate, especially in petrochemicals, but further opened out-ofstate markets of urban consumers. Wartime need resulted in a vast expansion of refining and petrochemicals, and that growth would accelerate in the years ahead. And as all these areas boomed, more and more Texans would find opportunities in the oil industry. Less easily anticipated, the half-century ahead would bring profound changes on many levels. As the industry matured in Texas and development of the principal producing regions progressed, emphasis on exploration would shift to increasingly costly oil and gas and involve the geosciences more heavily. Seat-of-the-pants exploration by poor boys faded slowly into memory and folklore. Upstream, the focus shifted to enhancing recovery from known reservoirs, and petroleum engineering assumed a vital role in operations. As Texas oil became ever more costly to produce, it faced mounting competition from abroad. With the growing importance of overseas oil, Texas’s dominance 236

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in prices and markets and, with it, the power of the TRC eroded steadily. Once preoccupied with questions like proration and well spacing, the commission would shift focus and pay more heed to environmental issues. So would the federal government, and Texas oilmen would face a mounting federal presence, though that presence was most immediately visible in price controls of natural gas in the interstate markets rather than in environmental issues. Downstream, the new area of spectacular activity, Texas would come to assume a commanding presence in refining and petrochemicals, though with mounting competition, and it would become a world leader in providing services and equipment allied with these industries as well as production and exploration. Ahead lay developments that would bring profound changes in oil field life. Company camps, once privileged shelter, would vanish before the end of the century. Successive reactions to markets and prices would lead to the progressive down-sizing of the oil industry in Texas. After one final boom during the 1970s and 1980s, a twenty-year slide would reduce employment to half of what it had once been. Sweeping acquisitions and consolidations would remove Gulf Oil Corporation, Amoco (Stanolind), Mobil (Magnolia), Texaco, and other large players from the board. Texans would move from oil field centers to the urban centers of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth, seeking jobs outside of the industry that had once acted as a magnet for farm boys. All of these developments, however, constitute another story, a vitally important one.

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NOTES Frequently cited works, collections, and agencies are identified by abbreviations as follows: AAPG American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, AAPG Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists ETO East Texas Oil Museum Collection, Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas HOT The New Handbook of Texas HP Houston Post and Houston Daily Post National Scouts National Oil Scouts and Landman’s Association, Oil and Gas Field Development in the United States OGJ Oil and Gas Journal OIJ Oil Investor’s Journal OW Oil Weekly PE Petroleum Engineer PTO Pioneers of Texas Oil Collection, Barker Texas History Collections, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin Southwest Scouts Southwest Texas Oil Scouts Association, Oil and Gas Development in Southwest Texas Transactions, AIME Transactions of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers TRC Texas Railroad Commission, Austin USGS United States Geological Survey

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1. THE ROAD TO SPINDLETOP 1. John O. King, Joseph Stephen Cullinan: A Study of Leadership in the Texas Petroleum Industry, 1897–1937 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, for the Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association, 1970), 18–19, 23. 2. C. A. Warner, Texas Oil and Gas Since 1543 (Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1939), 1– 4; Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, The American Petroleum Industry, Age of Illumination, 1859–1899 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1959), 18–22; Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas: Or a Saddle Trip on the Southwestern Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978 reprint of 1857 edition), 376; Oil Investor’s Journal, April 1, 1903, 2; August 15, 1903, 10 (hereafter cited as OIJ). 3. Warner, Texas Oil, 5–7; Ray F. Youngmeyer and Roy I. Jindra, ‘‘Nacogdoches Field,’’ in Occurrence of Oil and Gas in Northeast Texas, edited by Frank A. Herald, University of Texas Publication no. 5116 (Austin: University of Texas, 1951), 247. 4. E. T. Dumble, Mineral Resources of Texas: Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Texas (Austin: State Printing Office, 1891), xlv; Joseph B. Walker, ‘‘Nacogdoches County,’’ in ibid., 271–273; George I. Adams, ‘‘Oil and Gas Fields of the Western Interior and Northern Texas Coal Measures and the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary of the Western Gulf Coast,’’ USGS Bulletin 184 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901), 53–54; C. W. Raines, Year Book for Texas, 1901 (Austin: Gammel Book Co., 1902), 286 –287. 5. William Battle Phillips, Texas Petroleum, Bulletin of the University of Texas, no. 5, and University of Texas Mineral Survey Bulletin no. 1 (Austin: University of Texas, 1900), 4 –5; Houston Daily Post, August 5, 1901 (hereafter cited as HP). 6. J. O. King, Cullinan, 12–13; ‘‘The Corsicana Oil Field,’’ Derrick’s Hand-Book of Petroleum (Oil City, Pa.: Derrick Publishing Co., 1900), 2 : 172. 7. Derrick’s Hand-Book 2 : 172; J. O. King, Cullinan, 14 –16. King suggests that Davidson was an oil scout for Guffey and Galey. 8. J. O. King, Cullinan, 15–18; Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘Corsicana Field,’’ The New Handbook of Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996) 2: 340 –341 (hereafter cited as HOT); George C. Matson and Oliver B. Hopkins, ‘‘The Corsicana Oil and Gas Field, Texas,’’ Contributions to Economic Geology 1917, USGS Bulletin 661 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918), 247, 249. 9. J. O. King, Cullinan, 26 –27; Derrick’s Hand-Book 2 : 174. 10. John O. King, ‘‘The Early Texas Oil Industry: Beginnings at 240

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Corsicana, 1894 –1901,’’ Journal of Southern History, November 1966, 508; J. O. King, Cullinan, 30 –31, 35– 45, 48–54. 11. Phillips, Texas Petroleum, 38, 40 – 41; James S. Hudnall, ‘‘Corsicana-Powell Field,’’ in Herald, Occurrence of Oil and Gas, 104; Derrick’s Hand-Book 2 : 173–175; Matson and Hopkins, ‘‘Corsicana Oil and Gas Field,’’ 244; Claude Witherspoon, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, June 27, 1953, Dilley, Texas (Pioneers of Texas Oil Collection, Barker Texas History Collections, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin; hereafter cited as PTO). 12. Derrick’s Hand-Book 2 : 173; J. O. King, Cullinan, 73–75; J. S. Simkins, interviewed by Murray, December 10, 1952, Austin, Texas (PTO). 13. J. O. King, Cullinan, 77–78; Henrietta M. Larson and Kenneth Wiggins Porter, History of Humble Oil and Refining Company: A Study in Industrial Growth (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 12. 14. J. E. Brantly, ‘‘Hydraulic Rotary-Drilling System,’’ in History of Petroleum Engineering (New York: American Petroleum Institute, 1961), 295–301. 15. Matson and Hopkins, ‘‘Corsicana Oil and Gas Field,’’ 229, 247, 251; J. O. King, Cullinan, 69–71; Warner, Texas Oil, 33–34. With respect to the provisions relating to gas, which might be taken as conservation-minded, it is worth noting that at the behest of Cullinan and his associates, Corsicana began consuming locally produced natural gas in 1899, and it became necessary to ensure future supply in order to make good on the investment in gas lines and other facilities. 16. Warner, Texas Oil, 355; Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 594. 17. John Stricklin Spratt, The Road to Spindletop: Economic Change in Texas, 1875–1901 (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1955), 26 –36. 18. On Jay Gould, see Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 348, 350 –353, 411, 413, 418– 419. 19. Jonathan K. Gerland, ‘‘Sawdust City: Beaumont, Texas, on the Eve of the Petroleum Age,’’ Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record (November 1996), 21–22. 20. Spratt, Road to Spindletop, 35. 21. U.S. Census, 1900: Population 2: 425. 22. Ibid. 1: xciii, lxxii. 23. Robert A. Calvert, ‘‘Nineteenth-Century Farmers, Cotton, and Prosperity,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1970, 519. 24. U.S. Census, 1900: Population 1: 126, 128. 25. Spratt, Road to Spindletop, 42. NOTES TO PAGES 7 – 12

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26. Calvert, ‘‘Nineteenth-Century Farmers,’’ 512. 27. For specific details see the following works by J. Evetts Haley: The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953; orig. 1929); Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949; orig. 1936); and George L. Littlefield, Texan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943). 28. United States Census of Manufacturing, 1900, 864; Calvert, ‘‘Nineteenth-Century Farmers,’’ 519–520. 29. L. Tuffly Ellis, ‘‘The Revolutionizing of the Texas Cotton Trade, 1865–1885,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1970, 491– 493, 495, 507. 30. United States Census of Population, 1900 1: 125. 31. Alwyn Barr, Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876– 1906 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 83– 84. 32. Ibid., 9, 13, 79– 80. 33. Ibid., 119–120. 34. Ibid., 125, 131, 133, 138–139. Fifty-seven pages of Clark’s ninety-three-page biography were given over to his Civil War experiences. George Clark, A Glance Backward: Or Some Events in the Past History of My Life (Houston: Rein and Sons, n.d., copyright 1915), 11– 68. 35. G. Clark, A Glance Backward, 87. For background and later Progressive history, see Lewis L. Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). 36. Ellis, ‘‘Revolutionizing of the Texas Cotton Trade,’’ 501. 37. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, 122, 139. 38. Ibid., 218–222. 39. Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 127, 132–134, 90 –91. This is the most comprehensive overview of industry development in the period under consideration. 40. On early geological theory on oil accumulation, see E. DeGolyer, ‘‘Concepts on Occurrence of Oil and Gas,’’ in History of Petroleum Engineering (New York: American Petroleum Institute, 1961), 17–26. 41. On these geologists see Nancy Alexander, Father of Texas Geology, Robert T. Hill (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1976), and Monica Heiman, John August Udden: A Biography (Kerrville, Texas: S. M. Udden, 1963), 45– 62. DeGolyer, ‘‘Concepts,’’ 17–26. 42. Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 144 –149. For an exhaustive account of cable tool technology, see J. E. Brantly, ‘‘Percussion Drilling System,’’ in History of Petroleum Engineering, 135–269, 242

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and his classic History of Oil Well Drilling (Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., 1971), 153–206, 488–700, 1295–1296. On early cementing, see C. V. Millikan, ‘‘Cementing,’’ in History of Petroleum Engineering, 455– 457, and Harold Vance, ‘‘Completion Methods,’’ in History of Petroleum Engineering, 581–587. 43. Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 97, 127–129, 151–157, 163; Vance, ‘‘Completion Methods,’’ 593–598. 44. The key case in this respect was Westmoreland and Cambria Natural Gas v. DeWitt (1899); see Stephen L. McDonald, Petroleum Conservation in the United States: An Economic Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 31–32. 45. Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, Oil and Ideology: The Cultural Creation of the American Petroleum Industry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), chapters 3 and 4. Just one small Ohio refiner, George Rice, brought literally dozens of suits against Standard between 1880 and 1905. 46. J. D. Forrest, ‘‘Anti-Monopoly Legislation in the United States,’’ American Journal of Sociology, January 1896, 413, 418, 419. 47. John R. Allison, ‘‘Survey of the Texas Anti-Trust Laws,’’ Antitrust Bulletin, Summer 1975, 217–219, 222, 237, 263, 308. 48. U.S. 284 (1897). 49. Texas Criminal Reports 261 (1896); Robert C. Cotner, James Stephen Hogg: A Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959), 439. 50. U.S. 28 (1899). 51. Dallas Morning News, August 9, 1900. 52. Ibid. 53. Cotner, James Stephen Hogg, 512. 2. THE FIRST GREAT BOOM 1. HP, January 13, 14, August 4, 1901; February 8, 1905. 2. Robert W. McDaniel with Henry C. Dethloff, Pattillo Higgins and the Search for Texas Oil (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989), 26 –27, 30 –35, 38– 40; Allen W. Hamill, interviewed by William A. Owens, September 2, 1952, Tulsa, Oklahoma (PTO); Pattillo Higgins, interviewed by William A. Owens, July 25, 1952 (PTO). 3. Plummer M. Barfield, interviewed by William A. Owens, August 1, 1952, Sour Lake, Texas (PTO). Donald C. Barton and Roland B. Paxson, ‘‘The Spindletop Salt Dome and Oil Field, Jefferson County, Texas,’’ Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, May–June 1925, 594 (hereafter cited as Bulletin, AAPG). 4. The Gladys City Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company diNOTES TO PAGES 18 – 26

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rectors were George W. Carroll, president; George W. O’Brien, vicepresident; Pattillo Higgins, treasurer and general manager; and J. F. Lanier, secretary. McDaniel, Higgins, 40 – 42. 5. John O. King, Joseph Stephen Cullinan: A Study of Leadership in the Texas Petroleum Industry (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, for the Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association, 1970), 85– 86; McDaniel, Higgins, 43– 45, 48–50, 53–54; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 14. 6. McDaniel, Higgins, 46 – 47; Edgar Wesley Owen, Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (Tulsa: AAPG, 1975), 195. 7. Owen, Trek, 192–196; J. O. King, Cullinan, 89; McDaniel, Higgins, 59. 8. McDaniel, Higgins, 55–58; J. O. King, Cullinan, 88; obituary for Anthony F. Lucas, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 1921, 421 (hereafter cited as Transactions, AIME); Reid Sayers McBeth, Pioneering the Gulf Coast: A Study of the Life and Accomplishments of Capt. Anthony F. Lucas (n.p., n.d.), 7– 8. 9. Curt G. Hamill, interviewed by William A. Owens, July 17, 1952, Kerrville, Texas (PTO). 10. J. O. King, Cullinan, 89–90; Owen, Trek, 196. 11. Owen, Trek; Anthony Lucas, ‘‘The Great Oil-Well Near Beaumont, Texas,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1902, 1. As Lucas put it, ‘‘certain geological indications’’ roused his interest in Spindletop: ‘‘I had been making reconnoissances [sic] for nearly two years in that part of Texas, before deciding upon this supreme effort.’’ Higgins interview (PTO). In fact, with the exception of Lucas’s story, most accounts of Spindletop give Higgins generous credit, but for Higgins there could never be enough recognition. 12. Curt G. Hamill interview; Allen W. Hamill interview. 13. Curt G. Hamill interview; James A. Clark and Michel T. Halbouty, Spindletop (New York: Random House, 1952), 50. 14. Curt G. Hamill interview; HP, January 11, 1901; Clark and Halbouty, Spindletop, 54 –55. 15. Curt G. Hamill interview; HP, January 11, 12, 13, 14, 1901. 16. Beaumont Enterprise, January 12, 14, 15, 18, 1901; Beaumont Journal, January 22, 1901; Beaumont Age, April 15, 1901; HP, January 15, 18, 1901; J. O. King, Cullinan, 94 –95, 97–98. 17. C. M. Rork, ‘‘Spindletop Pioneer Was W. B. Sharp,’’ Oil and Gas Journal, October 14, 1921, 85 (hereafter cited as OGJ). 18. Quoted in Harvey O’Connor, Mellon’s Millions: The Biography of a Fortune (New York: John Day Co., 1933), 101.

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19. Beaumont Enterprise, January 15, 1901; HP, January 13, June 28, August 4, 1901; Phillips, Texas Petroleum, 70; McDaniel, Higgins, 68– 69; W. C. Gilbert, interviewed by William A. Owens, July 22, 1953, Beaumont, Texas (PTO). 20. HP, January 13, 15, 1901; George I. Adams, ‘‘Oil and Gas Fields of the Western Interior,’’ 60 – 61; OIJ, July 6, 1909. 21. Phillips, Texas Petroleum, 8. 22. Carlton D. Speed, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, August 27, 1952, Corsicana, Texas (PTO); Clark and Halbouty, Spindletop, 82; OIJ, May 24, 1902; Gilbert interview; James A. Kinnear, interviewed by William A. Owens, Beaumont, July 24, 1953 (PTO); Claude Witherspoon, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Dilley, June 27, 1953 (PTO). 23. Trevy, ‘‘Beaumont,’’ 114. 24. Rork, ‘‘W. B. Sharp,’’ OGJ, October 14, 1921, 84 – 85; Barfield interview; Beaumont Enterprise, January 15, 1901; McBeth, Anthony F. Lucas, 36 –37. 25. ‘‘The Advantages and Conditions of Beaumont and Port Arthur of Today’’ (Beaumont: Beaumont Oil Exchange and Board of Trade, 1901), 3– 4. 26. Clark and Halbouty, Spindletop, 83; HP, April 28, 1902. 27. Clark and Halbouty, Spindletop, 90; OIJ, October 1, 1902; Phillips, Texas Petroleum, 69–70. 28. ‘‘Art Souvenir—Beaumont, Texas, 1901’’ (Beaumont, Texas: Press of the Daily Enterprise, 1901), Tyrell Historical Library, Beaumont, Texas. 29. Phillips, Texas Petroleum, 66; Raines, Year Book, 298; HP, August 4, 1901, May 3, 1902; OIJ, June 7, 1902. 30. OIJ, May 24, 1902; October 1, 1902; January 1, September 15, 1903. HP, May 7, 9, August 22, 27, 1902. 31. Raines, Year Book, 295–296. Clark and Halbouty, Spindletop, 94 –96. HP, August 22, 27, 1902. OIJ, September 15, 1902; April 15, 1903. 32. Barton and Paxson, ‘‘Spindletop Salt Dome,’’ 596. OIJ, January 1, 1903; June 1, 1904; October 15, 1903. 33. M. R. Oliphant, in Mineral Resources Yearbook, 1903 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904), 676. 34. Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘High Island Field,’’ HOT 3: 601– 602; HP, August 5, 1901; Census of Mines and Quarries, 1919, Table 19: Acreage Operated by Fields and States, 1919 and 1909, 322. Also the following articles in Bulletin, AAPG: Alexander Deussen, ‘‘Oil-Producing Horizons of Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana,’’ 1934, 502–505; A. S. Henly, ‘‘The Big Hill Salt Dome, Jefferson County, Texas’’ 1925, 590; William

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Kennedy, ‘‘The Bryan Heights Salt Dome, Brazoria County, Texas,’’ 1925, 614; George M. Bevier, ‘‘The Damon Mound Oil Field, Texas,’’ 1925, 506. 35. HP, May 3, 1902; January 16, 1905. Claude L. Witherspoon, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, June 27, 1953, Dilley, Texas (PTO). 36. HP, March 12, 13, 14, 1902; Charles Austin Whiteshot, The Oil Well Driller: A History of the World’s Greatest Enterprise, the Oil Industry, 2d ed. (Mannington, W.Va.: n.p., 1905), 823, 825; OIJ, June 15, 1903, 3, 11; M. R. Oliphant, in Mineral Resources Yearbook, 1904, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), 716. See also Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘Batson— Old Field,’’ and ‘‘Humble Field,’’ HOT 1: 416. 37. HP, June 5, 1908, June 11, 1908. 38. HP, June 11, 1908; OIJ, August 15, 1903; Oliphant, in Mineral Resources Yearbook, 1903, 676. 39. OIJ, June 1, 15, August 15, November 15, 1903; HP, February 5, 8, 9, 10, 1905. 40. OIJ, November 14, December 15, 1904; January 10, 1905. T. E. Swigart and C. E. Beecher, Manual for Oil and Gas Operations, United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, Bulletin 232 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923). 41. OIJ, September 1, November 1, December 15, 1903; March 15, 1904; March 18, August 18, 1905. HP, February 5, 1905. John R. Suman, ‘‘The Saratoga Oil Field, Hardin County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 265. 42. Swigart and Beecher, Manual, 12, 19–21. 43. OW, January 30, 1931, 167. 44. HP, April 29, June 18, 1902; OIJ, August 1, 1902; Kennedy, ‘‘Bryan Heights Salt Dome,’’ 614; HP, June 5, 11, 1908; H. E. Minor, ‘‘Goose Creek Oil Field, Harris County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 288–289. 45. OGJ, February 17, 1916, 4; January 6, 1916, 26. 46. For these investors and companies, see Scott’s Official Oil Directory of the Companies Operating in Texas and Louisiana (Beaumont, 1902). 47. Joseph A. Pratt, The Growth of a Refining Region (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980), 44. 48. David E. Koskoff, The Mellons: The Chronicle of America’s Richest Family (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978), 99–103, 108– 109; J. O. King, Cullinan, 179. 49. August W. Giebelhaus, Business and Government in the Oil Industry: A Case Study of Sun Oil, 1876–1945 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980), 34, 42– 44. 246

