After drilling 20 “dry holes,” the Tyndall-Wyoming Oil Company completed the No. 1 Hogg well 50 miles south of Houston. Within four months, a second well was producing about 600 barrels a day. The discoveries ended a succession of attempts dating back to 1901, when former Texas Governor James “Big Jim” Hogg paid $30,000 for the lease. (more…)
A West Coast Spanish expedition discovered natural seeps that became known as La Brea (the tar). “We debated whether this substance, which flows melted from underneath the earth, could occasion so many earthquakes,” noted the expedition’s Franciscan friar in his diary. (more…)
The widely popular Depression Era newspaper comic strip character Alley Oop began in the imagination of a young cartographer who drew Permian Basin oilfield maps in Texas.
The club-wielding Alley Oop caveman appeared for the first time in the summer of 1933 when Victor Hamlin, a former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reporter, published fanciful tales about the Stone Age Kingdom of Moo. Hamlin began syndicating his daily cartoon in Iowa’s Des Moines Register.
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