Word: spindletop
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Drake's wake came Captain Anthony F. Lucas, an Austrian immigrant with a vague theory that oil is locked under salt domes. He started drilling near Beaumont, Texas and in 1901 struck Spindletop. Within weeks, oilmen there struck no less than six gushers that could produce more oil than the rest of the world combined. More money was lost than gained in the ensuing land rush, but Spindletop spouted 50 million bbl.. spawned three great oil-producing companies: Humble, Texas...
...sounds deep into the earth and gauging the echo to find "the rock beds humped up into a little dome which might be a trap for oil." In 1930 the well blew in at 8,000 bbl. a day. "This was the most important well drilled in America since Spindletop; reflection seismograph revolutionized prospecting for oil as completely as Spindletop had done...
...Spindletop took petroleum out of lamps and lubricants, put it into gas tanks and made it a source of cheap power. It cracked the coal's monopoly grip on fuel and Standard's grip on oil. Before Spindletop, Standard directly controlled 83% of America's annual 58 million barrels; a year later it was just another competitor. Spindletop gave birth to the entire Texas oil industry and to two of its giants: Texaco and Gulf...
...Whole Honor." Ironically, much of this bypassed Pattillo Higgins. Even before the first Spindletop gusher blew in, he had been elbowed aside by Anthony Lucas. It was called the "Lucas well," not the Higgins well. Higgins had to sue to get his share from the Lucas well, finally settled for about $300,000. When he tried to form a new company in 1902, suspicious Beaumonters, wary of the sharpsters that had flocked in, were calling the whole operation "Swindletop." In the boisterous, bawdy oil boom, Beaumont refused to honor the man who had started it all, just...
Died. Pattillo Higgins, 92, Texas oilman who triggered the Spindletop strike near Beaumont which ushered in the oil age; in Houston (see BUSINESS...