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50. Ibid., 55–57. 51. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 59, n. 41; J. O. King, Cullinan, 94 –97. 52. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 45–59; James A. Clark, The Chronological History of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Industries (Houston: Clark Book Co., 1963), 81. 53. J. O. King, Cullinan, 97, 108. 54. Ibid., 77–78. 55. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, 209–228; David G. McComb, Galveston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 166 –167. 56. H. P. Nichols, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Tyler, Texas, October 11, 1952 (PTO). 57. John O. King, Early History of Houston Oil Company of Texas, 1901–1908 (Houston, 1959), 73–76. 58. J. O. King, Cullinan, 169–174. 3. AFTER THE BOOM 1. Ralph W. Hidy and Muriel E. Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1882 –1911 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), 147, 393–394. 2. New York Times, December 19, 1909; HP, December 10, 1909. Standard built a pipeline from the new Baton Rouge refinery to Oklahoma. See Allison, ‘‘Survey of the Texas Anti-Trust Laws,’’ 215– 308; OIJ, June 19, 1907. 3. See John M. Duncan, ‘‘An Eye Opener: The Standard Oil-Magnolia Compromise, The Whole Cold Truth’’ (n.p., n.d., copyright 1915), sixth and seventh unnumbered pages of text; and W. H. Gray, ‘‘The Rule of Reason in Texas’’ (Houston: W. H. Gray, n.d.), 47– 48. Gray claims that I. H. Kempner, Sealy’s business associate in Galveston, was already a small shareholder in a bank organized in Beaumont to handle transactions for Standard companies in Texas (p. 20). Hidy and Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 610. 4. New York Times, August 5, 1909. 5. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 42– 43, 52–53. 6. OIJ, September 1, 1904. Oliphant, in Mineral Resources Yearbook 1904, placed year-end investment at $34,036,500 (p. 716). 7. Texas Almanac, 1992 –1993 (Dallas: A. H. Belo Corporation, 1991), 169, 175; Texas Almanac, 1994 –1995 (Dallas: A. H. Belo Corporation, 1993), 333. 8. In this regard, a number of circumstances combined to put a damper on Gulf Coast development. Most important, after DecemNOTES TO PAGES 49 – 57

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ber 1905, the discovery of the Glenn Pool in Oklahoma pushed Texas out of the limelight. Not only did Glenn Pool have gushers, but its oil was lighter than Gulf Coast crude and less heavily laced with sulfur, making it easier to refine for high-value products, principally kerosene. Oklahoma crude quickly eroded the market share of Texas crude and depressed prices of oil from the Texas fields. Symbolic of competition from Oklahoma was Gulf’s decision to take up its pipeline from Sour Lake to Humble and use the pipe to move more crude from Oklahoma to its Port Arthur refinery. In short, the final years of the first decade of the twentieth century found the new oil industry in Texas in the doldrums. 9. J. A. Clark, Chronological History, 81. The standard description of the growth of refining in the region is Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region. 10. OIJ, May 8, 1910. 11. OIJ, February 20, 1910, 94. 12. Brantly, History of Oil Well Drilling, 570. 13. See the company’s display advertisement in OIJ, October 18, 1906. 14. ‘‘Material Benefits That Beaumont Has Derived from the Oil Industry,’’ OIJ, January 16, 1907. 15. See the company’s display advertisement in OIJ, July 3, 1906; on Wallis see ‘‘Personal Mention,’’ OGJ, August 18, 1910, 21. 16. OIJ, February 20, 1910, 108. 17. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 50 –52; United States Census of Manufacturing, 1910 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911), 1208. 18. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 55. 19. Both firms advertised in OIJ. See June 18, 1906, for example. 20. Memorandum from Attorney for Estate of W. B. Sharp to Mrs. W. B. Sharp, J. S. Cullinan, and J. L. Autry, December 18, 1912 (PTO). 21. Cameron Iron Works: Twenty-Five Years, 1920 –1945 (Houston: Cameron Iron Works, 1946), 68– 69; OIJ, May 20, 1910, 11. 22. Texas Almanac, 1992 –1993, 173. 23. J. A. Clark, Chronological History, 110. 24. For the early careers of Farish and Blaffer, see Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 24 –27, 33–34. 25. Ibid., 28–32. 26. Ibid., 28–30. 27. Ibid., 35–52. 28. Ibid., 55–56. 29. Ibid., 71–75. 30. Ibid., 79. 248

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31. OIJ, February 20, 1910, 91; May 20, 22; August 18, 1910, 21. 32. OIJ, February 18, 1905, 9. 33. Donald C. Barton, ‘‘The Salt Domes of South Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 536 –589. OIJ, January 19, 1908; May 20, August 6, September 20, 1909. 34. See the following interviews in PTO: James W. Riggs, interviewed by William A. Owens, Goose Creek, June 19, 1952; Claude Deer, interviewed by William A. Owens, Spindletop, July 7, 1952; Frank Hamilton, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Sour Lake, July 29, 1952. 35. See the following interviews in PTO: M. A. ‘‘Curly’’ Johnson, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Corsicana, August 27, 1952; Clint Wood, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Mineral Wells, August 17, 1952; James Donohoe, interviewed by William A. Owens, Batson, August 1, 1952. 36. OIJ, June 15, August 15, November 15, 1903; January 15, December 15, 1904. HP, December 15, 1904. 37. See the following interviews in PTO: Frank Hamilton, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Sour Lake, July 29, 1952; Sam Webb, interviewed by William A. Owens, Fort Worth, September, 1952; John Little, interviewed by W. A. Owens, Belton, August 7, 1952. 38. Walter Cline, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright and others, Wichita Falls, August 13, 1952 (PTO). 39. Cline interview. 40. For a contemporary account of the shooter’s work, see ‘‘Shooting Oil Wells,’’ Scientific American Supplement, November 16, 1907, 307. 41. Cline interview. 42. John Little, interviewed by William A. Owens, Belton, August 7, 1952 (PTO); W. H. Bryant, interviewed by William A. Owens, Sour Lake, July 29, 1952 (PTO). 43. OIJ, June 5, 1907; Trevy, ‘‘Beaumont,’’ 128. 44. See the following interviews in PTO: James William Kinnear, interviewed by William A. Owens, Beaumont, July 24, 1953; Ashley Weaver, interviewed by William A. Owens, Beaumont, July 17, 1953; James Donohoe, interviewed by William A. Owens, Batson, Texas, August 1, 1952; W. H. Bryant, interviewed by William A. Owens, Sour Lake, July 29, 1952; Plummer M. Barfield, interviewed by William A. Owens, Sour Lake, August 1, 1952; Curt G. Hamill, interviewed by William A. Owens, Kerrville, Texas, July 17, 1952. 45. OIJ, June 1, 15, July 15, September 1, November 15, 1903; January 18, 1905; January 3, 1906. HP, January 14, 1905. 46. Whiteshot, Oil Well Driller, 821, 825; OIJ, September 18, 1905, 5; Swigart and Beecher, Manual, 57–58. NOTES TO PAGES 64 – 72

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47. W. H. Bryant, interviewed by William A. Owens, July 29, 1952, Sour Lake, Texas (PTO); R. S. Kennedy, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, July 30, 1952, place not given (PTO). 48. William Joseph Philp, interviewed by William A. Owens, July 17, 1953, South Park, Texas (PTO); OIJ, May 3, 1905, 9. 49. OIJ, April 3, 1905, 6. 50. OIJ, April 3, 1905, 6; May 3, 1905, 10. 4. OILY WATER AND BLACK GOLD 1. OGJ, April 23, 1920, 64. 2. OGJ, October 26, 1911, 14; Gardner, North Texas Oil, 19; Phillips, Texas Petroleum, 31. 3. Eugene Wesley Shaw, ‘‘Gas in the Area North and West of Fort Worth,’’ in Natural Gas Resources of Parts of North Texas, USGS Bulletin 629 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), 71; Gardner, North Texas Oil, 62; W. G. Matteson, ‘‘A Review of the Development in the New Central Texas Oil Fields during 1918,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1919, 168–177 and passim. On the limitations of geology in North Texas, see Richard Mason, ‘‘Lost Seas and Forgotten Climes: Petroleum and Geologists in North Texas,’’ West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 1987, 137–138. 4. William Charles Taylor, A History of Clay County (Austin: Jenkins Publishing Co., 1972), 98–99; Warner, Texas Oil, 49; H. V. Slagle, interviewed by Mody Boatright, June 21, 1952, Henrietta, Texas (PTO); H. P. Nichols, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, October 11, 1952, Tyler, Texas (PTO). Sources disagree as to whether Lockridge drilled his oily well in 1901 or 1902; Taylor says 1901, while Warner and Gardner give 1902. Among the venturesome investors were J. L. Jackson, George E. Root, and the Wichita Oil and Gas Company, whose directors included Frank Kell. Wichita Falls businessman Morgan Jones, promoter of the Wichita and Oklahoma Railroad, changed the road’s route to pass near the field. OIJ, September 1, 1904; November 1, 1904; January 3, 1906. Shaw, ‘‘Gas in the Area North and West of Fort Worth,’’ 26 –27, 31. 5. Nichols interview (PTO). OIJ, November 1, 1904; January 3, 1906. 6. OIJ, October 19, 1907; Warner, Texas Oil, 51–52. Clayco, Corsicana Petroleum, and Navarro Refining were brought into Magnolia. OGJ, March 2, 1911, 41– 42. Lone Star’s distributors were, in Fort Worth, the Fort Worth Gas Company; in Dallas, the Dallas Gas Company; and, in other towns, the North Texas Gas Company. 7. Shaw, ‘‘Gas in the Area North and West of Fort Worth,’’ 32. OGJ, November 2, 1911, 10; January 26, 1911, 21. OIJ, January 20, 250

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1910, 26. James O’Donohoe quoted in Wichita Falls (Wichita Falls, Texas: Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce, 1950), 6. 8. Gardner, North Texas Oil, 21; Wichita Falls Times, April 2, 1972; John F. O’Donohoe, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Louise Kelly, and J. W. Williams, September 4, 1953, Wichita Falls, Texas (PTO). 9. OGJ, November 2, 1911, 10; November 16, 1911, 11; January 29, 1914, 14. Gardner, North Texas Oil, 21. 10. Warner, Texas Oil, 56, 234; OGJ, May 9, 1918, 16, 18; Matteson, ‘‘Review of Development,’’ 196. 11. Dorsey Hager, ‘‘Geology of Oil Fields of North Central Texas,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1920, 520; Matteson, ‘‘Review of Development,’’ 167. Matteson reported more than a thousand tests in fortyfive counties. 12. Hager, ‘‘North Central Texas,’’ 526 –527; Warner, Texas Oil, 235. OGJ, May 21, 1918; June 21, 1918, 17. Journalist Boyce House did a great deal to turn the boom into ripping yarns, long after it was over. His tales found their way to movie screens in ‘‘Boom Town,’’ starring Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. 13. OGJ, January 3, 1918, 12, 31; May 16, 1918, 12; June 28, 1918, 43. 14. Warner, Texas Oil, 236; Gardner, North Texas Oil, 25; Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘Wichita County Regular Field,’’ in HOT. 15. OGJ, September 18, 1918, 16, 22; H. P. Hodge, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Louise Kelly, and J. W. Williams, September 3, 1953, Wichita Falls, Texas (PTO); H. A. Wheeler, ‘‘Wild Boom in North Texas Oil Fields,’’ Engineering and Mining Journal, March 27, 1920, 743–744. 16. OGJ, March 28, 1919, 20; Wheeler, ‘‘Wild Boom,’’ 744; Mrs. John Berry, interviewed by Diana Davids Olien, April 6, 1984, San Angelo, Texas. 17. OGJ, May 21, 1920, 60; June 11, 1925, 117. H. H. King, ‘‘Receivership Report to be Ready Soon,’’ Oil Weekly, August 19, 1922, 47 (hereafter cited as OW). 18. OGJ, June 20, 1919, 34; June 27, 1919, 20. One such observer was young George Ward Stocking, who worked for Empire Gas and Fuel in North Texas and whose book, The Oil Industry and the Competitive System: A Study in Waste (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), was an indictment of the kind of activity exemplified by the Ranger and Burkburnett booms (see especially p. 140 –145). 19. For interviews, all in PTO, see: A. J. Thaman and J. H. Anderson, interviewed by Maude Ross, January 29, 1960 [sic], Baytown, Texas; John Rust, interviewed by Mody Boatright, September 12, 1952, Borger, Texas; Jack Knight, interviewed by Mody Boatright, September 11, 1952, Borger, Texas; E. M. Friend, interviewed by Mody Boatright and Louise NOTES TO PAGES 78 – 85

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Kelly, September 4, 1953, Wichita Falls. For accounts of tents and living conditions, see Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, Oil Booms: Social Change in Five Texas Towns (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 49–51, and Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, Life in the Oil Fields (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1986), 87–98, 74 –76. 20. Thaman and Anderson interview. Knight interview. Rust interview. Clair McCormick, interviewed by Mody Boatright, July 30, 1952, Breckenridge, Texas (PTO). Bill Ingram, interviewed by Mody Boatright, July 2, 1952, Breckenridge, Texas (PTO). OGJ, October 24, 1919, 18; November 21, 1919, 78. Carl Angstadt, interviewed by Mody Boatright, August 24, 1952, Eastland, Texas (PTO). 21. Wheeler, ‘‘Wild Boom,’’ 742; Hager, ‘‘North Central Texas,’’ 520; Rust interview. 22. Ralph O. Harvey, Jr., interviewed by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, July 25, 1996, Wichita Falls, Texas; and by Diana Davids Olien, April 10, 1987, Abilene, Texas (Authors’ collection); Ralph O. Harvey, Jr., Scrapbook, Wichita County Archives, Wichita Falls, Texas; Louise Kelly, compiler, Wichita County Beginnings (Austin: Eakin Press, 1982), 18, 20 –22, 36, 109–114 passim. 23. Harvey Interview, July 25, 1996; Harvey Scrapbook; Perkins interview; Cullum interview; Sam T. Mallison, The Great Wildcatter (Charleston: Education Foundation of West Virginia, 1953), 289–290. 24. OGJ, February 24, 1916, 18; October 18, 1918, 38. OW, August 12, 1922, 16. Harvey interview, July 25, 1996. 25. OGJ, March 31, 1927, 93–94. 26. Historical Committee of the Fort Worth Petroleum Club, Oil Legends of Fort Worth (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1993), 13, 38–39, 73–74; Oliver Knight, Fort Worth: Outpost on the Trinity (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), 196 –197; Fort Worth StarTelegram, October 30, 1949; Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, Easy Money: Oil Promoters and Investors in the Jazz Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 74 –75. 27. OGJ, March 31, 1927, 93; Historical Committee of the Fort Worth Petroleum Club, Oil Legends, 41, 49–50, 67, 159–160, 193. On the symbiotic relationship of independents and major companies during this period, see Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, Wildcatters: Texas Independent Oilmen (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1984), 23–39 passim, which includes a study of Fort Worth independent Ed Landreth. 28. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 125–128, 145–146. 29. Ibid., 127–128. 30. William R. Childs, ‘‘The Transformation of the Railroad Commission of Texas, 1917–1940: Business-Government Relations and the Importance of Personality, Agency Culture, and Regional Differ252

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ences,’’ Business History Review, Summer 1991, 291–303; Robert E. Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History of Conservation of Oil in Texas,’’ in American Bar Association, Legal History of Conservation of Oil and Gas (Chicago: Mineral Law Section, American Bar Association, 1938), 217; Nicholas George Malavis, Bless the Pure and Humble: Texas Lawyers and Oil Regulation, 1919–1936 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996), 32–34. 31. Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 218; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 249. 32. Prindle, David F. Petroleum and Politics: The Texas Railroad Commission (Austin: Center for Energy Studies, the University of Texas at Austin, 1980), 47– 48; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 247–250. 33. Childs, ‘‘Transformation of the Railroad Commission,’’ 308; Howard Jarvis file, TRC. Our assessment of the TRC differs from that offered by Childs. 34. D. P. Carlton, ‘‘West Columbia Salt Dome and Oilfield, Brazoria County, Texas,’’ in Structure of Typical American Oil Fields, vol. 2 (Tulsa: AAPG, 1929), 452, 467. OGJ, April 20, 1920, 24; October 15, 1920, 34; October 22, 1920, 26; November 5, 1920, 18; November 19, 1920, 45; December 31, 1925, 42. OW, January 21, 1927, 45. 35. OGJ, October 1, 1920, 93; OW, January 21, 1927, 45. 36. Alexander Deussen and E. W. K. Andrau, ‘‘Orange, Texas, Oil Field,’’ in Gulf Coast Oil Fields, edited by Donald C. Barton and George Sawtelle (Tulsa: AAPG, 1936), 8820 – 8825; OW, January 27, 1936, 110. 37. Sidney A. Judson and R. A. Stamey, ‘‘Overhanging Salt on Domes of Texas and Louisiana,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1933, 1510 –1511; OGJ, May 19, 1927, 142. 38. D. S. Hager and E. Stiles, ‘‘The Blue Ridge Salt Dome, Fort Bend County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 305–306. OGJ, October 15, 1920, 35; December 10, 1920, 26; November 1, 1927, 67. 39. HP, April 29, 1902. 40. George M. Bevier, ‘‘The Barber’s Hill Oil Field, Chambers County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 958–961. 41. Alexander Deussen, ‘‘Review of Developments in the Gulf Coast County in 1917,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1918, 23–27; Bevier, ‘‘Damon Mound Oil Field,’’ 505–511. 42. HP, August 5, 1901; W. F. Bowman, ‘‘The South Dayton Salt Dome, Liberty County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 655– 666. 43. J. C. Smith, ‘‘High Island Field.’’ 44. OGJ, February 14, 1918, 44; April 2, 1920, 24; August 27, 1920, 38; October 21, 1921, 40; January 20, 1922, 22. NOTES TO PAGES 92 – 98

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45. Marilyn McAdams Sibley, The Port of Houston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 152–153. 46. James C. Maroney, ‘‘Oilfield Strike of 1917,’’ HOT 4: 1119. 47. OW, April 19, 1919, 51. 48. OGJ, October 27, 1910, 10. 49. Southwest Texas Oil Scouts Association, Oil and Gas Development in Southwest Texas, Bulletin no. 1 (San Antonio: The Association, 1930), 27 (hereafter cited as Southwest Scouts). San Antonio Express, August 22, 1888; January 4, 7, August 6, 1901; May 25, 1904; March 3, 1906. Warner, Texas Oil, 281. Phillips, Texas Petroleum. 50. OGJ, December 22, 1910, 14. 51. OIJ, November 19, 1907; January 19, 1908, September 6, 1908, August 20, 1909, September 20, 1909. 52. Olin G. Bell, ‘‘Petroleum Development in Southwest Texas during 1928,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1928, 395; I. R. Sheldon, ‘‘Driscoll Pool, Duval County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1933, 622– 623; Dorothy D. DeMoss, ‘‘Clara Driscoll,’’ HOT 2: 702–703; Frank Wagner, ‘‘Robert Driscoll, Jr.,’’ HOT 2: 703. 53. OGJ, July 2, 1920, 34. 54. OIJ, October 5, 1907, 14; November 9, 1907, 15; December 19, 1907, 17. 55. OIJ, January 19, 1908, 3; March 5, 1908, 12; February 6, 1909, 24. San Antonio Express, August 9, September 15, 1909; December 28, 1909. E. H. Sellards, ‘‘Structural Conditions in the Oil Fields of Bexar County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1919, 300. 56. Warner, Texas Oil, 282. 57. OW, September 16, 1922, 29; OGJ, July 19, 1918, 21. 58. Sellards, ‘‘Structural Conditions,’’ 300; OGJ, September 6, 1918. 59. Warner, Texas Oil, 283; OGJ, February 3, 1916, 18; Sellards, ‘‘Structural Conditions,’’ 300; Southwest Scouts (1930), 27. 60. OGJ, April 16, 1914, 25; December 26, 1914, 14; February 4, 1915, 18; January 6, 1916, 16; December 26, 1919, 84. W. Armstrong Price, ‘‘Discovery of Oil in White Point Gas Field, San Patricio County, Texas, and History of Field,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1931, 206. A. E. Getzendaner, ‘‘Oil in Southwest Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1934, 520. 61. OGJ, December 26, 1919, 84. 62. OGJ, October 8, 1920, 14. 63. Warner, Texas Oil, 282–283. OGJ, January 7, 1915, 21; January 21, 1915, 14; February 25, 1915, 14; March 4, 1915, 29; July 7, 1915, 15; September 9, 1915, 10. John D. Northrup, ‘‘Petroleum,’’ in USGS, Mineral Resources of the United States, 1914, Part 2: Nonmetals (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), 1022. 254

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64. OGJ, February 14, 1918, 14; July 2, 1920, 34; August 6, 1920, 26. 65. Southwest Scouts (1930) 36, 37; Warner, Texas Oil, 281, 283, 286. 66. Southwest Scouts (1930), 38; OGJ, February 20, 1927, 124. 67. OIJ, November 3, 1905, 6; February 6, 1910, 15. OGJ, September 29, 1910, 16; January 7, 1915, 21; October 18, 1918, 34; January 2, 1920, 18; August 16, 1920, 18, 39. Northrup, ‘‘Petroleum,’’ 1022. 5. THE RISING TIDE OF OIL 1. OW, July 15, 1922, 40, 44. 2. OGJ, October 10, 1919, 22; February 13, 1920, 76. OW, July 15, 1922, 40; August 5, 1922, 40, 62; September 23, 1922, 44; June 7, 1929, 67– 80; July 15, 1922, 40, 44. Southwest Scouts (1930), 46. 3. Barton ‘‘Salt Domes of South Texas,’’ 539, 580; OGJ, July 5, 1918, 22; Southwest Scouts (1930), 42. 4. Warner, Texas Oil, 284; O. W. Killam, interviewed by W. A. Owens, Laredo, Texas, May 7, 1956, 3– 4 (PTO); W. E. Wrather, ‘‘The Mirando Oil Company Well, Zapata County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1921, 626; J. W. Bostwick, ‘‘Analysis of Zapata County, Texas, Oil,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1921, 626; O. W. Killam, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, September 5, 1956, Laredo, Texas (PTO). 5. O. W. Killam, interviewed by W. A. Owens, Laredo, Texas, May 7, 1956 (PTO). 6. Ibid., 11. 7. Killam, interviewed by Boatright, 4 –5. 8. O. L. Brace, ‘‘Factors Governing Accumulation of Oil and Gas in Mirando and Pettus Districts, Gulf Coastal Texas, and Their Application to Other Areas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1931, 757; Wrather, ‘‘Mirando Oil Company,’’ 626; OW, May 31, 1924, 15. 9. OW, September 29, 1923, 43; October 2, 1925, 214. E. H. Sellards, ‘‘Notes on the Oil and Gas Fields of Webb and Zapata Counties,’’ University of Texas Bulletin no. 2230 (Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology: August 8, 1922), 10 –11. Richard A. Jones, ‘‘The Relation of the Reynosa Escarpment to the Oil and Gas Fields of Webb and Zapata Counties, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1923, 532. 10. OW, September 29, 1923, 43. 11. Jones, ‘‘Reynosa Escarpment,’’ 540. OW, August 12, 1922, 43; February 23, 1924, 44; December 18, 1925, 45. 12. Houston Chronicle, June 1, 1922; OGJ, April 5, 1923. 13. Jones, ‘‘Reynosa Escarpment,’’ 541; Richard A. Jones, ‘‘Large Gas Well in Jim Hogg County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1924, 767. NOTES TO PAGES 105 – 112

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14. OW, September 26, 1924, 51. 15. Jones, ‘‘Reynosa Escarpment,’’ 545. OW, August 1, 1922, 41; September 2, 1922, 41; December 22, 1923, 44. 16. OW, April 5, 1924, 51; July 5, 1924, 57; January 30, 1925, 48; February 27, 1925, 64; July 17, 1925, 73. 17. Killam, interviewed by Owens, 15–18 passim (PTO). 18. OW, May 14, 1926, 39; Ralph E. Davis, Stories of Natural Gas (n.p.: Ralph E. Davis, 1964), 2–3, 143–144. 19. J. A. Clark, Chronological History, 142; Alfred M. Leeston, John A. Crichton, and John C. Jacobs, The Dynamic Natural Gas Industry: The Description of an American Industry from the Historical, Technical, Legal, Financial, and Economic Standpoints (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 8. 20. Leeston, Crichton, and Jacobs, Dynamic Natural Gas Industry, 10. 21. OGJ, April 28, 1927, 53; March 10, 1927, 59. 22. OGJ, March 10, 1926, 74; April 14, 1927, 53. 23. W. E. Galloway, E. Ewing, C. M. Garrett, N. Tyler, and G. G. Bebout, Atlas of Major Texas Oil Reservoirs (Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology, the University of Texas at Austin, 1983), 33–35; Olin G. Bell, ‘‘Petroleum Development in Southwest Texas,’’ 393–394. 24. Phil F. Martyn, ‘‘Refugio Oil and Gas Field, Refugio County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1928, 1189–1192. 25. Warner, Texas Oil, 289–290. 26. Jack Logan, ‘‘Refugio Gas Field Originally Drilled for Oil,’’ OW, April 5, 1929, 37, 39. 27. Warner, Texas Oil, 290 –292. 28. OGJ, March 4, 1915, 17; March 11, 1915, 25; March 18, 1915, 12; March 27, 1924, 150; April 9, 1925, 38. H. P. Bybee and R. T. Short, ‘‘The Lytton Springs Oil Field,’’ University of Texas Bulletin no. 2539 (October 15, 1929), 17–31. D. M. Collingwood and R. E. Rettger, ‘‘The Lytton Springs Oil Field, Caldwell County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 953–959. OW, March 20, 1925, 58; April 13, 1925, 59. D. W. Collingwood and R. E. Rettger, ‘‘The Lytton Springs Oil Field, Caldwell County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1926, 953–975. 29. OW, August 14, 1925, 40, 42. 30. George Charlton Matson, ‘‘Gas Prospects South and Southwest of Dallas,’’ USGS Bulletin 629: Natural Gas Resources of Parts of North Texas (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916), 87– 88; Hudnall, ‘‘Corsicana-Powell Field,’’ 96. 31. Louise McDonald Finney, ‘‘The Old Mexia Field Has Interesting History,’’ Pure Oil News, August 1934, 5– 6; OGJ, November 18,

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1921, 66; W. E. Wrather, ‘‘The Mexia Pool, Mexia, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1921, 419– 421. 32. ‘‘Colonel Humphreys, King of the Wildcatters,’’ Waco TimesHerald, February 21, 1955; OGJ, December 31, 1920, 75. 33. James S. Hudnall, ‘‘Mexia Field,’’ in Herald, Northeast Texas, 232. OGJ, November 11, 1921, 78; December 30, 1921, 22. 34. Nadine Simmons, ‘‘Fortunes Made Overnight in Fast Lease Trading of Mexia Oil Boom,’’ Waco Times-Herald, February 17, 1955. OGJ, September 16, 1921, 57; November 11, 1921, 78. 35. Frederick R. Sheerer, ‘‘Currie Field, Navarro County, Texas,’’ in Herald, Northeast Texas, 230. Frederic Lahee, ‘‘The Currie Field, Navarro County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1923, 25. OGJ, January 20, 1922, 30; July 27, 1922, 1; October 21, 1921, 60. 36. OGJ, November 11, 1921, 78; December 2, 1921, 81. 37. OGJ, December 2, 1921, 73; March 8, 1923, 118. 38. OW, September 9, 1922, 35; OGJ, September 28, 1921, 56; James G. Dunn, ‘‘History of the Oil Industry in Navarro County’’ (master’s thesis, Baylor University, 1967), 63– 64, 65, 67. 39. Mexia Evening News, December 19, 1921. 40. Jacob F. Wolters, Martial Law and Its Administration (Austin: Gammel’s Book Store, 1930), 81– 82; P. D. Browne, ‘‘Freestone County’s Tragic Decade, 1921–1931: A Memoir,’’ Oral Memoirs of Philip Dale Browne (Program for Oral History, Baylor University, the Texas Collection), 3; P. D. Browne, interviewed by Rufus B. Spain, August 2, 1972 (Baylor Oral History Collection, Interview no. 5), 182–183. 41. Wolters, Martial Law, 84. 42. Ibid., 82– 87. 43. OGJ, December 2, 1921, 73; December 9, 1921, 70; December 30, 1921, 22; February 3, 1922, 90. 44. Finney, ‘‘Old Mexia Field,’’ 7. OGJ, August 30, 1923, 76; January 10, 1924, 74. 45. ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in East Central Texas,’’ Petroleum Engineer, July 1, 1936, 68 (hereafter cited as PE). 46. Owen, Trek, 844; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 133; Hudnall, ‘‘Corsicana-Powell Field,’’ 98. 47. Hudnall, ‘‘Corsicana Powell Field,’’ 104. OGJ, November 18, 1923, 42; November 25, 1923, 106; December 6, 1923, 116. 48. OGJ, November 25, 1923, 106. 49. Lahee, ‘‘Currie Field,’’ 47. Jasper L. Starnes, ‘‘Wortham Field,’’ in Herald, Northeast Texas, 437– 438. OGJ, December 4, 1924, 47; December 11, 1924, 48; December 18, 1924, 23, 35. OW, January 1, 1925, 50.

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50. Matson and Hopkins, ‘‘Corsicana Oil and Gas Field,’’ 217. Owens, Trek, 845– 846. OGJ, February 24, 1922, 56; November 13, 1923, 46; December 6, 1923, 46. OW, December 29, 1923, 51. 51. Riley Froh, Edgar B. Davis: Wildcatter Extraordinary (Luling, Texas: The Luling Foundation, 1984), 14. 52. OGJ, July 31, 1924, 86, 123; May 15, 1924, 148. 53. ‘‘Little Activity in East Central Texas with Production Declining,’’ OGJ, March 25, 1929, 36. 54. E. H. Sellards, ‘‘The Luling Oil Field in Caldwell County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1924, 775. Owens, Trek, 847– 849. Wallace E. Pratt, ‘‘Oil at Luling, Caldwell County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1923, 182. Ernest W. Brucks, ‘‘The Luling Field, Caldwell and Guadalupe Counties, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1925, 633. OW, August 26, 1922, 42; March 1, 1924, 44; March 22, 1924, 45; July 12, 1924, 42; August 8, 1924, 46; October 3, 1924, 178; January 30, 1925, 66. OGJ, May 15, 1924, 148. 55. Warner, Texas Oil, 292–294. 56. Minor, ‘‘Goose Creek Oil Field,’’ 288–290. OGJ, March 17, 1922, 1; May 15, 1924, 150; February 10, 1927, 212. OW, October 1, 1926, 35; January 21, 1927, 45; February 18, 1927, 75. 57. OGJ, February 10, 1927, 212; February 24, 1927, 151; May 19, 1927, 61; December 1, 1927, 67. OW, July 9, 1926, 28–30; January 21, 1927, 44. J. Brian Eby and Michel T. Halbouty, ‘‘Spindletop Oil Field, Jefferson County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1937, 477– 478. Fred Barry McKinley, ‘‘The Yount-Lee Oil Company’’ (master’s thesis, Lamar University, 1987), 29–33, 36, 38– 40, 63, 73. 58. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, Mineral Resources Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office), 1922, Part 2, 416; 1923, Part 2, 372–373, 375; 1924, Part 2, 391–392; 1925, Part 2, 356 –359, 329–330. OW, February 26, 1921, 83. OGJ, August 26, 1921, 16; October 14, 1921, 16; October 28, 1921, 18; January 27, 1922, 72, 93. 59. Bevier, ‘‘Barber’s Hill Oil Field.’’ 60. HP, August 5, 1901; Bowman, ‘‘South Dayton Salt Dome,’’ 655– 666. 61. Alva C. Ellisor, Rockhounds of Houston: An Informal History of the Houston Geological Society (Houston: Houston Geological Society, 1977), 8–13; Maria Spencer, interviewed by Diana Davids Olien, January 25, 1978, Midland, Texas. 62. OGJ, December 24, 1925, 60; December 31, 1925, 42; February 10, 1927, 122. 63. B. B. Weatherby, ‘‘The History and Development of Seismic Prospecting,’’ in Geophysical Case Histories, vol. 1, edited by L. L. Nettleton (n.p.: Society of Exploration Geophysicists, 1949), 13–17. 258

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64. Roy Wallace Davis, ‘‘Finding Salt Domes That Formerly Took Years of Drilling,’’ OW, September 4, 1925, 29–30; OGJ, February 10, 1927, 122; Sidney A. Judson, ‘‘Result of Operations on Gulf Coast,’’ OGJ, February 24, 1927, 97, 151–152; Jack Logan, ‘‘Discovery of Deep Domes Revises Gulf Coast Potentialities,’’ OW, July 26, 1929, 80 – 81, 204; W. B. McCarter and P. H. O’Bannon, ‘‘Sugarland Oil Field, Fort Bend County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1933, 1362–1363. 65. Jack Logan, ‘‘Discovery of Deep Domes,’’ 80. 66. W. L. Goldston, Jr., and George D. Stevens, ‘‘Esperson Dome, Liberty County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1934, 857– 858. 67. Wallace Davis, ‘‘Most of Recently Found Domes Were ‘Shot’ after Gas Seeps and Paraffine Dirt Showed the Way,’’ OW, February 1, 1919, 77; L. R. Teas, ‘‘Natural Gas of Gulf Coast Salt-dome Area,’’ in Geology of Natural Gas, edited by Henry A. Ley (Tulsa: AAPG, 1935), 692. 68. L. P. Teas and Charles R. Miller, ‘‘Raccoon Bend Oil Field, Austin County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1933, 1459–1461. 69. Ed Kilman and Theon Wright, Hugh Roy Cullen: A Story of American Opportunity (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954), 131, 137, 140 –145. 70. David G. McComb, Houston: The Bayou City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), 117. 71. Ernest Obadele-Starks, ‘‘Black Labor, the Black Middle Class, and Organized Protest along the Upper Texas Gulf Coast, 1883–1945,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1999, 58–59. 72. OW, March 11, 1922, 10. Port Arthur News, January 14, 1923, 1. OGJ, September 6, 1923, 56; January 10, 1924, 74; May 29, 1924, 21; August 26, 1926, 76. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 200 –206. 73. Port Arthur News, January 6, 1923, 1; March 3, 1923, 1; April 5, 1923, 1. OGJ, September 6, 1923, 56; January 1, 1925, 20, 116; April 2, 1927, 134. Sibley, Port of Houston, 161. 6. OIL IN COW COUNTRY 1. OGJ, August 6, 1920, 66; Samuel D. Myres, The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest: Era of Discovery, from the Beginning to the Depression (El Paso: Permian Press, 1973), 1– 4, 95–103; Charles D. Vertrees, ‘‘The Permian Basin,’’ in HOT. 2. Myres, Permian Basin, 43. 3. L. C. Snider, Oil and Gas in the Mid-Continent Fields (Oklahoma City: Harlow Publishing Co., 1920), 135; Wallace E. Pratt, ‘‘Oil and Gas in the Texas Panhandle,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1923, 246; Owen, Trek, 940. NOTES TO PAGES 131 – 139

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4. Charles N. Gould, Covered Wagon Geologist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959), 191–194; Charles N. Gould, ‘‘The Beginning of the Panhandle Oil and Gas Field,’’ in Panhandle Petroleum, edited by Bobby D. Weaver (Canyon, Texas: Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, 1982), 37– 47; N. D. Bartlett, ‘‘Discovery of the Panhandle Oil and Gas Field,’’ in Panhandle Petroleum, 49–51. The Amarillo Oil Company contracted drilling to the Hapgood Oil and Development Company of Oklahoma; Thomas F. Cartright, ‘‘History of Pioneer Natural Gas Company,’’ in Panhandle Petroleum, 75–76. 5. OGJ, December 26, 1919, 82; W. F. Kerr, ‘‘Possibilities of the Panhandle Continue to Attract Oil Men,’’ OGJ, October 5, 1922, 110. 6. H. H. King, ‘‘Panhandle District Potential Light Oil Area,’’ OW, March 15, 1924, 21; Bartlett, ‘‘Discovery,’’ 50; Owen, Trek, 941; C. Max Bauer, ‘‘Oil and Gas Fields of the Texas Panhandle,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1926, 733; OGJ, March 20, 1924, 44. 7. H. H. King, ‘‘Panhandle District,’’ 21; George R. Kelley, ‘‘Panhandle Area in Limelight in 1926,’’ OGJ, February 18, 1926, 38, 40; ‘‘Amarillo Area in Panhandle Scene of Much Field Activity,’’ OGJ, February 25, 1925, 33, 108; H. H. King, ‘‘High Gravity Oil Found in Five Counties of Texas Panhandle,’’ OW, January 15, 1926, 140 –142. By 1925, twenty-six Amarillo-based companies like Twin Six and Dixon Creek were successful in exploration, but Amarillo, like other booming oil towns, also had its share of local speculators and outside promoters (Bartlett, ‘‘Discovery,’’ 50 –51). 8. ‘‘Trucking Real Problem in Texas Panhandle,’’ OW, June 25, 1926, 42; H. H. King, ‘‘Shortage of Big Sizes in Pipe Threatens Slowing of Work in Panhandle,’’ OW, July 9, 1926, 42; Bartlett, ‘‘Discovery,’’ 51. 9. Magnolia had a six-inch line to the Santa Fe at Kingsmill, where it built a tank farm; Plains Pipe Line and Gulf built lines to Panhandle; and Marland, Magnolia, and Sinclair laid lines to tank farms and loading racks on the railroad by mid-1926. Only one small line, Pantex, went from the fields to the Amarillo Refining Company plant in Amarillo. H. H. King, ‘‘Transportation Problem Becomes Acute in Texas Panhandle,’’ OW, August 6, 1926, 29-30; H. H. King, ‘‘Price Increase Opens New Interest in Panhandle,’’ OW, April 16, 1926; C. D. Lockwood, ‘‘Texas Panhandle’s Great Half Year,’’ OGJ, July 29, 1926, 82; Kent Ridley, ‘‘Crude Market Not Necessarily Affected by Panhandle Producers’ Problems,’’ OW, August 6, 1926, 27; Kent Ridley, ‘‘Texas Panhandle Is Only Disturbing Influence Left as Crude Market Threat,’’ OW, August 20, 1926, 26. 10. J. L. Dwyer, ‘‘Heavy Shots Help Panhandle Output,’’ OGJ, April 29, 1926, 39; H. H. King, ‘‘Texas Panhandle Active Drilling Area,’’ OW, May 14, 1926, 70, 72; OGJ, June 17, 1926, 99. 260

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11. H. H. King, ‘‘Hutchinson County Leads Texas in Production,’’ OW, June 4, 1926, 53-4; OGJ, June 17, 1926, 99. 12. C. D. Lockwood, ‘‘Panhandle Completing Good Wells,’’ OGJ, August 12, 1926, 39; H. H. King, ‘‘Panhandle Wells Must Have Handling Facilities before Completion,’’ OW, August 13, 1926, 26; OW, August 20, 1926, 30. 13. H. H. King, ‘‘Start Three Ten-Inch Pipelines to Serve Panhandle,’’ OW, November 26, 1926, 25–26, 44; Warner, Texas Oil, 262. The Gulf-Magnolia line was a joint effort. 14. Cartright, ‘‘History of Pioneer,’’ 77– 80. OGJ, March 29, 1923, 82; November 25, 1923, 70. 15. Warner, Texas Oil, 268; C. O. Willson, ‘‘Casinghead Gas Output in Panhandle,’’ OGJ, July 29, 1926, 47; Victor Cotner and H. E. Crum, ‘‘Geology and Occurrence of Natural Gas in Amarillo District, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1933, 898– 899. Carbon black’s most important use was in tire manufacture, since it greatly strengthened rubber; it was also used in a great number of products ranging from phonograph records to printer’s ink. The first carbon-black plant permitted in Texas opened in Stephens County in 1923. The TRC also permitted carbonblack plants to burn ‘‘sour gas,’’ containing hydrogen sulfide. 16. Warner, Texas Oil, 268–269; James H. Dameron, ‘‘Gas Trunk Lines to Cost $50,000,000,’’ OGJ, July 21, 1927, 36, 87, 99; James H. Dameron, ‘‘Gas Dominates in Texas Panhandle,’’ OGJ, July 28, 1927, 168; Cotner and Crum, ‘‘Natural Gas,’’ 896 – 897; M. Elizabeth Sanders, The Regulation of Natural Gas: Policy and Politics, 1938–1978 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 25; Cartright, ‘‘History of Pioneer,’’ 80 – 84; Christopher J. Castaneda and Clarance M. Smith, Gas Pipelines and the Emergence of America’s Regulatory State: A History of Panhandle Eastern Corporation, 1928–1993 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 37. 17. Diana J. Kleiner, ‘‘Helium,’’ HOT 3: 545–546; C. W. Seibel, ‘‘The Development of Helium Production as Now Carried on at Amarillo, Texas by the U.S. Bureau of Mines, Department of the Interior,’’ Panhandle Petroleum, 118–123. 18. Della Tyler Key, In the Cattle Country: History of Potter County, 1887–1966, 2d ed. (Wichita Falls, Texas: Nortex Offset Publications, 1972), 265–266; Thomas Thompson, The Ware Boys: The Story of a Texas Family Bank (Canyon: Staked Plains Press, 1978), 108. 19. F. Stanley, The Phillips, Texas Story (Nazareth, Texas, n.p., 1975), 2–14; H. Allen Anderson, ‘‘Phillips, Texas,’’ HOT 5: 183–184; H. Allen Anderson, ‘‘Skellytown, Texas,’’ HOT 5: 1071–1072. 20. H. Allen Anderson, ‘‘Asa Phillip Borger,’’ HOT 1: 649– 650; H. Allen Anderson, ‘‘Borger, Texas’’ HOT 1: 650; H. H. King, ‘‘ExtenNOTES TO PAGES 143 – 146

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sion Well Booms Development of Gray County Field,’’ OW, June 18, 1926, 29. 21. Olien and Olien, Oil Booms, 128–129; Jerry Sinise, Black Gold and Red Lights (Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press, 1982), 96 –108 passim. 22. Myres, Permian Basin, 99–100, 103–114. Several of these tests produced small amounts of oil, from one to five barrels per day, but the oil had to be bailed or pumped. 23. J. A. Udden, ‘‘Notes on the Geology of the Glass Mountains,’’ University of Texas Bulletin no. 1753 (Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, September 20, 1917), 56 –58. Udden was careful to point out that there was little accurate geological knowledge of the area under discussion and that there was ‘‘exceedingly small chance of making the right location for a test’’ (p. 58) even with more study, a caveat that should have daunted wildcatters. 24. J. W. Beede, ‘‘Further Notes on the Structure Near Robert Lee, Coke County, Texas,’’ University of Texas Bulletin no. 1847 (Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, August 20, 1918); R. A. Liddle, ‘‘The Marathon Fold and Its Influence on Petroleum Accumulation,’’ University of Texas Bulletin no. 1847 (Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, August 20, 1918); Owen, Trek, 890. As Owen points out in Trek, although the Marathon Fold hypothesis turned out to be wrong, its supposed location coincided with dolomite formations containing many oil pools. 25. Myres, Permian Basin, 140 –149, 154 –156. 26. Ibid., 162–166; Owen, Trek, 886 – 887. 27. The best source on the discovery and development of the Big Lake field is Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘The Early Development of Big Lake Field, Reagan County, Texas’’ (master’s thesis, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, 1986). On Ricker, see J. C. Smith, ‘‘Early Development,’’ 9–13. See also Myres, Permian Basin, 195–197; Owen, Trek, 888– 889. On permits to prospect on university lands, see Berte R. Haigh, Land, Oil, and Education (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986), 122–124. Geologists R. A. Liddle and T. M. Prettyman, in fact, suggested that university lands in Reagan and Crockett counties had oil possibilities, again reasoning from the Marathon Fold hypothesis; see their ‘‘Geology and Mineral Resources of Crockett County with Notes on the Stratigraphy, Structure, and Oil Prospects of the Central Pecos Valley,’’ University of Texas Bulletin no. 1857 (Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, 1918), 85–90. 28. J. C. Smith, ‘‘Early Development,’’ 13. 29. Ibid., 15–18; Myres, Permian Basin, 200 –201. 30. J. C. Smith, ‘‘Early Development,’’ 21–29.

