Last Day of Caching & Sightseeing Around Beaumont 4/15/2010

Today we went caching close to the campgrounds doing a few caches as well as some sightseeing. Our caches included one at the Texas Visitor's Center, a couple along the highway in the woods, one on a guardrail and another in a light post. Then it was off to Spindletop-Gladys Boomtown Museum and a cache in the parking lot and then after finding the cache we took the walking tour through the Boomtown Village. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Southeast Texas was something of a backwater. Its economy, like that of most of the South, was subsistence agriculture, but the lumber business was also important. Mills in Beaumont and Orange produced lumber for shipment to the rest of America and overseas. Southeast Texas had another resource - oil - but the amount underground remained a mystery. People knew of oil in the area for hundreds of years before any substantial production began. In 1543 the Spanish used the oil from seeps near Sabine Pass for caulking their ships, although local Indians certainly knew of oil much earlier. To the north, settlers near Nacogdoches used seeping oil for lubricants before 1800. In 1847 the settlers at Sour Lake noticed that oil was bubbling to the surface, and after the Civil War Dick Dowling tried unsuccessfully to drill a well near there. There were numerous discoveries in east and central Texas in the later years, especially at Corsicana in 1896. Wildcatters drilled at Spindletop in 1893 and 1896 and at Sour Lake in 1896. However, there was no significant oil production along the Gulf Coast until the gusher at Spindletop in 1901. Total Texas oil production was 836,000 barrels in 1900, a small fraction of national production (63 million barrels). If one had asked a Beaumonter on January 1, 1901, what big news of recent months had most interested him, he would have said the great Galveston hurricane of September 8, or the dawning of a new century. If one had asked him on January 10, he would have said
the great gusher at Spindletop. As geologists would soon learn, salt domes are surrounded by oil, and one of the largest was Spindletop Hill, south of Beaumont.
Pattillo Higgins had noticed oil seeps and gas flares on the Hill while taking his Sunday school class on picnics. To get the necessary backing, he approached George W. Carroll, George W. O'Brien, and J.F. Lanier. In 1892, they incorporated the Gladys
City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company. Many years and many dry holes later, Higgins advertised for a new partner. Anthony F. Lucas, an Austrian mining engineer, answered the ad. Lucas believed that salt domes contained oil, and he was
able to convince John H. Galey and James M. Guffey of Pittsburgh that there were great prospects in Texas. They helped finance a new well. On January 10, the discovery well at Spindletop blew out a gigantic gusher, 100 feet tall. The drillers, Al and Curt Hamill, quickly sent a roughneck to tell Lucas of the strike. The oil flowed for nine days before the Hamills could cap the well, and soon all of Beaumont, Texas, and the entire nation knew of the gusher, and the first great oil boom began. Within months, over 40,000 boomers had poured into Beaumont, with more to come. Beaumont, a small town, literally filled to overflowing. Men slept in shifts if they could find a bed or in the streets if they could not. The Hill and the surrounding landscape was soon covered by wooden derricks almost touching one another. All-white shack towns like Guffey and Gladys City sprang up near the wells. The blacks had shanties nearby. The hottest spot was the Log Cabin Saloon, where, according to legend, every Saturday night someone was killed. Today, nothing is left; the hill has subsided and looks like a wasteland. The gallery of the Crosby hotel was the most crowded spot in Beaumont as speculators and con-men tried to make connections. Within a year, 500 oil and land companies had been created. Most were devices designed to generate money - not with oil, but with watered stock. Excursion companies ran tours of the Hill and opened synthetic gushers special for the occasion. Properly impressed suckers then, in turn, opened their wallets, dreaming dreams of quick wealth. Not all the companies were disreputable; Texaco and Gulf (now Chevron) got their start in Southeast Texas, and Humble (now Exxon) at nearby Humble. Former governor James Stephen Hogg, Bet-A-Million Gates (who helped create Texaco), and other out-of-towners, especially easterners, got rich if their agents could buy leases fast enough. Local boys-made-good included Harry Wiess, Harry Phelan, Wes Kyle, H. A. Perlstein, and others who happened to own land with oil under it, and in the case of the McFaddin family, lots of land. The first year Spindletop produced 3.59 million barrels, and the second year produced 17.4 million. The glut of oil destroyed John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil's world monopoly. Oil sold for 25 cents a barrel - on good days. When the Spindletop area began to decline, wildcatters in 1903 headed to Sour Lake, Saratoga, and Batson in Hardin County. Since there were no jails in Batson, police chained suspects to trees. In 1904, the crews moved to Humble and then to Burkburnett in north Texas. But oil production in Southeast Texas remained the most important part of the economy. Oil must be refined, and refineries soon opened nearby. Guffey Oil's refinery (now Chevron) began operation in Port Arthur in 1901, and within three years, Texaco opened its refinery, also at Port Arthur, and the George A. Burt Company operated one in south Beaumont along the Neches river. Burt later became the Magnolia Refinery and is now called Mobil. Soon others, and associated companies, followed in the local area and at Houston. The oil products most in demand were kerosene, naptha, and lubricants. In 1901, gasoline was not much desired and at one time was used as a quack remedy. Users could buy it at drugstores. The beginning of the automobile age came shortly, and gasoline became a major product. One of the problems with oil booms is that they come to an end, and boom times in Southeast Texas were largely over by World War I. Nevertheless, the oil industry continued a steady growth. In 1906, Port Arthur became a port of entry for the Sabine District, and the ship channel reached Beaumont and Orange in 1908. The major cargo was oil and oil products. In 1911, the Beaumont harbor was enlarged, and in 1927, a turning basin dredged. The three ports together shipped huge amounts of tonnage in later years. Now imported crude oil comes through the ports to be refined at the various refineries on the intracoastal canal. After World War I, a new oilman appeared on the scene - Frank Yount of the Yount-Lee Oil Company. In 1922, the company brought in the first great flank well on the Texas Gulf coast in the Hull field. The company made huge profits over the next several years. Yount believed that there was much more oil at Spindletop, if flank wells could be drilled deep enough. He was right, and the McFaddin No. 2 began to produce oil at 2518 feet on November 13, 1925. That evening, Magnolia's radio station announced the discovery, and the second Spindletop boom began. Soon the Hill was ringed with wells, but the lawless atmosphere that had characterized the first boom was not repeated. Nearly 60 million barrels were produced during the next five years, almost all by the Yount-Lee company. Over 10,000 men found employment in the oil field, and the economy of southeast Texas flourished until the Great Depression hit hard in the early 1930s. The result was hard times. After the second boom ended, Spindletop produced only small amounts of oil, but in the early 1950s, the Texas Gulf Sulfur Company built a twelve-million-dollar plant to extract another mineral - sulfur - and drilled the necessary wells. This operation would soon cause the Hill to subside. Today, the glory days of Spindletop are long since gone. The site looks like a wasteland, and only a few oil wells continue to operate, very slowly. It was extremely interesting to walk through the buildings as each one had a great deal of antiques in them as you can see by the pictures.

After we finished the walking tour our next cache was outside the Lamar University baseball field on the center field wall. Boomtown, by the way, is located on the Lamar Univ. property and is run by them. We found the cache and then walked into the baseball field as they were having batting practice, so we stayed and watched for awhile. Then we drove out to Spindletop Park which is a little used park with a small scale pumping oil well and some historical informational plaques. We did a Earthcache and a traditional cache there and then were on our way back to the coach. We did our usual afternoon routine and then had dinner and watched some TV.

Well until tomorrow we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick.