First Texas Oil Well
An 1866 well at Nacogdoches produced 10 barrels of oil a day.
Lyne Taliaferro Barret completed the first Texas oil well on September 12, 1866. Barret had intended to drill before the Civil War but paused exploration to serve as a captain in the Quartermaster Corps, Confederate States of America, for the Nacogdoches district. His 1866 well west of the Sabine River did not produce commercial quantities of oil, so it lay dormant for nearly two decades.
In December 1859, less than four months after Edwin L. Drake’s first U.S. oil well in Pennsylvania, a similarly determined petroleum-drilling pioneer named Lyne (Lynis) Taliaferro Barret began searching in East Texas. He looked in an area southeast of Nacogdoches known as Oil Springs. (more…)