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31. The classic tale about the name Santa Rita, put about by Frank Pickrell, has the name of the well suggested by a salesman pushing certificates to ladies at a Catholic sodality in New York, Santa Rita being the ‘‘patron saint of the impossible.’’ Pickrell said that the ladies gave him a rose blessed by their priest and told him to scatter the petals at the well and name it for Santa Rita, which he did (Myres, Permian Basin, 205). It is at least equally probable that the name came to the mind of Haymon Krupp because of a New Mexico copper mine promotion that had been very profitable (J. C. Smith, ‘‘Early Development,’’ 16). 32. Myres, Permian Basin, 216 –223; J. C. Smith, ‘‘Early Development,’’ 55– 61. In fact, the discovery was on the western edge of the pool; Mallison, Great Wildcatter, 342. 33. Big Lake Oil was the subsidiary of another new Benedum creation, Plymouth Oil. Mallison, Great Wildcatter, 334; ‘‘West Texas Producer and Acreage Sold to Benedum and Trees for Close to a Million,’’ OW, October 20, 1923, 14. 34. Myres, Permian Basin, 226 –228. On the sale of Big Lake crude, see Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 21. 35. Owen, Trek, 890. 36. On Bunker’s promotions, see Olien and Olien, Easy Money, 163–167. See also, Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 22–23; Myres, Permian Basin, 313–314. 37. Owen, Trek, 890 – 891. 38. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 25. 39. Ibid.; Owen, Trek, 893; Myres, Permian Basin, 346 –350; Historical Committee of the Fort Worth Petroleum Club, Oil Legends, 148, 165–166. For a long list of such sellouts, see H. H. King, ‘‘Stronger Companies Quick to Buy Wildcat Discoveries,’’ OW, July 27, 1928, 97–98. 40. J. J. Bowden, Uncertain Riches: The Discovery and Exploitation of the Yates Oil Field (Austin: Eakin Press, 1991), 40 – 43; Mallison, Great Wildcatter, 300 –304, 307–308, 310 –311; Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘Yates Oilfield,’’ HOT 6: 1113–1114. 41. Bowden, Uncertain Riches, 43; Brad Mills, ‘‘Seepage Oil Recovery,’’ OW, April 6, 1936, 22–23; ‘‘Completion Indicates Wide Extent of Yates Field,’’ OW, August 5, 1927, 39; ‘‘Big Production in Yates Field Extended Mile East,’’ OW, August 26, 1927, 41; H. H. King, ‘‘Yates Pool Yield Most Economical,’’ OGJ, December 22, 1927, 22; James H. Dameron, ‘‘Peculiarities of the Pecos Oil Field,’’ OGJ, September 1, 1927, 29. 42. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 46 – 47; H. H. King, ‘‘Gauge Reveals Yates Field Capable of 313,381 Barrels,’’ OW, November 11, 1927, 29–30; H. H. King, ‘‘Yates Field Proration Plan Change Due First of

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Year’’ OW, December 2, 1927, 71; R. W. Richmond, ‘‘Proration and Its Effects in the Yates Pool,’’ OW, March 14, 1930, 58; ‘‘History of Yates Oil Field, Pecos County, Texas,’’ unpublished typescript in author’s possession, typescript author’s name illegible. 43. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 46 – 47; H. H. King, ‘‘Yates Field Proration Plan,’’ 71. 44. Olien and Olien, Easy Money, 147–149; Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘Hendrick Oil Field, Winkler County,’’ Permian Historical Annual (1992), 53– 60. 45. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 48– 49; H. H. King, ‘‘Southern Withdrawing as West Texas Crude Buyer,’’ OW, December 2, 1927, 66; H. H. King, ‘‘Peculiar Water Trouble Develops in Hendrick Field,’’ OW, January 13, 1928, 37–38. 46. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 50; ‘‘Commission Orders Proration for Hendrick Field,’’ OW, April 27, 1928, 27–28, 34; H. H. King, ‘‘Winkler County Proration Has Increased Recovery,’’ OW, August 2, 1929, 31, 35; James H. Dameron, ‘‘Year of Big Events in West Texas,’’ OGJ, January 31, 1929, 112. 47. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 51. 48. Berte Haigh, ‘‘The University of Texas and Its Land,’’ in Myres, Permian Basin, 519–523; Bert R. Haigh, Land, Oil, and Education (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986), 33–35. Texas A&M, whose founding predated that of the University of Texas by a decade, was established as a federal land grant school. The best scholarly discussion of this subject is David F. Prindle, ‘‘Oil and the Permanent University Fund: The Early Years,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly, October 1982, 277–298. 49. Haigh, ‘‘University of Texas,’’ 523, 528; Prindle, ‘‘Permanent University Fund,’’ 278. 50. Haigh, Land, Oil, and Education, 118–119; A. W. Walker, Jr., ‘‘The Texas Relinquishment Act,’’ in Southwestern Legal Foundation, First Annual Institute on Oil and Gas Law and Taxation as It Affects the Oil and Gas Industry (Albany, N.Y.: Matthew Bender and Co., 1949), 255–256; Haigh, ‘‘University of Texas,’’ 530. 51. Haigh, ‘‘University of Texas,’’ 530; Haigh, Land, Oil, and Education, 155; Bowden, Uncertain Riches, 39. 52. Prindle, ‘‘Permanent University Fund,’’ 290 –291; Myres, Permian Basin, 270 –277; Haigh, ‘‘University of Texas,’’ 531–532. 53. Haigh, ‘‘University of Texas,’’ 527; Prindle, ‘‘Permanent University Fund,’’ 292–294. 54. Walker, ‘‘Relinquishment Act,’’ 259. 55. Ibid., 259–262; Bowden, Uncertain Riches, 38– 40. 56. Olien and Olien, Oil Booms, 11–17. 264

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57. Ibid., 46 – 47; Myres, Permian Basin, 259; Olien and Olien, Life in the Oil Fields, 109–124 passim. 58. Myres, Permian Basin, 611– 612. 7. THE COLOSSUS OF TEXAS BOOMS 1. James A. Clark and Michel T. Halbouty, The Last Boom (New York: Random House, 1972), 6 –9, 15–21; Dorman H. Winfrey, ‘‘Columbus Marion Joiner,’’ in HOT 3: 973. Dallas journalist Paul Crume claimed that Joiner’s death certificate was issued for Clarence Marion Joiner; Dallas Morning News, December 6, 1955. 2. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 4, 8–9, 19–21; Joiner obituary, Dallas Morning News, March 29, 1947. On the economic history of the northern part of East Texas, see Walter L. Buenger, ‘‘ ‘This Wonder Age’: The Economic Transformation of Northeast Texas, 1900 –1930,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1995, 519–550. 3. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 448– 449; H. H. King, ‘‘Another East Texas Fault Field Indicated by Van Zandt Well,’’ OW, October 8, 1929, 54; Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 23–25; Owen, Trek, 858. That geologists had taken a strong interest in the East Texas Woodbine but simply had not hit the right location was pointed out by Wallace E. Pratt to Everette DeGolyer, July 10, 1941, DeGolyer Papers, Folder 1513, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. 4. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 17–19; Olien and Olien, Easy Money, 30 –33. 5. C. M. Joiner Oil Development, promotional letter, July 1, 1929, East Texas Oil Museum archives. Lloyd’s report, ‘‘Geological, Topographical, and Petroliferous Survey, Portion of Rusk County, Texas,’’ is reprinted in Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 295–300. As they note (p. 256, 110) of Lloyd’s anticlines, salt dome, and fault, every important feature in the report was incorrect. See also Judith King, ed., An Oilman’s Oilman: A Biographical Treatment of Walter W. Lechner by James A. Clark (Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., 1979), 65– 66; Owen, Trek, 857. On pseudogeology, see Olien and Olien, Easy Money, 30 –33. 6. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 26 –29, 34; E. C. Laster, interviewed by R. M. Hayes, Shreveport, La. (PTO). 7. The majority of sources give the date as October 3; Clark and Halbouty say October 5 (Last Boom, 79, 26 –29, 66 – 67). Later wells drilled with up-to-date equipment usually took only eight to ten days to drill and complete. H. E. Minor and Marcus A. Hanna, ‘‘East Texas Oil Field, Rusk, Cherokee, Smith, Gregg, and Upshur Counties, Texas,’’ in Stratigraphic Type Oil Fields, edited by A. I. Levorsen (Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1941), 629; Gerald Lynch, RoughNOTES TO PAGES 165 – 170

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necks, Drillers, and Tool Pushers: Thirty-Three Years in the Oil Fields (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 70. See also Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 56 –57. 8. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 82. 9. Ibid., 95–107 passim. On the Lathrop well, see also J. King, ed., Oilman’s Oilman, 69– 83; ‘‘ ‘You Have Made Yourself a Deal,’ Said Monty Moncrief,’’ Petroleum Independent, November–December, 1972, 6 –7; Tyler Journal, January 2, 30, 1931; ‘‘Second Oil Area in Rusk County Appears Likely,’’ OW, December 26, 1930; OW, January 16, 1931, 70. 10. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 109; Minor and Hanna, ‘‘East Texas Oil Field,’’ 601, 629; ‘‘New East Texas Crude Has Good Refining Qualities,’’ OW, February 6, 1931, 70. ‘‘East Texas Oil Attractive to Small Refiners,’’ OW, March 6, 1931, 55. 11. Jack Logan, ‘‘Fast Drilling in Soft Formations Makes for Low Drilling Costs in East Texas,’’ OW, March 6, 1931, 29; ‘‘Many Operators Are Attracted to Rusk County Oil Area,’’ OW, January 9, 1931; Lynch, Roughnecks, 54 –55; ‘‘Major Companies Are Buying East Texas Proven Acreage,’’ OW, August 7, 1931, 59. 12. Austin American-Statesman, March 3, 1954; New York Times, August 23, 1964; H. L. Hunt, Hunt Heritage: The Republic and Our Families (Dallas: Parade Press, 1973), 70 –74. 13. Tyler Journal, August 22, September 12, 1930; A History of the Hunt Oil Company (Dallas: Hunt Oil Co., 1984), p. 16. 14. Hunt, Hunt Heritage, 89–90; Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 66 – 67, 83– 84, 95–96. 15. Joiner Property File, Hunt Oil Company, Dallas. 16. Tyler Journal, November 31, 1930. 17. Joiner Property File, Hunt Oil Company, Dallas. 18. Joiner Memo, Joiner Property File, Hunt Oil Company, Dallas. 19. Contract, Joiner Property File, Hunt Oil Company, Dallas; Rusk County Deed Records 160: 56. 20. Joiner Memo; pencil note on contract, Joiner Property File, Hunt Oil Company, Dallas. 21. See the following, all in Joiner Property File, Hunt Oil Company, Dallas: Joiner notes and memos, November 20, 1931; December 12, 1930; December 15, 1930; December 6, 1930; November 20, 1931. Assignments, September 1, 1931; March 2, 1935; December 3, 1930; August 11, 1931; June 23, 1933. Releases, C. L. Garrett to H. L. Hunt, March 2, 1935; December 13, 1930; Quitclaim, Fannie S. Joiner et al., and Hunt Production Company, March 2, 1935; Hunt Production Company to C. M. Joiner, November 25, 1931, and January 23, 1933. See also C. M. Joiner, Trustee, to H. L. Hunt, Trustee, Rusk County Deed 266

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Records, 160: 56; John Joiner v. C. M. Joiner, District Court of Smith County, Docket no. 3032A (1931). 22. Tyler Journal, February 20, 1931; June 23, 1934. History of Hunt Oil Company, 16. 23. Hunt, Hunt Heritage, 98–101. 24. Olien and Olien, Life in the Oil Fields, 30; Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 126, 129–130; A. C. Hopper, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, August 8, 1970, Paris, Texas, (East Texas Oil Museum Collection; hereafter cited as ETO); B. C. Baldwin, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, September 19, 1970, San Antonio, Texas (ETO); Mrs. L. L. Tullos Skeeters, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, n.d., Kilgore, Texas (ETO); Mrs. Olga Hermann Lapin, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, July 3, 1970, Kilgore, Texas (ETO); Kilgore News-Herald, August 19, 1951; Bill Taylor, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, Longview, Texas, August 13, 1970 (ETO); Tyler Journal, February 13, 1931. 25. Jack Logan, ‘‘East Texas: Whether One Pool or a Series of Pools, It’s a Big Oil Field,’’ OW, February 27, 1931, 28–29. 26. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 127, 136; Harry Hotchkin, ‘‘Hitting the Shore Line,’’ Saturday Evening Post, July 18, 1931, 49; Jack Logan, ‘‘East Texas,’’ 27–29; Kilgore News-Herald, August 19, 1951. 27. Harold R. Johnson, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, August 15, 1970, Tomball, Texas (ETO); Mary Ann Bean, interviewed by L. Welch, Kilgore, Texas, January 28, 1979 (ETO); Sis Dickerson, interviewed by Camie Dell Reich, Kilgore, Texas, October 6, 1978 (ETO); A. C. Hopper interview; Skeeters interview; Kilgore News-Herald, August 19, 1951. 28. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 58; H. J. Struth, ‘‘Crude Price Down Seventy-Eight Percent,’’ OW, June 12, 1931, 24. 29. In 1929, industry representatives approached the Justice Department with the suggestion that voluntary agreements to control production in specific oil pools could promote conservation and should be exempt from antitrust prosecution. The department rejected the proposal. Clarence L. Linz, ‘‘Washington Withholds Approval of Institute’s Conservation Plan,’’ OW, April 12, 1929, 37; Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 51. 30. For an extended discussion of controversy over waste, see Olien and Olien, Oil and Ideology, chapters 6 – 8. See also American Petroleum Institute, American Petroleum Supply and Demand (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1925), 82. 31. Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 222; ‘‘Texas Legislature Investigation Nearing Termination,’’ OW, July 31, 1931, 99. 32. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 54, 60 – 61; ‘‘Mass Meeting Seeks Control of East Texas by Legislation,’’ OW, June 12, 1931, 67; NOTES TO PAGES 175 – 182

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‘‘Fate of ‘Cranfill Plan’ Weighed in the Balance,’’ OW, June 26, 1931, 50; ‘‘Texas Legislature Investigation Nearing Termination,’’ OW, July 31, 1931, 99. 33. Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 221; Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 55–56; Malavis, Pure and Humble, 62– 63. 34. Malavis, Pure and Humble, 72; ‘‘Proration of Rusk-Gregg Area Is Planned,’’ OW, January 23, 1931, 71; ‘‘Enforcement of Joiner Area Proration Appears Difficult,’’ OW, January 16, 1931, 71; ‘‘East Texas Potential Set at 1,544,322 Barrels Daily,’’ OW, June 5, 1931; Tyler Journal, January 16, 1931. 35. ‘‘Posted Price Below Lifting Cost on 25,000 Small Wells,’’ OW, June 5, 1931, 66; H. J. Struth, ‘‘Crude Price Down Seventy-Eight Percent,’’ OW, June 12, 1931, 24; H. H. King, ‘‘East Texas Highlights,’’ OW, July 10, 1931, 61. 36. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 59– 61; ‘‘Mass Meeting Seeks Control of East Texas by Legislation,’’ OW, June 12, 1931, 67; ‘‘Fate of ‘Cranfill Plan’ Weighed in the Balance,’’ OW, June 26, 1931, 50; Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 230. 37. For an analysis of Judge Hutcheson’s perspective, see Olien and Olien, Oil and Ideology, chapter 8; Malavis, Pure and Humble, 81– 86; Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 229–231. An additional complication was the East Texas field’s being a water-drive rather than gas-drive reservoir; scientists were more familiar with the mechanics of gas drive, for which they had begun to amass extensive scientific data; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 438– 443. 38. Malavis, Pure and Humble, 81– 82; Warner E. Mills, Jr., Martial Law in East Texas (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), 12–14. 39. W. E. Mills, Martial Law in East Texas, 18–19; Malavis, Pure and Humble, 88–90; Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 232. 40. W. E. Mills, Martial Law in East Texas, 25. 41. Ibid., 26 –28; Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 233; Kilgore NewsHerald, August 19, 1951. Wolters was also a Texas Company attorney. 42. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 180; Malavis, Pure and Humble, 95, 106 –108; W. E. Mills, Martial Law in East Texas, 34 –37; Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 234; Kilgore News-Herald, August 19, 1951. 43. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 178–179, 184, 187–188; J. Howard Marshall, Done in Oil: An Autobiography, edited by Robert L. Bradley, Jr. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994), 46 – 47; Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 239. 44. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 210; Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 60 – 61; Olien and Olien, Oil and Ideology, 195–199. For Parten’s role in the East Texas controversy, see Don E. Carleton, A Breed So Rare: The Life of J. R. Parten, Liberal Texas Oil Man, 1896–1992 (Austin: 268

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Texas State Historical Association, 1998), chapters 4 –9. The standard biography, near hagiography, of Thompson is James A. Clark’s Three Stars for the Colonel (New York: Random House, 1954); for a more upto-date scholarly assessment, see Childs, ‘‘Transformation of the Railroad Commission,’’ 318–322, 324 –326. On Abercrombie, see Patrick J. Nicholson, Mr. Jim: The Biography of James Smither Abercrombie (Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., 1983). 45. The TRC had tried affidavits earlier, with similar results. Clark and Halbouty, Last Boom, 213, 215, 221–223; Marshall, Done in Oil, 43; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 484 – 485. 46. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 469; Hardwicke, ‘‘Legal History,’’ 236 –237, 246 –247; Malavis, Pure and Humble, 165–166, 182–184, 186 –187. 47. Ludwig Schmidt and John M. Devine, The Disposal of OilField Brines, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Mines, Reports of Investigations, Serial 2945 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, June, 1929), 9, 14, 15–16; ‘‘Salt Water Storage,’’ OGJ, August 3, 1911, 12; Grady Triplett, ‘‘Salt Water Company Serves Useful End,’’ OW, December 26, 1924, 31; Wallace Davis, ‘‘Coastal Operators Have Pollution Problem Well in Hand,’’ OW, January 14, 1927, 47; S. W. Oberg, ‘‘Salt Water Disposal,’’ OW, September 6, 1929, 58, 60; Earl S. Post, ‘‘Salt Water System Handles Disposal Economically,’’ OW, June 26, 1931, 27–30. 48. ‘‘East Texas Operators Plan for Handling Water Problem,’’ OW, June 12, 1931, 22; Neil Williams, ‘‘Salt Water Disposal Will Be One of East Texas’ Problems,’’ OGJ, July 9, 1931, 88; L. E. Bredberg, ‘‘Saltwater Disposal Costly Problem,’’ OGJ, August 13, 1931, 24. 49. ‘‘East Texas Operators,’’ 22; N. Williams, ‘‘Salt Water Disposal,’’ 88; Bredberg, ‘‘Salt Water,’’ 24; M. J. Goodnight, ‘‘Present SaltWater Separation and Disposal Methods Used in East Texas Field,’’ PE, November, 1937, 65–70. 50. Jack McWilliams, ‘‘Large Saltwater-Disposal Systems at East Texas and Hastings Oil Fields, Texas,’’ in Underground Waste Management and Environmental Implications, edited by T. D. Cook (Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1972), 331; typescript, transcript of hearing of Conference on Disposal of Oil Field Wastes, March 25, 1939, Austin, Texas, in Midland County Library. 8. SURVIVAL AND GROWTH 1. ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in North Texas,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 89–92; ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in Texas Panhandle, PE, July 1, 1936, 97–100; ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in NOTES TO PAGES 189 – 194

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West Texas,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 133–143; H. H. King, ‘‘Permian Basin Crude Reserves Increasing,’’ OW, July 19, 1937, 38; Frank B. Taylor and Warren L. Baker, ‘‘Permian Basin Drilling Activity at Record Level,’’ OW, July 19, 1937, 44; Owen, Trek, 906 –907. 2. Diana Davids Olien and Roger M. Olien, ‘‘Oil and Community Development in Ector County, Texas, 1920 –1960,’’ Permian Historical Annual (1995), 34 –36; ‘‘Proceed with Ector County Development,’’ OW, July 17, 1933, 124. 3. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 69–71; Ralph O. Harvey, Jr., interviewed by Diana Davids Olien and Roger M. Olien, July 25, 1996, Wichita Falls, Texas. The TRC set limits on both the amount a given oil field could produce and the amount any individual well could produce— a regulatory policy known as field allowable and well allowable. 4. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 70 –71. 5. Owen, Trek, 506 –508, 516 –518, 529–530. 6. Wichita Daily Times, July 1, 1929; April 1, 1936. Harvey interview. Owen, Trek, 603. ‘‘Review of Petroleum in North Texas,’’ 90. 7. ‘‘Review of Petroleum Production in North Texas,’’ 92; H. H. King, ‘‘Permian Basin Crude,’’ 22; OW, July 19, 1937, 38; J. J. Maucini, ‘‘Developments in North-Central and West-Central Texas, 1938,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1939, 844. 8. Owen, Trek, 603; Karl A. Mygdal, ‘‘Developments in North and West-Central Texas, 1939,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1940, 1044, 1048– 1049. 9. Wise County Messenger, July 15, 1920; July 30, 1920; October 2, 1922; February 16, 1923; April 26, 1923; November 12, 19, 1936; September 23, 1937; October 7, 1937. 10. ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in Texas Panhandle,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 97. 11. Maurice Cheek, ‘‘Legal History of Conservation of Gas in Texas,’’ in American Bar Association, Legal History of Conservation of Oil and Gas (Chicago: Mineral Law Section, American Bar Association, 1938), 269–286. 12. Ibid., 271–274. 13. Ibid., 274 –279. 14. Ibid., 282–285; Robert E. Hardwicke, ‘‘Texas, 1938–1948,’’ in Conservation of Oil and Gas: A Legal History, 1948, edited by Blakely M. Murphy (Chicago: Mineral Law Section, American Bar Association, 1949), 497– 499; Erich W. Zimmerman, Conservation in the Production of Petroleum: A Study in Industrial Control (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 252–255.

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15. Myres, Permian Basin, 122–124; Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 69–71; Harvey interview. 16. ‘‘Review of Petroleum Developments in West Texas,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 134; B. G. Margin and Brad Mills, ‘‘World’s Deepest Test,’’ OW, July 1, 1935, 33. 17. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 74. 18. Myres, Era of Advancement, 127; Historical Committee of the Fort Worth Petroleum Club, Oil Legends, 187–188; Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 75–76. 19. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 73–74; Historical Committee of the Fort Worth Petroleum Club, Oil Legends, 93–94; H. H. King, ‘‘Wasson-Bennett Merging to Make Largest, Most Active Field in Permian Basin Area,’’ OW, August 7, 1939, 20 –28 passim; Julia Cauble Smith, ‘‘Wasson Field,’’ Permian Historical Annual (1994), 71–75. 20. H. H. King, ‘‘Wasson-Bennett Merging,’’ 20 –28; Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 80 – 82. 21. Edd Cox, interviewed by Roger M. Olien, and Clell Reed, interviewed by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, as quoted in Olien and Olien, Life in the Oil Fields, 95. 22. Harvey interview; Myres, Era of Advancement, 95. 23. Diana Davids Olien, ‘‘Ladies in Oil,’’ paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Texas State Historical Association, March 1998; Bessie Leonard, interviewed by Diana Davids Olien, May 19, 1978, Midland, Texas (Authors’ collection); Olien and Olien, Oil Booms, 87–124 passim. 24. Andrews County Heritage Committee, Andrews County History, 1876–1978 (Andrews, Texas: Andrews County Heritage Committee, 1978), 110 –116; Texas Almanac, 1933 (Dallas: A. H. Belo Corporation, 1932), 54, 328; Texas Almanac, 1943–1944 (Dallas: A. H. Belo Corporation, 1942), 71. 25. A. E. Getzendaner, ‘‘McFaddin-O’Connor, Greta, Fox, Refugio, White Point and Saxet fields, Texas.’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1934, 1805; J. C. Poole, ‘‘Saxet Oil and Gas Field, Nueces County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1940, 110, 1832. 26. R. A. Stanley, J. C. Montgomery, and H. D. Easton, Jr., ‘‘Greta Oil Field, Refugio County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1935, 546, 548. 27. OW, March 20, 1933, 4. 28. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 405– 406. 29. Herbert G. Mills, ‘‘Geology of Tom O’Connor Field, Refugio County, Texas,’’ in Geology of Giant Petroleum Fields, edited by Michel T. Halbouty (Tulsa: AAPG, 1970), 198–199; Frank J. Gardner, ‘‘Reference Report on Oil and Gas Fields of the Texas Lower Coast,’’ Five Star Oil Report (Dallas, 1952), 195; OW, September 28, 1935, 52.

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30. John Trenchard and J. Barney Whisenant, ‘‘Government Wells Oil Field, Duval County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1935, 1133, 1142. OW, June 24, 1935, 57; July 1, 1935, 91; September 28, 1936, 37. 31. OW, September 28, 1936, 37; Eugene L. Earl and F. W. Mueller, ‘‘Sam Fordyce Field, Hidalgo County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1939, 1874. 32. David L. Sadler, ‘‘Seeligson Field, Jim Wells-Kleberg Counties, Texas,’’ in Typical Oil and Gas Fields of South Texas, vol. 2 (Corpus Christi: Corpus Christi Geological Society, 1988), 343. 33. William C. Woolley, ‘‘Geophysical History of the La Gloria Field, Jim Wells and Brooks Counties, Texas,’’ in Case Histories 1: 379–388. 34. Dorothy Abbott McCoy, Oil, Mud, and Guts (Brownsville, Texas: privately published, 1977), 4, 20, 129. 35. ‘‘South Texas Oil Town Outgrows Rough Image,’’ Midland Reporter-Telegram, September 22, 1985; Robert H. Yelvington, ‘‘Oil Boom,’’ Alice Echo and Energy News, January 3, 1987. 36. OW, October 9, 1939, 127, 129, 131; September 28, 1936, 67; September 30, 1937, 67. PE, July 1, 1936, 37. Corpus Christi CallerTimes, August 17, 1930. 37. Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, Corpus Christi: The Oil Capital of South Texas (Corpus Christi: Chamber of Commerce, 1938), n.p. 38. Owen, Trek, 768–769; Kilman and Wright, Hugh Roy Cullen, 145. 39. Patrick O’Bryan, The Great Conroe Oil Field (n.p., n.d. [Conroe, Texas: 1956]), 10, 12, 19, 21, 23, 28; Joseph A. Kornfeld, ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in Coastal Texas,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 36; Frank W. Michaux, Jr., and E. O. Buck, ‘‘Conroe Oil Field, Montgomery County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1936, 736. 40. J. Brian Eby, ‘‘The Geophysics of the Tomball Oil Field, Harris County, Texas,’’ in Case Histories 1: 95–104. 41. Owen, Trek, 786. 42. R. A. Weingartner, ‘‘Geophysical Case History of the Hastings Oil Field, Brazoria and Galveston Counties, Texas,’’ in Geophysical Case Histories, vol. 2, edited by Paul L. Lyons (n.p.: Society of Exploration Geophysicists, 1956), 156 –165 (hereafter cited as Case Histories 2). 43. Glenn E. Bader, ‘‘Geophysical History of the Anahuac Oil Field, Chambers County, Texas,’’ Case Histories 1: 66 –73. 44. H. G. Patrick, ‘‘Case History of the Friendswood (Webster) Oil Field, Harris County, Texas,’’ in Case Histories 1: 74 – 84. 45. Owen, Trek, 772–773. 272

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46. Michel T. Halbouty, ‘‘Old Ocean Field, Brazoria and Matagorda Counties, Texas,’’ Natural Gases of North America (Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1968), 295; McCarter and O’Bannon, ‘‘Sugarland Oil Field,’’ 1380 –1381; L. P. Teas and Charles R. Miller, ‘‘Raccoon Bend Oil Field, Austin County, Texas,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1933, 1488. 47. OGJ, September 2, 1918, 18; December 30, 1926, 57. Offshore leasing began in 1922. 48. OW, September 9, 1935, 78; December 9, 1935, 57; May 25, 1936, 20. Joseph A. Kornfeld, ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in Coastal Texas,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 46, 48. 49. Owen, Trek, 800. The most complete account of offshore activity to the 1960s is Tai Kreidler, ‘‘The Offshore Oil Industry’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1997). 50. OGJ, March 26, 1936, 24; OGJ, April 17, 1941, 72–73; ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in Coastal Texas,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 48; ‘‘Oil and Mineral Possibilities on the Continental Shelves of the United States and Alaska,’’ Statement of W. E. Wrather, director of the USGS. U.S. Cong., Senate, Special Committee Investigating Petroleum Resources, Investigation of Petroleum Resources: New Sources of Petroleum in the United States, Hearings of the 79th Congress, 1st Session, June 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945), 9. 51. ‘‘Review of Petroleum Development in Coastal Texas,’’ PE, July 1, 1936, 53. 52. J. Kent Ridley, ‘‘Petroleum Refining,’’ Houston, June 1930, 18–19. For an overview of the process, see William L. Leffler, Petroleum Refining for the Non-Technical Person (Tulsa: PennWell Books, 1979), 39– 48. 53. George Reid, ‘‘Refining Capacity of Gulf Coast Growing,’’ OW, March 16, 1936, 74 –75. 54. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 356, 358, 360 –361, 375; Carl B. King and Howard W. Risher, Jr., The Negro in the Petroleum Industry, Racial Policies of American Industry, Report 5 (Philadelphia: Industrial Research Unit, Department of Industry, Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania, 1969), 28; Ernest Obadele-Starks, ‘‘Black Labor, the Black Middle Class, and Organized Protest along the Upper Texas Gulf Coast, 1883–1945,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1999, 53– 65. 9. TEXAS OIL GOES TO WAR 1. Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 531–533. 2. Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide: 1944 (Dallas: NOTES TO PAGES 215 – 220

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A. H. Belo Corporation, 1943), 171, 175–176; Leeston, Crichton, and Jacobs, The Dynamic Natural Gas Industry, 9. 3. Texas Almanac, 1944, 173–174. 4. Alexander B. Morris, ‘‘Big Companies Still Far from Monopoly in Texas Production,’’ OW, March 11, 1940, 26, 28. 5. A. G. White et al., ‘‘Crude Petroleum and Petroleum Products,’’ in United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, Minerals Yearbook: Review of 1940 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1941), 965, 933–934; L. J. Logan, ‘‘Increased Profits Ahead If Surpluses Are Checked,’’ OW, April 15, 1940, 13; L. J. Logan, ‘‘Surplus Gasoline and Small Exports Handicap Industry,’’ OW, June 10, 1940, 12–14, 44. 6. OW, September 2, 1940, 41; L. J. Logan, ‘‘Higher Costs ⫹ Lower Volume ⫹ Altered Yields ⫹ Price Control ⫽ Disaster!’’ OW, August 3, 1942, 12; Robert S. Dewey, ‘‘Developments in West Texas during 1942,’’ in Transactions, AIME, 1943, 547. 7. ‘‘Liberal Exemptions to M-68 Order Appeal Probable,’’ OW, January 12, 1942, 10 –12; ‘‘New Orders Give Oil Priority Ratings; Force Unitization’’ OW, January 19, 1942, 13–15; M. G. Cheney, ‘‘Advances in Oil Prices Needed to Avert Threatened Shortage,’’ OW, November 2, 1942, 15; Logan, ‘‘Higher Costs,’’ 12. 8. ‘‘Oil Placed Under Virtual Wartime Federal Control,’’ OW, December 29, 1941, 10 –13; Olien and Olien, Oil and Ideology. 9. William R. Childs, ‘‘Texas, the Interstate Oil Compact Commission, and State Control of Oil Production: Regionalism, States’ Rights, and Federalism during World War II,’’ Pacific Historical Review, 1995, 586 –587. By contrast, in California, which had no comparable state regulatory body, federal regulation by the PAW was far more comprehensive, including control of production. 10. Ibid., 585. 11. J. A. Clark, Three Stars, 181–183. 12. Ibid., 200 –202; Blakely M. Murphy, ed., Conservation of Oil and Gas: A Legal History (Chicago: Mineral Law Section, American Bar Association, 1949), 488, 198–199. 13. J. A. Clark, Three Stars, 201; Murphy, Legal History, 487– 488. 14. J. A. Clark, Three Stars, 201–202; Murphy, Legal History, 499. 15. Arch J. Rowan, ‘‘Drilling Efficiency under Wartime Conditions,’’ PE, December 1943, 92–96. OW, October 6, 1942, 18; November 16, 1942, 8; February 15, 1943, 39; July 12, 1943, 43. 16. National Oil Scouts and Landman’s Association, Oil and Gas Field Development in the United States (Austin: National Oil Scouts and Landman’s Association) (1942), 481– 486; (1943), 512–514; (1945),

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618 (hereafter cited as National Scouts); D. V. Carter and K. M. Fagin, ‘‘Development and Production in East and East Central Texas in 1942,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1943, 467; D. V. Carter and Dan C. Williams, Jr., ‘‘Development and Production in East and East Central Texas in 1943,’’ in Transactions, AIME, 1944, 470; D. V. Carter, Dan C. Williams, Jr., and John R. Coombs, ‘‘Development and Production in East and East Central Texas in 1944,’’ in Transactions, AIME, 1945, 507–516; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 635. 17. Christopher J. Castaneda and Joseph A. Pratt, From Texas to the East: A Strategic History of Texas Eastern Corporation (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993), 22–25; the Editors of Look, Oil for Victory: The Story of Petroleum in War and Peace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), 114 –115; Marshall, Done in Oil, 128–129. 18. McWilliams, ‘‘Large Saltwater-Disposal Systems,’’ 333; ‘‘Thompson Praises Eastex Brine Plan,’’ Dallas Morning News, June 11, 1943. 19. National Scouts (1941), 455; (1942), 574; (1943), 593. Lewis W. MacNaughton and R. B. Gilmore, ‘‘Oil and Gas Development and Production in North Texas for the Year 1942,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1943, 501. M. G. Cheney, ‘‘Oil and Gas Production in West Central Texas in 1942,’’ in Transactions, AIME, 1943, 567. V. C. Perini, Jr., ‘‘Oil and Gas Production in North Central Texas in 1943,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1944, 504. 20. National Scouts (1943), 640; (1942), 603; (1946), 749–752. 21. National Scouts (1941), 554 –558; Robert S. Dewey, ‘‘Developments in West Texas during 1942,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1943, 547. 22. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 81; Dewey, ‘‘Developments during 1942,’’ 554; Frank Briggs, ‘‘Deep West Texas Drilling Presents Many Problems,’’ OW, September 6, 1943, 48, 52, 54; National Scouts (1944), 708. 23. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 85; Robert S. Dewey, ‘‘Developments in West Texas Oil Fields during 1943,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1944, 537. 24. Olien and Olien, Wildcatters, 85; Jack G. Elam, ‘‘Abell Field,’’ in Occurrence of Oil and Gas in West Texas, edited by Frank A. Herald (Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas, 1957), 1–5. 25. Edwin Van Den Bark, ‘‘Embar Field,’’ in Occurrence of Oil and Gas, 110; M. H. L. Keener, ‘‘Dollarhide Field,’’ in Occurrence of Oil and Gas, 87; J. V. Hardwick, ‘‘Block 31 Field,’’ in Occurrence of Oil and Gas, 40; Myres, Permian Basin, 78–79, 140 –141; National Scouts (1944), 705–708. 26. National Scouts (1941), 538; (1944), 705. H. H. King, ‘‘Daily

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Movement of Permian Basin Oil Sets New All-Time Record,’’ OW, June 19, 1944, 50, 52. A. R. McTee, ‘‘Industry Dependent on West Texas for More Production,’’ OW, September 6, 1943, 77–78, 80. 27. P. B. Leavenworth and W. H. Hough, ‘‘Oil and Gas Production in the Upper Texas Gulf Coast during 1943,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1944, 480. OW, November 16, 1942, 26 –27; May 17, 1943, 44; June 21, 1943, 48; July 26, 1943, 44; September 13, 1943, 54. 28. L. B. Herring, ‘‘Developments in South Texas during 1940,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1941, 1043; Dallas Morning News, January 17, 1943. 29. Victor Bychok and C. H. Jones, ‘‘Case History, Mustang Island Field, Nueces County, Texas,’’ in Case Histories 2: 508, 510 –512; William C. Woolley, ‘‘Geophysical History of La Gloria Field, Jim Wells County, Texas,’’ in Case Histories 1: 379, 384. 30. William H. Spice, ‘‘Developments in South Texas in 1943,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1944, 863; Bruce Scrafford, ‘‘Developments in South Texas in 1944,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1945, 777, 784; Bruce Scrafford, ‘‘Developments in South Texas in 1945,’’ Bulletin, AAPG, 1946, 972, 979. 31. Harold Decker and L. B. Herring, ‘‘Oil and Gas Development in South Texas during 1943,’’ Transactions, AIME, 1944, 518–519; Larson and Porter, History of Humble, 586 –587. 32. Walter S. Carpenter, Jr., ‘‘Relationship of Oil and Chemicals,’’ Spindletop: Where Oil Became an Industry (Beaumont, Texas: Spindletop 50th Anniversary Commission, n.d. [1951]). 33. Henrietta M. Larson, Evelyn H. Knowlton, and Charles S. Popple, New Horizons: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1927–1950 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 153–160. 34. The most accessible introduction to petrochemicals is in Robert O. Anderson’s Fundamentals of the Petroleum Industry (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), 224 –235. 35. The Citizen (Houston), October 20, 1949. 36. Warren L. Baker, ‘‘Houston Is War Petroleum Front,’’ Houston, April 1943, 28. 37. Houston Chronicle, October 26, 1941; ‘‘Sinclair’s $24,000,000 Butadiene Plant,’’ Houston, July 1943, 46; James C. Kiper, ‘‘Monsanto Supplies Styrene,’’ Houston, July 1943, 28.

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GLOSSARY abandoned well A well no longer in use, whether because it never produced oil or gas or because production ceased. acidizing A technique of well stimulation, developed in the early 1930s, in which hydrochloric acid and other fluids are pumped into a well to increase the flow of oil from an oil-bearing limestone formation. allowable The amount of oil or gas a well, lease, or field is permitted to produce under regulation by a state regulatory commission or by a pipeline purchaser. anticline A subsurface geological structure that is in the shape of a rounded peak; oil may be trapped under the peak. API gravity A measure of crude oil weight. The lower the gravity, the higher the weight. High-gravity, light crude oil has, historically, been more valuable than low-gravity, heavy crude oil because high-gravity crude yielded more valuable products. assignment The transfer of ownership of a lease. associated gas Gas in an oil reservoir, as in a cap above oil or dissolved in oil. barrel A liquid measure of oil amounting to 42 gallons. basic sediment Impurities contained in fluid produced from a well. black oil Crude oil with an asphalt base. blowout An unexpected, uncontrolled expulsion of oil, gas, mud, and/or brine from a well being drilled, caused by high pressure in the well. Blowouts can cause damage to the rig or cave-ins of the well bore, as well as cratering around the well in extreme cases. bonus Commonly, cash paid to the landowner in return for an oil or gas lease. A bonus may also consist of produced oil.

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bottom-hole pressure Reservoir pressure at the bottom of the well bore. brine Salt water produced from a well, with or without oil. bringing in a well Completing a well for production. cable tool rig A drilling rig that penetrates rock by repeatedly dropping a weighted and sharpened metal bit onto the rock. Cable tool rigs are most effective in relatively shallow wells where underground rock formations are such that they shatter when hit. carbon black A substance produced by incomplete combustion of petroleum and of particular use in rubber manufacture. casing Steel pipe used in a well to support the walls of the hole and keep fluids from passing from the well bore to surrounding formations and vice versa. casinghead Casing extending above the surface of the ground, to which controls and flow valves are fastened. casinghead gas Gas produced from an oil well, as opposed to gas produced from a gas well. casinghead gasoline plant A plant that extracts gasoline from natural gas or casinghead gas. catalytic cracking A refining method that breaks down complex hydrocarbon molecules through use of a catalyst. choke back Cutting back the flow of oil from a well. commercial production Production in sufficient quantity to allow for recovery of costs plus an attractive level of profit, thus encouraging further development. common carrier A business entity, such as a pipeline, that engages in transport of oil and/or gas as a public utility and is available for hire. common purchaser A business entity, usually a pipeline company, that takes oil or gas ratably, without discriminating among producers or sources of supply. condensate Liquid hydrocarbons separated from natural gas, sometimes referred to as distillate or natural gasoline. core A sample of subsurface rock that is taken by drilling and reveals the sequence and thickness of strata. correlative rights The theory that owners share rights to produce from a reservoir and that consequently individual use of property should not infringe upon the shared rights of other owners. cracking plant An installation that processes oil by heating it under pressure so as to break up heavier hydrocarbon molecules into gasoline and other products. 278

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cratering The collapse of earth around a well when a well blows out, commonly swallowing up rig and equipment. crude oil Liquid petroleum as it comes out of the ground. cut oil Oil emulsified with water and, sometimes, sand and minerals. cycling The process by which condensate is recovered from gas, the residue gas is compressed, and the compressed gas is returned to the original reservoir, thereby maintaining reservoir pressure. development Drilling and bringing wells into production following field discovery. development well A well drilled to a producing formation in a discovered field. dip The incline of a geological formation. distillate Liquid, usually colorless hydrocarbons above 60 degrees API gravity. Distillate is also called natural gasoline or condensate. doodle bug A device supposedly helpful in locating underground sources of oil and/or gas. drainage The migration of oil or gas toward the well bore of a producing well. drill bit A tool used to cut through or break up rock in drilling a well. drilling mud A mixture of fluid and solid additives used in drilling to bring up rock cuttings, stabilize the walls of the hole, control the flow of gas and/or fluids into the hole, and generally expedite drilling. The earliest drilling muds were simply a mixture of water and earth or clay; mineral and chemical additives came into use in the later 1920s. drilling rig The surface equipment used to drill for oil and gas, including the derrick, winch, rotary table in rotary drilling, and units to supply power for operation. dry gas Natural gas that does not contain a significant amount of liquid hydrocarbons. dry hole A well that fails to yield a commercial amount of oil or gas. dry hole money A commitment to pay a sum for completion of a test, albeit unsuccessful. economic waste The marketing and sale of petroleum at prices below producer’s cost. Part of conservationist discourse in the 1920s and 1930s, this term varied in meaning depending on the users’ industry perspectives. Economic waste was contrasted with physical waste, the situation where produced oil or gas was not marketed or put to any use, as when oil was simply allowed to run off over the ground. GLOSSARY

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emulsion A mixture of oil with water and mineral salts or sand; also called cut oil. enhanced recovery Increased recovery from a reservoir by artificial means after the amount of production and reservoir pressure has dwindled in the course of production. farmout A contribution of lease acreage by a leaseholder to a second party in return for drilling a well. fault trap A geological structure created by the cracking and breaking of a rock formation, so as to trap oil and/or gas. Such structures are common in Central Texas. field The surface over one or more oil pools. flaring As used in this study, the burning off of natural gas in the absence of a market for it. This practice was common in the Panhandle in the 1920s and 1930s. flowing by heads See heading. flowing well A well producing oil as a result of reservoir pressure, as opposed to a well that must be pumped. flush production Production from natural reservoir pressure, unassisted by pumping or other measures. gasoline plant An installation that removes liquid hydrocarbons from natural gas, especially casinghead gas. gas-oil ratio The cubic feet of gas produced per barrel of oil produced. gathering lines Pipelines used to take oil or gas from the lease to the main pipeline or collection station. geologic structure Layers of rock displaced from a horizontal position by natural forces. Examples of structures are anticlines, fault traps, and salt domes. geophysical exploration The use of geophysical devices such as gravimeters, magnetometers, or seismographs to search for structures that may contain oil and/or gas. gravimeter/gravity meter A device for measuring the gravitational force of rocks. This device is used as part of geophysical exploration. green oil Paraffin-based oil. heading Variable or intermittent flow of oil from a well. heavy oil Crude oil of a high viscosity and low API gravity. high-gravity oil See API gravity. hot oil Oil produced in violation of the amount allowed under regulation, as was common in the East Texas oil field in the early 1930s.

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hydrogen sulfide A compound of hydrogen and sulfur that is found in sour gas and that can be fatal if inhaled. independent operator Originally any individual or firm operating in the industry independent of Standard Oil. The term has come to refer to individuals or firms whose industry operations are smaller in scale than those of major companies and whose operations are generally vertically unintegrated—i.e., do not include all industry functions from exploration to retail sales. landman A person who acquires leases, satisfies title requirements, and arranges for clear legal title to land. league A unit of land measure consisting of 4,432 acres. lease The site of drilling or other field activity; the legal instrument conveying the right to drill for and produce oil and gas on a given tract of land. lease bonus See bonus. lease broker A trader in leases for a commission or on a speculative basis. light oil Oil of a low viscosity and high API gravity. low-gravity oil See API gravity. magnetometer A device used in geophysical exploration to identify subsurface rock structures through differences in magnetic force. major company An industry firm with extensive, large-scale, vertically integrated operations, as, for example, Exxon/Mobil or Shell. Mcf Thousand cubic feet, a standard measurement for gas. MMcf Million cubic feet, a standard measurement for gas. mineral rights Ownership of minerals under a tract of land. mud See drilling mud. natural gasoline A light, very volatile liquid hydrocarbon obtained from natural gas. nonassociated gas Gas found independent of oil. offset A well drilled to counteract the productive capacity of a well on an adjoining lease or property by tapping into the same productive reservoir. operator The person or firm owning and/or managing work on a lease. overproduction As used in this study, production in excess of market demand. override Interest in the revenue produced from the sale of production that does not require paying a share of expenses.

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overriding royalty A royalty interest that does not pay the expenses of drilling or operating a well. paleontology The study and correlation of fossilized remains of life taken from geological formations with a view to identification of productive formations. pay A horizon of a formation that produces commercially attractive amounts of oil and/or gas. payout The time required for a well to pay for itself. petrochemicals Chemicals derived from crude oil or natural gas, such as ammonia or carbon black. pinch out The end of a thinning strata. pipeline proration Allocation of production in terms of the capacity of pipeline systems. proration Allocation of oil and/or gas production from a reservoir by a regulatory body or by common agreement of producers, historically having the effect of limiting the amount of oil or gas producers could produce from their wells. prospect A lease thought suitable for drilling for oil or gas on the basis of scientific data. proven acreage The area within the presumed boundaries of an oil or gas field. random drilling A term used to refer to wildcat exploration without benefit of science. reserves Unproduced oil and/or gas that is economically retrievable. reservoir pressure Pressure at the face of the productive formation when a well is shut in. rotary drilling rig A drilling rig that penetrates rock by means of a rotating bit and drilling mud, thus effectively grinding a hole in rock. This is the means by which the vast majority of oil and gas wells are now drilled. roughneck A worker on a drilling rig. roustabout An oil field laborer working at unskilled or semiskilled work in drilling and production. royalty The mineral owner’s share of production, free of all expense of production and most commonly amounting to one-eighth of production. Royalty is ordinarily conveyed by cash payment, but it can be taken in kind, depending upon leasing provisions. rule of capture A legal convention holding that oil and gas belong to the person producing them, regardless of where they may have drained from. 282

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salt dome A subsurface mound or plug of salt around which there may be traps of oil and/or gas. Salt domes are common structures on the Gulf Coast. sanding up An accumulation of pulverized rock in a well, resulting in impeded or halted production. seismograph A device used in geophysical exploration that records manmade vibrations through subsurface rock. Analysis of the recorded data can help identify subsurface structures. shooting a well Detonation of explosives like nitroglycerine or other explosives in a well to shatter the producing formation and increase the amount of production. show of oil An amount of oil too small to be of commercial value. sour crude oil Crude oil containing hydrogen sulfide gas. sour gas Natural gas containing hydrogen sulfide or other sulfur compounds. spudding in The initial boring of a hole in the earth to begin drilling a well. step out A test that is located less than one mile from existing production. stripper well An oil well producing ten barrels or less of oil per day. structure A subsurface geological formation configured so as to contain, or have the potential to trap, oil. sweet crude oil Oil containing little hydrogen sulfide. sweet gas Natural gas not contaminated by hydrogen sulfide or other impurities. syncline A downfold in stratified rock, shaped like a bowl. trend A broadly defined producing area. unitization Control and management of all leases in a field as though they formed a single unit, even though they are not owned by one owner. The Van field was the first in Texas to be operated in this manner. water-drive field An oil field in which primary natural energy for production is derived from water at the edge or bottom of the reservoir. The East Texas field is a good example of this sort of field. well allowable See allowable. wet gas Natural gas containing liquid hydrocarbons. wildcatting Drilling for oil or gas in a territory or a horizon from which there is no production. A ‘‘rank wildcat’’ is geographically far removed from existing production.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIVATE PAPERS Everette L. DeGolyer Papers, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Ralph O. Harvey, Jr., Scrapbook, Wichita County Archives, Wichita Falls, Texas. Joiner Property File, Hunt Oil Company, Dallas. W. B. Sharp Papers, Pioneers of Texas Oil Collection, Barker Texas History Collections, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Yount-Lee Oil Company Papers, Texas Energy Museum, Beaumont, Texas. PUBLIC DOCUMENTS Adams, George I. ‘‘Oil and Gas Fields of the Western Interior and Northern Texas Coal Measures and of the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary of the Western Gulf Coast.’’ United States Geological Survey, Bulletin 184. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901. Beede, J. W. ‘‘Further Notes on the Structure Near Robert Lee, Coke County, Texas.’’ University of Texas Bulletin No. 1847. Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, August 20, 1918. Bybee, H. P., and R. T. Short. ‘‘The Lytton Springs Oil Field.’’ University of Texas Bulletin No. 2539. Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology, October 15, 1929. Dumble, E. T. Mineral Resources of Texas. Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Texas. Austin: State Printing Office, 1891. Galloway, W. E., E. Ewing, C. M. Garrett, N. Tyler, and G. G. Bebout. Atlas of Major Texas Oil Reservoirs. Austin: University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, 1983.

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Howard Jarvis File, Drilling Reports, Texas Railroad Commission, Austin. Liddle, R. A., and T. M. Prettyman. ‘‘Geology and Mineral Resources of Crockett County with Notes on the Stratigraphy, Structure, and Oil Prospects of the Central Pecos Valley.’’ University of Texas Bulletin No. 1857. Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, 1918. Liddle, R. A. ‘‘The Marathon Fold and Its Influence on Petroleum Accumulation.’’ University of Texas Bulletin No. 1847. Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, August 20, 1918. Matson, George Charlton. ‘‘Gas Prospects South and Southwest of Dallas.’’ In Natural Gas Resources of Parts of North Texas. USGS Bulletin 639. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916. Matson, George C., and Oliver B. Hopkins. ‘‘The Corsicana Oil and Gas Field, Texas.’’ In Contributions to Economic Geology, Part 2: Mineral Fuels. USGS Bulletin 661. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1918. ‘‘Oil and Mineral Possibilities on the Continental Shelves of the United States and Alaska.’’ Statement of W. E. Wrather, Director of the United States Geological Survey. U.S. Congress, 79th Congress, 1st Session, Senate, Special Committee Investigating Petroleum Resources. In Investigation of Petroleum Resources: New Sources of Petroleum in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945. Phillips, William Battle. Texas Petroleum. University of Texas Bulletin No. 5 (July 1901). ———. ‘‘Texas Petroleum.’’ Mineral Survey Bulletin 1. Austin: University of Texas, 1905. Rusk County, Texas. Deed Records. Schmidt, Ludwig, and John M. Devine. The Disposal of Oil-Field Brines. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Mines, Reports of Investigations: Serial 2945. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, June, 1929. Shaw, Eugene Wesley. ‘‘Gas in the Area North and West of Fort Worth.’’ In Natural Gas Resources of Parts of North Texas. United States Geological Survey, Bulletin 629. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916. Swigart, T. E., and C. E. Beecher. Manual for Oil and Gas Operations. United States Department of the Interior: Bureau of Mines, Bulletin 232. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923. Udden, J. A. ‘‘Notes on the Geology of the Glass Mountains.’’ University of Texas Bulletin No. 1753. Austin: Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology, September 20, 1917.

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United States Department of Commerce. Census of Manufacturing, 1900. 1910. ———. Census of Mines and Quarries, 1919. ———. Census of Population, 1900. United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines. Mineral Resources Yearbook, 1904; 1914, Part 2; 1922, Part 2; 1923, Part 2; 1924, Part 2; 1925, Part 2. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office [dates as indicated for issue]. White, A. G., G. R. Hopkins, H. A. Breakey, and A. T. Coumbe. ‘‘Crude Petroleum and Petroleum Products.’’ In United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, Minerals Yearbook: Review of 1940. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1941. Youngmeyer, Ray F., and Roy I. Jindra. ‘‘Nacogdoches Field.’’ In Occurrence of Oil and Gas in Northeast Texas. Edited by Frank A. Herald. University of Texas Publication, No. 5116. Austin: University of Texas, 1951.

BOOKS A History of the Hunt Oil Company. Dallas: Hunt Oil Company, 1984. Alexander, Nancy. Father of Texas Geology, Robert T. Hill. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1976. American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Structure of Typical American Oil Fields, vol. 2. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1929. American Bar Association. Legal History of Conservation of Oil and Gas. Chicago: Section of Mineral Law of the American Bar Association, 1938. American Petroleum Institute. American Petroleum Supply and Demand. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1925. ———. History of Petroleum Engineering. New York: American Petroleum Institute, 1961. Anderson, Robert O. Fundamentals of the Petroleum Industry. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984. Andrews County Heritage Committee. Andrews County History, 1876–1978. Andrews, Texas: Andrews County Heritage Committee, 1978. Barr, Alwyn. Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876–1906. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971. Barton, Donald C., and George Sawtelle, eds. Gulf Coast Oil Fields. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1936.

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Bowden, J. J. Uncertain Riches: The Discovery and Exploitation of the Yates Oil Field. Austin: Eakin Press, 1991. Brantly, J. E. History of Oil Well Drilling. Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1971. Cameron Iron Works: Twenty-Five Years, 1920 –1945. Houston: Cameron Iron Works, 1946. Carleton, Don E. A Breed So Rare: The Life of J. R. Parten, Liberal Texas Oil Man, 1896–1992. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1998. Castaneda, Christopher J., and Clarance M. Smith. Gas Pipelines and the Emergence of America’s Regulatory State: A History of Panhandle Eastern Corporation, 1928-1993. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Castaneda, Christopher J., and Joseph A. Pratt. From Texas to the East: A Strategic History of Texas Eastern Corporation. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993. Clark, George. A Glance Backward: Or Some Events in the Past History of My Life. Houston: Rein and Sons, n.d. [ca. 1915]. Clark, James A. The Chronological History of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Industries. Houston: Clark Book Company, 1963. ———. Three Stars for the Colonel. New York: Random House, 1954. Clark, James A., and Michel T. Halbouty. Spindletop. New York: Random House, 1952. ———. The Last Boom. New York: Random House, 1972. Cook, T. D., ed. Underground Waste Management and Environmental Implications. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1972. Cotner, Robert C. James Stephen Hogg: A Biography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959. Derrick’s Handbook of the Petroleum Industry. Oil City, Pa.: Derrick Publishing, 1900. Duncan, John M. An Eye Opener: The Standard Oil-Magnolia Compromise, the Whole Cold Truth. n.p., n.d. [ca. 1915]. Ellisor, Alva C. Rockhounds of Houston: An Informal History of the Houston Geological Society. Houston: Houston Geological Society, 1977. Froh, Riley. Edgar B. Davis: Wildcatter Extraordinary. Luling, Texas: Luling Foundation, 1984. Giebelhaus, August W. Business and Government in the Oil Industry: A Case Study of Sun Oil, 1876-1945. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980. Gould, Charles N. Covered Wagon Geologist. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959. 288

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Gray, W. H. The Rule of Reason in Texas. Houston: W. H. Gray, n.d. Haigh, Berte R. Land, Oil, and Education. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986. Halbouty, Michel T., ed. Geology of Giant Petroleum Fields. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1970. Haley, J. Evetts. Charles Goodnight: Cowboy and Plainsman. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949. First ed. 1936. ———. George L. Littlefield: Texan. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943. ———. The XIT Ranch of Texas, and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953. First ed. 1936. Heiman, Monica. John August Udden: A Biography. Kerrville, Texas: S. M. Udden, 1963. Hidy, Ralph W., and Muriel E. Hidy. Pioneering in Big Business: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1882 –1911. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955. Historical Committee of the Fort Worth Petroleum Club. Oil Legends of Fort Worth. Dallas: Taylor Publishing, 1993. Hunt, H. L. Hunt Heritage: The Republic and Our Families. Dallas: Parade Press, 1973. Kelly, Louise, compiler. Wichita County Beginnings. Austin: Eakin Press, 1982. Key, Della Tyler. In the Cattle Country: History of Potter County, 1887– 1966, 2d. ed. Wichita Falls, Texas: Nortex Offset Publications, 1972. Kilman, Ed, and Theon Wright. Hugh Roy Cullen: A Story of American Opportunity. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954. King, Carl B., and Howard W. Risher, Jr. The Negro in the Petroleum Industry. Racial Policies of American Industry, Report 5. Philadelphia, Pa.: Industrial Research Unit, Department of Industry, Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania, 1969. King, John O. Early History of Houston Oil Company of Texas, 1901– 1908. Houston: Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association, 1959. ———. Joseph Stephen Cullinan: A Study of Leadership in the Texas Petroleum Industry, 1897–1937. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1970. King, Judith, ed. An Oilman’s Oilman: A Biographical Treatment of Walter W. Lechner, by James A. Clark. Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1979. Klein, Maury. The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Koskoff, David A. The Mellons: The Chronicle of America’s Richest Family. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978. Larson, Henrietta M., and Kenneth Wiggins Porter. History of Humble BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Oil and Refining Company: A Study in Industrial Growth. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959. Larson, Henrietta M., Evelyn H. Knowlton, and Charles S. Popple. New Horizons: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1927– 1950. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Leffler, William L. Petroleum Refining for the Non-Technical Person. Tulsa: PennWell Books, 1979. Levorsen, A. I., ed. Stratigraphic Type Oil Fields. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1941. Ley, Henry A. Geology of Natural Gas. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1935. Look Magazine. Oil for Victory: The Story of Petroleum in War and Peace. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946. Lyons, Paul L., ed. Geophysical Case Histories, vol. 2. n.p.: Society of Exploration Geophysicists, 1956. Malavis, Nicholas George. Bless the Pure and Humble: Texas Lawyers and Oil Regulation, 1919–1936. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996. Mallison, Sam T. The Great Wildcatter. Charleston: Education Foundation of West Virginia, 1953. Marshall, J. Howard. Done In Oil: An Autobiography. Edited by Robert L. Bradley, Jr. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994. McBeth, Reid Sayers. Pioneering the Gulf Coast: A Story of the Life and Accomplishments of Capt. Anthony F. Lucas. n.p., n. d. McComb, David G. Galveston: A History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. ———. Houston: The Bayou City. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969. McCoy, Dorothy Abbott. Oil, Mud, and Guts. Brownsville, Texas: Privately published, 1977. McDaniel, Robert W., with Henry C. Dethloff. Pattillo Higgins and the Search for Texas Oil. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989. McDonald, Stephen L. Petroleum Conservation in the United States: An Economic Analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. Mills, Warner E., Jr. Martial Law in East Texas. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1960. Murphy, Blakely M., ed. Conservation of Oil and Gas: A Legal History. Chicago: Mineral Law Section, American Bar Association, 1949. Myres, Samuel D. The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, vol. 1: Era of Discovery, from the Beginning to the Depression. El Paso: Permian Press, 1973. 290

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Nettleton, L. L., ed. Geophysical Case Histories, vol. 1. n.p.: Society of Exploration Geophysicists, 1949. Nicholson, Patrick J. Mr. Jim: The Biography of James Smither Abercrombie. Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1983. O’Bryan, Patrick. The Great Conroe Oil Field. [Conroe, Texas: 1956.] O’Connor, Harvey. Mellon’s Millions: The Biography of a Fortune. New York: John Day, 1933. Olien, Roger M., and Diana Davids Olien, Easy Money: Oil Promoters and Investors in the Jazz Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. ———. Life in the Oil Fields. Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1986. ———. Oil and Ideology: The Cultural Construction of the American Petroleum Industry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ———. Oil Booms: Social Change in Five Texas Towns. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. ———. Wildcatters: Texas Independent Oilmen. Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1984. Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey Through Texas: Or A Saddle Trip on the Southwestern Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. Reprint of 1857 ed. Owen, Edgar Wesley. Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1975. Pratt, Joseph A. The Growth of a Refining Region. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980. Prindle, David F. Petroleum Politics and the Texas Railroad Commission. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Sanders, M. Elizabeth. The Regulation of Natural Gas: Policy and Politics, 1938–1978. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. Sibley, Marilyn McAdams. The Port of Houston: A History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Sinise, Jerry. Black Gold and Red Lights. Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press, 1982. Snider, L. C. Oil and Gas in the Mid-Continent Fields. Oklahoma City: Harlow Publishing, 1920. Spindletop: Where Oil Became an Industry. Beaumont: Spindletop 50th Anniversary Commission, n.d. [1951]. Spratt, John Stricklin. The Road to Spindletop: Economic Change in Texas, 1875–1901. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1955. Stanley, F. The Phillips, Texas Story. Nazareth, Texas: n.p., 1975.

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Taylor, William Charles. A History of Clay County, Texas. Austin: Jenkins Publishing, 1972. Thompson, Thomas. The Ware Boys: The Story of a Texas Family Bank. Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains Press, 1978. Typical Oil and Gas Fields of South Texas, vol. 2. Corpus Christi: Corpus Christi Geological Society, 1988. Warner, C. A. Texas Oil and Gas Since 1543. Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1939. Weaver, Bobby D., ed. Panhandle Petroleum. Canyon, Texas: PanhandlePlains Historical Society, 1982. Whiteshot, Charles Austin. The Oil Well Driller: A History of the World’s Greatest Enterprise, the Oil Industry. 2d ed. Mannington, W.Va: n.p., 1905. Williamson, Harold F., Arnold R. Daum, Ralph L. Andreano, Gilbert C. Klose, and Paul A. Weinstein. The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859–1899. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1959. Wolters, Jacob F. Martial Law and Its Administration. Austin: Gammel’s Book Store, 1930. Zimmerman, Erich W. Conservation in the Production of Petroleum: A Study in Industrial Control. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957. PERIODICALS American Journal of Sociology. Antitrust Bulletin. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Business History Review. Engineering and Mining Journal. Houston. Journal of Southern History. Oil and Gas Journal. Oil Investor’s Journal. Oil Weekly. Pacific Historical Review. Permian Historical Annual. Petroleum Engineer. Petroleum Independent. Pure Oil News. Saturday Evening Post. Scientific American. Southwestern Historical Quarterly. Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record. 292

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Transactions of the American Institute of Mechanical and Metallurgical Engineers. West Texas Historical Association Yearbook. NEWSPAPERS Alice Echo and Energy News. Austin American-Statesman. Beaumont Age. Beaumont Enterprise. Beaumont Journal. Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Dallas Morning News. Fort Worth Record. Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Houston Chronicle. Houston Daily Post and Houston Post. Kilgore News-Herald. Mexia Evening News. Midland Reporter-Telegram. New York Times. Port Arthur News. San Antonio Express. Tyler Journal. Waco Times-Herald. Wichita Falls Times. Wise County Messenger. REFERENCE WORKS National Oil Scouts and Landman’s Association. Oil and Gas Field Development in the United States. Austin: National Oil Scouts and Landman’s Association: 1941–1945. Raines, C. W. Year Book for Texas, 1901. Austin: Gammel Book Co., 1902. Scott’s Official Directory of the Companies Operating in Texas and Louisiana. Beaumont: n.p., 1902. Southwest Texas Oil Scouts Association. Oil and Gas Developments in Southwest Texas. San Antonio: Southwest Texas Oil Scouts Association, 1930. Texas Almanac, 1933, 1944, 1992–1993. Dallas: A. H. Belo Corporation. Tyler, Ron, ed. The New Handbook of Texas. 6 vols. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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UNPUBLISHED WORKS Dunn, James G. ‘‘History of the Oil Industry in Navarro County.’’ Master’s thesis, Baylor University, 1967. McKinley, Fred Barry. ‘‘The Yount-Lee Oil Company.’’ Master’s thesis, Lamar University, 1987. Smith, Julia Cauble. ‘‘The Early Development of the Big Lake Field, Reagan County, Texas.’’ Master’s thesis, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, 1986. INTERVIEWS Angstadt, Carl, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Eastland, Texas, August 24, 1952. Pioneers of Texas Oil Collection, Barker Texas History Collections, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. (Hereafter cited as PTO.) Baldwin, B. C., interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, San Antonio, Texas, September 19, 1970. Oral History Collection, East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore, Texas. (Hereafter cited as ETO.) Barfield, Plummer M., interviewed by William A. Owens, Sour Lake Texas, August 1, 1952. PTO. Bean, Ann, interviewed by L. Welch, Kilgore, Texas, January 28, 1979. ETO. Berry, Mrs. John, interviewed by Diana Davids Olien, San Angelo, Texas, April 6, 1984. Authors’ collection. Browne, P. D. ‘‘Freestone County’s Tragic Decade, 1921-1931: A Memoir.’’ Oral Memoirs of Philip Dale Browne, Baylor University Program for Oral History, Waco. Browne, P. D., interviewed by Rufus B. Spain, n.p., August 2, 1972. Baylor University Program for Oral History, Waco. Bryant, W. H., interviewed by William A. Owens, Sour Lake, Texas, July 29, 1952. PTO. Cline, Walter, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright and others, Wichita Falls, Texas, August 13, 1952. PTO. Cox, Edd, interviewed by Roger M. Olien with J. Conrad Dunagan, Monahans, Texas, April 19, 1978. Permian Archives, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Odessa. Deer, Claude, interviewed by William A. Owens, Spindletop, Texas, July 7, 1952. PTO. Dickerson, Sis, interviewed by Camie Dell Reich, Kilgore, Texas, October 6, 1978. ETO. Donohoe, James, interviewed by William A. Owens, Batson, Texas, August 1, 1952. PTO.

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Friend, E. M., interviewed by Mody Boatright and Louise Kelly, Wichita Falls, Texas, September 4, 1953. PTO. Gilbert, W. C., interviewed by William A. Owens, Beaumont, Texas, July 22, 1953. PTO. Hamill, Allen W., interviewed by William A. Owens, Tulsa, Oklahoma, September 2, 1952. PTO. Hamill, Curt G., interviewed by William A. Owens, Kerrville, Texas, July 18, 1952. PTO. Hamilton, Frank, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Sour Lake, Texas, July 29, 1952. PTO. Harvey, Ralph O., Jr., interviewed by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, Wichita Falls, Texas, July 25, 1996. Authors’ collection. Higgins, Pattillo, interviewed by William A. Owens, n.p., July 25, 1952. PTO. Hodge, H. P., interviewed by Mody Boatright, Louise Kelly, and J. W. Williams, Wichita Falls, Texas, September 3, 1953. PTO. Hopper, A. C., interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, Paris, Texas, August 8, 1970. ETO. Ingram, Bill, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Breckenridge, Texas, July 2, 1952. PTO. Johnson, Harold R., interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, Tomball, Texas, August 15, 1970. ETO. Johnson, M. A. ‘‘Curly,’’ interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Corsicana, Texas, August 27, 1952. PTO. Kennedy, R. S., interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, n.p., July 30, 1952. PTO. Killam, O. W., interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Laredo, Texas, September 5, 1956. PTO. Killam, O. W., interviewed by William A. Owens, Laredo, Texas, May 7, 1956. PTO. Kinnear, James A., interviewed by William A. Owens, Beaumont, Texas, July 24, 1953. PTO. Knight, Jack, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Borger, Texas, September 11, 1952. PTO. Lapin, Olga Hermann, Mrs., interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, Kilgore, Texas, July 3, 1970. ETO. Leonard, Bessie, interviewed by Diana Davids Olien, Midland, Texas, May 19, 1978. Authors’ collection. Little, John, interviewed by W. A. Owens, Belton, Texas, August 7, 1952. PTO. McCormick, Clair, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Breckenridge, Texas, July 30, 1952. PTO.

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Nichols, H. P., interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Tyler, Texas, October 11, 1952. PTO. Philp, William Joseph, interviewed by William A. Owens, July 17, 1953, South Park, Texas. PTO. Reed, Clell, interviewed by Roger M. Olien, San Angelo, Texas, April 6, 1984. Permian Archives, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Odessa. Riggs, James W., interviewed by William A. Owens, Goose Creek, Texas, June 19, 1952. PTO. Rust, John, interviewed by Mody Boatright, Borger, Texas, September 12, 1952. PTO. Simkins, J. S., interviewed by Murray, December 10, 1952, Austin, Texas. PTO. Skeeters, Mrs. L. L. Tullos, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, Kilgore, Texas, n.d. ETO. Slagle, H. V., interviewed by Mody Boatright, Henrietta, Texas, June 21, 1952. PTO. Speed, Carlton D., interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Corsicana, Texas, August 27, 1952. PTO. Spencer, Maria, interviewed by Diana Davids Olien, Midland, Texas, January 25, 1978. Permian Archives, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Odessa. Taylor, Bill, interviewed by Bobby H. Johnson, Longview, Texas, August 13, 1970. ETO. Thaman, A. J., and J. H. Anderson, interviewed by Maude Ross, Baytown, Texas, January 29, 1960 [sic]. PTO. Webb, Sam, interviewed by William A. Owens, Fort Worth, Texas, September, 1952. PTO. Witherspoon, Claude, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Dilley, Texas, June 27, 1953. PTO. Wood, Clint, interviewed by Mody C. Boatright, Mineral Wells, Texas, August 17, 1952. PTO.

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Index Abell, George, 230 Abercrombie, James, 133, 213 African Americans at East Texas Iron Foundry, 178 racial barriers against employment of, 206, 218 racial conflicts, 71 at refineries, 134 work in early oil fields, 71 agribusiness, 11–14, 120, 138, 154, 167–168 Air Reduction Company, 145 Akin, E. H., 9 Alfred MacMillan et al. vs Railroad Commission of Texas, 184 Allen, R. E., 196 Amazon Petroleum Corporation vs Railroad Commission of Texas, 189 American Federation of Labor, 99 Anderson, Charles E., 51 Ash, William Franklin ‘‘Hotshot,’’ 146 –147 Autry, James L., 4, 50, 51 Bailey, Joseph W., 16, 22 Baker, C. E., 8 Baker, M. C., 8 Barnett, Lynis T., 2–3 Barrett, C. E., 46 Bateman, Ed, 170 Beaton, Ralph, 4 Beatty, David R., 32, 36, 42 Beaumont Iron Works, 58 Beaumont Oil Exchange and Board of Trade, 37

Beede, J. W., 148 Benedum, Michael Late, 87, 151, 155 Bennett, Mills, 129 B. F. Goodrich Corporation, 229 ‘‘Big Inch’’ pipeline, 226 Bingham, Gladys, 25 Bivens, Lee, 139, 140 Blaffer, Robert Lee, 62 Borger, A. P. ‘‘Ace,’’ 146 Bradford, Daisy, 168 brine water, 73, 160, 175, 192, 227 Brooks, R. E., 33 Brown, Charles, 95 Brown, E. R., 77 Bryan, Chester H., 52 Bryant, Randolph, 184 Bunker, Chester R., 152–153 Burns, Gordon, 188 Burt, George, 53 Calvert, Robert A., 13 Cameron Iron Works, 61, 133–134 Campbell, William T., 33, 50 carbon black, 144 –145, 199, 229 Carll, John F., 3 Carroll, George W., 26, 47 Carroll, W. M., 34 Carruth, ‘‘Hog Creek,’’ 125 Carter, Amon, 202–203, 231 Cayce, Edgar, 126 Childs, William R., 222 cities and towns Alice, 211 Amarillo, 139, 144, 145 Andrews, 206

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Beaumont: decline as management center, 60; disease, 36; first boom, 32; growth, 57; housing, 36 –37; as oil business center, 38–39, 48– 49; public services, 36 –37; refinery site, 54 Borger, 145–147 Brownwood, 83 Bryan Heights, 47 Burkburnett, 78, 83, 85 Electra, 78 Fort Worth, 88–91 Fowlkes Station, 78 Frankel City, 206 Freer, 210 –211 Gander Slue, 126 Gladys City, 25 Goldsmith, 206 Henrietta, 77 Houston: development of Port of Houston, 98; emerges as oil management center, 60; manufacturing and supply center, 60 – 62; and natural gas pipeline connections, 114, 115, 116; population growth, 62; and wartime construction, 236 Iowa Park, 78 Isom, 141 Juarez, 121 Kilgore, 178–179 Mercedes, 112 Mexia, 120 –123 Midland, 164 Nacogdoches, 2–3 Odessa, 164, 194 Oil City, 121 Pampa, 145 Panhandle, 141 Phillips, 145 Port Arthur, 57 Ranger, 79, 81– 85 Saratoga, 2 Seguin, 126 Skellytown, 145 Tuckertown, 121 Wichita Falls, 78–79, 85, 87– 88, 91 Clark, George A., 15–16, 22 Cline, Walter, 68– 69, 70, 83 Cockburn, H. C., 131 Coleman, P. C., 149

298

.

OIL IN TEXAS

company camps Gulf and Humble at Ranger, 85 Humble at Cisco, 91 Humble in East Texas, 180 Humble in the Means field, 206 Magnolia at Alice, 211 in the Panhandle, 141, 145–146 in the Permian Basin, 164 –165, 206 Sinclair, in East Texas, 179 Texon, 164 Connally Hot Oil Act, 190 Conservation Order M-68, 222 Constantin, Eugene, 187 Corrigan, Tom, 104 Cox, Edd, 205 Corzelius, F. M., 223–224 Crane, Martin M., 22 Cranfill, Rev. J. B., 38 Crosbie, John E., 47 Crosby House, 36 –37 Crystal Ice Company, 100 Culberson, Charles A., 16 Cullen, Hugh Roy, 133, 209 Cullinan, Joseph Stephen in American Petroleum Company, 51 at Corsicana, 1–9 in Farmers’ Oil Company, 51 invests in Hughes Tool Company, 60 invests in Paraffine Oil Company, 50 organizes Texas Fuel Company, 49 promotes Port of Houston, 98 in Republic Production Company, 51 at Spindletop, 28–29 takes Hogg-Swain Syndicate into Texas Fuel Company, 50 Cullum, Landon H., 87 Damron, H. G., 4 Davidson, John, 4 Davidson, Robert Vance, 54 Davidson, W. E., 51 Davidson, W. S., 34 Davis, Edgar B., 125–126 Decker, Harry R., 46, 72 Defense Plant Corporation, 233 DeGolyer, Everette L., 130, 131, 213 Dillard, A. R., 87 Donohoe, James, 67 Dow Chemical Corporation, 236 Drake, Edwin L., 17 Driscoll, Robert, 101 Driscoll, Robert, Jr., 101

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Dullnig, George, 4 Dumble, E. T., 129 Eastland Drilling Company, 154 –155 East Texas Saltwater Disposal Company, 175 Fall, Phillip, 35 Farben, I. G., 235 Farish, William S., 62, 68– 69 Farrell, John E., 170 Federal Tender Board, 189 Fisher, A. S., 37 Flagler, Henry, 21 Fohs, F. Julius, 118, 119, 125 Folger, Henry C., Jr., 5, 29 Fondren, Walter W., 8, 63 Fowler, S. L., 83 Freeport Sulphur Company, 62 Galey, John H., 4 –5, 29–32 Gates, John W. ‘‘Bet-a-Million,’’ 50 General Tire Corporation, 236 Geophysical Research Corporation, 131 Gilbert, John M., 34 Gillespie, E., 104 Gordon, W. K., 79 Gould, Charles, 139–140 Guffey, James M., 29, 33–34 Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad, 13–14 Hageman, Mrs. Agnes, 38 Hall, A. C., 101 Hamill, Allen, 29–30, 31 Hamill, Curtis, 29, 31 Hamill, James, 29, 31, 65 Hamilton, Frank, 68 Harrell, H. M., 223 Hart, George, 46 Harvey, Ralph O., 86 – 87, 196 Harvey, Ralph O., Jr., 87 Hastings, J. J., 144 Hayes, C. Willard, 27 Hendrick, Ada, 158 Hendrick, Thomas G., 158 Henry, Willie, 71 Higgins, Pattillo and Anthony F. Lucas, 28–29 and Barber’s Hill, 94, 96 early exploration, 25–29

pg 299 # 3

and Goose Creek oil field, 43 and Higgins Oil and Fuel Company, 34 and J. M. Guffey Company, 29 promises bigger discoveries, 47 Hill, Robert T., 17 Hindman, Sam, 96 Hogg, James Stephen and anti-monopoly politics, 21–22 and Hogg-Swayne Syndicate, 33 and J. M. Guffey, 34 –35 in politics, 14 –15 at Spindletop, 33 and Texas Railroad Commission, 16 Hogg, Will C., 51 Holmes, John A., 147 House, Edward M., 16 Howard Smith Company, 61 Hughes, Howard R., 60 Hughes, J. K., 120, 124 Hughes Tool Company, 133, 135 Humphreys, Colonel A. E. as Boyd Oil Company, 125 buys and sells leases, 123 at Currie, 199–201 in Dallas County, 125 at Kosse, 124 at Mexia, 118–119 at Powell, 124 sells additional properties, 123 sells properties to Prairie-Sinclair, 123 at Wortham, 125 Hunt, H. L., 172–175 Hutcheson, Joseph C., 51, 184, 188, 189 Ickes, Harold L., 189, 222–223 Independent Petroleum Association of America, 182 Jarman, Jake, 215 John, Robert A., 51 Johnson, Curly, 67 Johnson, N. G., 9 Joiner, Columbus Marion ‘‘Dad’’ and creditors, 174 in Dallas, 167 his second Bradford well, 169 his third Bradford well, 170 leases owned by, 173–174 lease sale to H. L. Hunt, 173–174 as ‘‘poor-boy’’ operator, 169

INDEX

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and Rusk County leases, 167 and sale of production payments, 174 –175 spuds in first Bradford well, 169 Jones, Jesse, 47 Jones, Roy B., 88 Jones, Samuel M. ‘‘Golden Rule,’’ 32 Karcher, John C., 131, 213 Kell, Frank, 86 – 88 Kemp, J. A., 86 – 88, 196 Kempner, I. H., 77 Kennedy, William, 26, 27 Kettler Brass Manufacturing, 61 Killam, O. W., 108–110, 113 King, Henrietta M., 208 King Ranch, 104, 208–209 Kingsville Chamber of Commerce, 104 –105 Kinnear, James William, 71 Kirby, John Henry, 16, 47, 51 Kleberg, Robert, 51 Kniker, Hedwig T., 129 Krupp, Haymon, 150 –151 labor African American employment in early fields, 71 cost of living, 67 and cut-back hours, 217–218 employment in 1940, 220 hazards, 68, 156 impact of the Depression, 205 living conditions, 67, 70 –71, 165, 177–178 and the Oil Workers International Union, 217 racial and ethnic tension, 134 –135 at Ranger, 82 sources of, 66, 99 Spindletop wages and working conditions, 66 strike in 1917, 99 Tejano work crews, 113 and union organizations, 99, 127 wartime shortages of, 224 –225 well shooters, 69 at Wichita Falls, 85 Lake, P. G. ‘‘Pete,’’ 173–174 Lanier, J. F., 26 ‘‘law of capture,’’ 19, 84 Lee, J. W., 51

300

.

OIL IN TEXAS

Lee, T. P., 51, 128 Lee, William E., 128 Liddle, R. A., 148 Linde Air Products, 145 Lingo, E. H., 47 Little, John, 36, 68, 70 Little, Perry A., 143 ‘‘Little Inch’’ pipeline, 226 Lloyd, A. D. ‘‘Doc,’’ 169 Lockridge, J. W., 76 Lockwood, Marcus L., 47 Loonie, M. B., 26 Lucas, Anthony F., 28–29 Lynch, Gerald, 172 Marcus, Sam, 47 Marrs, J. T., 103 Marshall, E. J., 33 Masterson, Harris, 33 Masterson, R. B., 139 Maudie’s barbershop, 121 McClesky, J. H., 79, 86 McElroy, John T., 48 McGowan, T. M., 3, 97 McLean, Marrs, 97, 128 McMinn, John, 42 Mellon, W. L., 48 Mexia Commercial Club, 119 Moncrief, W. A., 170 Monsanto Corporation, 236 Moody, Governor Dan, 147 Moody, Frank B., 50 Moody, William L., III, 114 Moody, W. L., 50 Moore, T. J., 139 Morris, Joe, 110 Moss, T. E., 33 Munger, M., 196 Murray, William H. ‘‘Alfalfa Bill,’’ Oklahoma governor, 188 Myrick, Walter B., 51–52 National Industrial Recovery Act, 189–190 natural gasoline plants, 194, 229 Neff, Governor Pat, 122 Nobles, M. C., 139 Noel, W. D., 230 North Texas Utilities Company, 144 O’Brien, George W., 26 O’Donohoe, John F., 78, 196

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Office of Price Administration, 222 offshore oil activity, 97, 215–216, 232 oil and gas fields Agua Dulce, 115 Alta Vista, 103 Aviators’, 111–112 Avis, 76 Barber’s Hill, 94, 96, 129, 232 Batson, 43, 46 Benevides, 210 Bennett, 200 Big Lake, 150 –151, 200 Block, 31, 230 Blue Ridge, 94, 95 Borregas, 208 Brenham, 94 Burkburnett, 83 Burkburnett Townsite, 83– 84 Carolina, 112 Carthage, 226 Charco Redondo, 112 Conroe, 212–213, 215, 232 Corpus Christi, 210 Corsicana, 4 –10 Currie, 119–120 Damon Mound, 94, 96 Darst Creek, 126 –127 Dayton, 129 Deep Rock, 194 Dollarhide, 230 Driscoll Ranch, 101–102 East Texas: the boom, 171–172; C. M. Joiner, 168–170; discovery, 170; division of independents, 188; expansion, 170 –171; fight over proration, 183–190; and ‘‘hot oil,’’ 188; impact on prices, 180 – 183; production in 1940, 219; refineries, 171; statewide impacts, 193; theft of oil, 188; theory of A. D. Lloyd, 169; Woodbine sand, 168 Embar, 230 Esperson, 131 Fannette, 131, 132 Flour Bluff, 210 Foster, 201 Goldsmith, 201 Goose Creek, 43, 97–98, 215 Government Wells, 116 Grandfalls, 200 Greta, 207

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Harper, 201 Hastings, 214, 232 Hawkins, 226 Hendrick, 154 –155 Henne-Winch-Farris, 113 High Island, 99 Hull, 94, 95–96, 232 Humble, 45– 46, 72, 73, 97 Jennings Ranch, 106 Katy, 214 –215 Keystone, 201, 231 Kingsville, 115 KMA, 196 –197 Kosse, 124 La Gloria, 210, 232, 234 Loma Novia, 209, 212 Long Point, 132 Luling, 125–126 Lytton Springs, 117–118 Markham, 94 McCamey, 154 Means, 201 Mexia, 118–119 Mirando Valley, 109–110 Mission, 102 Mitchell County, 149 Nash Dome, 130 North Cowden, 194 Old Ocean, 213–214 Orange, 95–96 Orchard, 138 Panhandle natural gas, 140 –141 Panhandle oil, 140 –141 Petrolia, 47, 77 Pettus, 116 Piedras Pintas, 65, 101 Pierce Junction, 128–129 Placedo, 210 Plymouth, 210 Powell, 124 –125 Raccoon Bend, 132, 215 Ranger, 79, 81– 82 Refugio, 106, 115–116 Reiser, 106 Sam Fordyce, 210 Saratoga, 43, 46, 73 Saxtet gas, 116 Saxtet oil, 206 –207 Schott, 111 Seeligson, 210 Seven Sisters, 210 Shipley, 200

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301

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Slaughter, 201 Somerset, 102–103, 107–108 Sour Lake, 43, 46, 72 South Government Wells, 209 South Liberty, 129 Spindletop: the boom, 32–35; decline, 42; discovery well, 30; early drilling, 26 –29; early plans, 25– 26; fire, 41; re-entry, 128; role of Anthony F. Lucas, 28; saltwater incursion, 40; stimulates exploration, 42– 43; well costs, 39 St. Joseph Island, 104 Sugarland, 131, 215 Sun, 210 Thompson, 212, 232 Thrall, 116 –117 Tomball, 213 Tom O’Connor, 209 TXL, 231 Walnut Bend, 197 Wasson, 201 Webster (Friendswood), 214, 232 West Columbia, 94 –95, 232 White Point, 103–104, 115 World, 152–153 Wortham, 125 Yates, 152, 155–156 oil companies Abercrombie and Harrison, 127, 213 Amarillo Oil Company, 143–144 American Petroleum Company, 51 American Production Company, 97 American Refining Company, 88 American Well Prospecting Company, 101 Anglo-American Oil Company, 54 Atlantic Refining Company, 127, 230, 232 Aviators’ Oil Company, 111–112 Beaumont Oil and Refining Company, 47 Benedum and Trees, 104 Big Lake Oil Company, 151, 164 Bluebonnet Oil Company, 42 Border Gas Company, 106 Border Oil Company, 101 Boyd Oil Company, 125 Brock-Lee Oil Company, 187 Buffalo Oil Company, 48 Cabot Corporation, 145 Cactus Oil Company, 64

302

.

OIL IN TEXAS

California Oil Company (Standard Oil of California), 153 Cattlemen’s and Consolidated Oil Company, 48 Chapa Refining Company, 211 Cities Service Corporation, 231 Clayco Oil and Pipeline Company, 77–78 Coastal Refining Company, 211 Colo-Tex Company, 149 Continental Oil Company, 88 Corpus Christi Oil and Gas Company, 104 Corpus Christi Refining Company, 211 Corsicana Oil Development Company, 5 Corsicana Petroleum Company, 77 Cranfill-Reynolds, 132 Cullen and West, 212 Danciger Oil and Refining, 183 Deep Oil Development Company, 196 Deep Rock Oil Company, 170 Denison Oil Company, 64 Dixie Oil Company (Standard Oil of Indiana), 154 East Texas Oil Company, 54 Empire Gas and Fuel, 97, 103, 106 Farmers’ Petroleum Company, 51 F. C. Henderson Corporation, 199 Fowler Farm Oil Company, 83 Garcia Oil and Refining Company, 108 Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company, 26 –28 Globe Oil Company, 48 Golden West Oil Company, 108 Goose Creek Oil Company, 43 Grayburg Oil Company, 103, 107– 108, 207 Group One Oil Corporation, 200 Grubstake Investment Company, 105 Guffey and Galey, 65, 101 Gulf Oil Company, 57, 62, 89 Gulf Pipeline Company, 48, 71, 143 Gulf Production Company: at Blue Ridge, 95; company geologists in Permian Basin, 153; in Crockett County, 153; discovers Hankamer field, 131; discovers Panhandle oil

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field, 140; and early seismology, 130; at Fannette Dome, 130; at High Island, 97; leases near Laredo, 112; at Orange, 95, 127; at Orchard Dome, 130; at Pierce Junction, 128; at Powell, 124; sells Somerset production, 103, 107; at Sour Lake, 127; at Stark’s Dome, 130; surface mapping in Central Texas, 117; treats cut oil, 98; at West Columbia, 94 Gulf Refining Company of Texas, 48, 99, 136, 217 Gypsy Oil Company (Gulf Production Company), 62– 63 Hamill and Josey, 102 Heywood Oil Company, 97 Higgins Oil and Fuel Company, 34, 36, 46, 58, 62 Hogg-Swain Syndicate, 33–34, 50 Homaokla Oil Company, 118 Houston Gulf Gas Company, 114, 115 Houston Oil Company, 114, 207 Houston Oil and Transport Company, 135 Hugo-West Oil Company, 48 Humble Oil and Refining Company: background, 62– 63; Baytown refinery, 134; in the Conroe field, 212; contract with Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, 63; cracking plant at Ingleside, 211; cuts back hours, 217; cuts East Texas crude price, 183; develops Sugarland field, 131; discovers Kingsville gas field, 115; discovers Loma Novia field, 209; at Dollarhide field, 230; East Texas leases in 1930, 168; exports products, 136; geological surveys in South Texas, 116; geologists in the Permian basin, 153; at Goose Creek, 128; hires woman paleontologist, 130; King Ranch lease, 208–209; leases near Laredo, 113; at McFaddin Beach, 216; at Mexia, 123; at Orange, 95; organization, 63; at Palangana, 108; polymerization plant, 217; price cut in 1939, 219; produces butadiene, 236; purchase by Standard

pg 303 # 7

Oil Company of New Jersey, 63; at Raccoon Bend, 132; raises refinery workers’ wages, 99; at Ranger, 91; refinery at Ingleside, 207; refinery workers reject union, 217; treats ‘‘cut oil,’’ 98; at West Columbia, 94; and Woodbine sands leases, 125; World Oil field purchase, 153 Humble Pipeline Company, 91, 143, 156, 233 Illinois Pipeline Company, 156 J. M. Guffey Company, 29, 36, 42, 48, 97; See also Gulf Oil Company Johnston and McCamey, 154 Kirby Petroleum Company, 119 Kleberg Oil and Gas Company, 105 Laredo Oil Company, 111 Larson and Cleary, 101 Little Six Oil Company, 95 Lone Star and Crescent Oil Company, 41 Lone Star Gas Company, 77, 106, 144, 145 Lumberman Oil Company, 47 McSweeny and Snowden, 128 Magnolia Gas Company, 115 Magnolia Oil Company: absorbs Security Oil Company, 54; acquisition by Standard Oil of New York, 55; discovers La Gloria field, 210; at Dollarhide field, 230; at Electra, 78; expands refinery, 134; extends Schott field, 111; in Fort Worth, 89; organized, 54; Panhandle pipelines, 143; purchase at Mirando Valley field, 110; purchases from Benedum and Trees, 87; purchases Mexia leases, 119, 123; refinery at San Antonio, 207; and the Sealy interests, 54 –55; at Seeligson field, 210; and Standard Oil Company of New York, 54 Marland Oil Corporation, 130, 153, 154 Mexia Gas Company, 118 Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company (Standard Oil of Ohio), 155 Midwest Exploration Company (Standard Oil of Indiana), 154 Mirando City Oil Company, 109–110

INDEX

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Misko Refining Company, 111, 207 Mission Oil Company, 144 National Oil Company, 108 Norway Oil Company, 65 Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Company, 144 Panhandle Pipeline Company, 144 Panhandle Refining Company, 88 Pan-Tex Pipeline Company, 111 Paraffine Oil Company, 47, 62, 97 Phillips Oil Corporation, 144, 229, 230 Phoenix Refining Company, 208 Piedras Pintas Consolidated Oil and Pipeline Company, 65 Pierce Junction Oil Company, 128 Pierce Oil Association, 89 Pioneer Natural Gas Company, 144 Pioneer Oil and Refining Company, 207 Prairie Oil and Gas Company, 123, 144 Producers Oil (Texaco), 42, 47, 50, 78, 109 Pure Oil Corporation, 123–124, 135, 168 Rado Refining and Producing Company, 207 Rebecca Oil Company, 47 Reliance Oil Company, 62 Republic Oil Company, 95 Republic Production Company, 51, 154 Rio Bravo Oil Company (Southern Pacific Railroad Company), 49, 95, 129 Rio Grande Refining Company, 150 Rio Grande Valley Gas Company, 116 Rockport Oil and Gas Company, 104 R. O. Harvey and Company, 86 Roxana Oil Company (Shell), 153, 155 Rycade Oil Corporation, 130 Saxtet Gas Company, 116 Security Oil Company (Magnolia), 54 Shamrock Oil and Gas Corporation, 145 Shell Oil Company: buys oil from J. M. Guffey, 48; discovers TXL field, 231; early seismology, 130;

304

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OIL IN TEXAS

operates iso-octane plant, 217; raises refinery wages, 99; workers join Oil Workers’ International Union, 217 Sinclair Oil Company, 98, 108, 217 Skelly Oil Company, 144 Southern Crude Oil and Purchasing Company (Standard Oil Company of Indiana), 158 Southern Gas Pipeline Company, 116 South Texas Development Company, 212 Standard Oil Company of California, 150 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, 20, 53–54, 55; See also Humble Oil and Refining Company Sun Oil Company, 48, 95, 96, 113, 192 Sun Pipeline Company, 48 Tennessee Gas and Transmission Company, 233 Texaco (The Texas Company): at Barber’s Hill, 129; at Blue Ridge, 96; at Darst Creek, 125; develops solvent dewaxing refinery process, 217; discovers Port Neches field, 131; at Electra, 78; expands refinery, 134; foreign markets, 57, 134; founded as Texas Fuel Company, 49; at Goose Creek, 98; headquarters moves to Houston, 60; hires woman scientist, 129; and integrated operations legislation, 55–56; at Kosse, 124; leases near Laredo, 112; merger with Hogg-McSwayne Syndicate, 50; at Moran, 79; at Piedras Pintas, 65; Port Arthur refinery, 57; San Antonio refinery, 207; treats ‘‘cut oil,’’ 98; at West Columbia, 94, 127 Texas Gas Company, 116 Texas Gulf Gas Association, 106 Texas Pacific Coal Company, 79, 81 Texas Petroleum Company, 96 Texhoma Refining Company, 88 Texon Oil and Land Company, 151 Transcontinental Oil Company, 152, 155

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Underwriters Producing and Refining Company, 149, 150 Union Exploration, 132 United North and South Oil Company, 126 United Petroleum Company, 96 Vacuum Oil Company (Standard Oil Company of New York), 213 Valley Refining Company, 208 Waters-Pierce Company, 6, 22 White Point Oil and Gas Company, 103–104 World Oil Company, 152–153 Yellow Pine Oil Company, 47 Young Ladies’ Oil Company, 38–39 Yount-Lee Oil Company, 127, 128 Zapata Oil and Gas Company, 106 oil storage at Burkburnett Townsite field, 84 at Corsicana, 18–19 at Electra, 78 in Gulf Coast fields, 98 in the Panhandle, 142 at Pierce Junction, 128 at Sour Lake and Humble, 72 at Spindletop, 31 Oil Well Supply Company, 59 Oliver, Roderick, 50 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 1–2 Owen, E. W., 139 Panhandle helium field, 145 Parker, E. W., 27 Parker Well Works, 58 Payne, Calvin N., 5, 28, 29, 77 Pennington, Harry, 132 Permanent University Fund, 163 Petroleum Administration for War, 222–223 Pew, J. Edgar, 48 Pew, Robert, 32, 48 Phillips, William Battle, 3, 18, 29, 100 Pickrell, Frank, 150 –151 Pierce, Henry Clay, 22 pipelines ‘‘Big Inch’’ and ‘‘Little Inch’’ lines, 226 conversion of Refugio gas line, 233 at Corsicana, 5 interstate pipelines, 231, 232, 233 Lone Star gas pipeline, 77 in North Texas, 86, 88

pg 305 # 9

from Oil Springs, 3 to Oklahoma, 48 in the Panhandle, 144 in the Permian Basin, 156, 160, 165, 166, 231 Sinclair-Prairie line from Corpus Christi to Houston, 233 in South Texas, 65, 101, 104, 106, 111, 113, 114 –115, 116 at Spindletop, 34, 41, 48, 50, 54 Pipkin, L. B., 34 Pipkin, S. W., 50 Pittsburgh Oil Well Supply Company, 32 Powell, L. P., 150 Prather, Ed, 65 Pratt, Wallace E., 126, 139 Priddy, Walter M., 88 Prince, Robert E., 9 railroads, 10 –12, 15–17, 139 Rather, J. D., 187 Reagan, John H., 16 Reed, Clarence E., 133 Reed, Clell, 205 refineries and aviation fuels, 229, 235 at Bayou Vistador, 3 at Beaumont, 54, 57 at Corsicana, 5– 6 growth during the 1920s, 134 –135 on the Houston Ship Channel, 217 improved processes, 217 and petrochemicals, 217 at Port Arthur, 57 in South Texas, 207–208 at Spindletop, 48– 49 See also oil companies Richards, Esther, 129 Richardson, Sid W., 90 –91, 201–202, 231 Ricker, Rupert, 150 –151 Rittersbacker, Charles, 9 Roberts, Governor Oran, 15 Rockefeller, John D., 21 Roeser, Charles, 188 Rork, C. M., 33 Sandusky, L. W., 149 Sanger, Alex, 47 Scharbauer, John, 48 Scharbauer Hotel, 194

INDEX

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Scott, Miss D. C., 38 Seagraves, Odie, 114 Sealy, George, 13 Sealy, John, 50, 54 –55 Sevier, Clara Driscoll, 101–102 Sharp, Walter B. cofounder of Hughes Tool Company, 60, 133 at Corsicana, 8 later career, 8 and merger with Texas Company, 50 and Producers’ Oil Company, 50 at Sour Lake, 43 at Spindletop, 26, 32 Showers, Eddie, 170 Silk, W. W., 196 Simms, E. F., 108 Smead, Mrs. Louisa F., 38 Smith, Blake, 118 Smith, Harvey, 132 Smith, Mattie Monroe, 155 Snider, L. C., 139 Staiti, Henry T., 96, 132 Strake, George W., 212–213 Sterling, Frank, 63 Sterling, Ross early career, 62 as governor, recommends new regulatory agency, 184 and organization of Humble Oil Company, 63 promoted Port of Houston, 98 rebuffed by United States Supreme Court, 188 sends Texas National Guard to East Texas, 186 special legislative session, 185 Stump, Mrs. D. A., 38 Swayne, James W., 33 Teagle, Walter, 153 technology brine water disposal, 192 controlled directional drilling, 216 control systems, 214 control valves at Spindletop, 31 ‘‘cut oil’’ processing, 98 early blowout preventers, 46 early oil rigs, 18 gas separation, 213 measuring reservoir pressure, 184

306

.

OIL IN TEXAS

paleontology, 129 petrochemical production, 217, 235–236 refinery processes, 217 seamless high carbon steel pipe, 11 seismology, 130 –132, 197, 209, 215– 216 submersible drilling barges, 216 sub-surface geology, 130 –132 treating paraffined oil, 143 Worthington Special Slush Pump, 60 Tejanos, 134, 206 Templeton, John D., 14 –15 Texas government and the petroleum industry Anti-Market Demand Act, 185 anti-monopoly legislation, 20 –21 common carrier pipeline legislation, 55 Common Purchaser Act, 182–183, 199 Constitution of 1876, 14 –15 federal ‘‘hot oil’’ legislation, 190 House Bill No. 542, 9 on integrated ownership of pipelines, 55–56, 92 Land Act of 1933, 164 lawsuits against: Waters-Pierce Oil Company, 54; Navarro Refining, 54; Security Oil Company, 54; Union Tank Line company, 54 legal definition of ‘‘waste,’’ 181 limitation of saltwater incursion, 74 Myrick bill (1905), 51–52 natural gas legislation, 199 Permit and Leasing Act of 1913, 162 regulation of waste, 92 Section 59a amendment of Article 16 of the constitution, 92 See also Texas Railroad Commission Texas National Guard, 123, 147, 186, 188 Texas Oil and Gas Conservation Association, 182, 188 Texas Oil Producers and Landowners Association, 55 Texas Railroad Commission adjustment of allowables, 223, 226, 229, 231 allowable production in South Texas, 211

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and the Bammell field, 223–224 bans well shooting in Panhandle field, 142 cementing in the Powell field, 15 created, 16 early pipeline regulation, 92 enforces common purchaser act, 182–183 in the Hendrick field, 158–160 issues, 38 jurisdiction over physical waste, 92 limited authority in East Texas, 181–182 on natural gas proration, 144 noncompliance with regulations, 93–94 on Panhandle carbon black plants, 144 in the Panhandle casinghead gas dispute, 198–199 on Panhandle natural gas, 142–143 production restriction at Darst Creek, 127 production shutdown in 1939, 219 proration in 1940, 221 proration orders in East Texas, 183– 190 regulation of ‘‘underground waste,’’ 92 rules, 92 Rule 37, 92–93 staffing levels, 93 wartime regulation, 223 well spacing at the Tomball field, 213 in Yates field, 156 –157 Texas Rangers, 122–123, 147, 155 Texas State Geological Survey, 17, 26 Thompson, Ernest O., 189, 190, 223 Thompson, F. L., 103 Townes, M. K., 108 Trees, Joseph, 87 Tyrell, W. C., 51 Udden, John August, 18, 148 United States Geological Survey, 125 United States Zinc Company, 144 university lands, 161–162, 164

pg 307 # 11

University of Texas, 150 Waggoner, W. T. ‘‘Ole Tom,’’ 75 Wagner, Warren, 82 Wallis, C. L., 58, 65 Webb, Sam, 68 Wells, J. B., 51 West, Duval, 184 West, George, 48 West, W. E., Jr., 118 Westbrook, Roy, 154 –155, 158–159 Western Carbon Company, 144 White, Israel, 17 Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce, 79 Wiess, Mark, 47 Wiess, William and Ardmore Oil Company, 63 at Batson oil field, 62 and Cactus Oil Company, 64 – 65 and Denison Oil Company, 64 enters oil business, 47 and Frank and Ross Sterling, 63 and Gypsy Oil Company, 62 and Higgins Oil and Fuel Company, 62 at Humble oil field, 62 at North Dayton oil field, 62 and Paraffine Oil Company, 50 and Reliance Oil Company, 62 at Sour Lake oil field, 62 Wisdom, Miss Maude, 38 Wise County, 197–198 Witherspoon, Claude, 7, 42, 108 W. K. M. Manufacturing Company, 61 women and the petroleum industry and boomtown jobs, 206 in chemistry, 129 non-oil jobs created, 71 in oil-related science, 205–206 in paleontology, 129 Young Ladies’ Oil Company, 38 Worsham, W. B., 77 Worthington, Henry, 68 Yates, Ira, 155 Yount, Miles Frank, 128

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pg 308 # 12