First Texas Oil Well
Well at Nacogdoches produced 10 barrels of oil a day in 1866.
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 the successful drilling of Edwin L. Drake’s first U.S. oil well in Pennsylvania, a similarly determined petroleum pioneer named Lyne (Lynis) Taliaferro Barret began searching in East Texas. He look in an area known as Oil Springs. (more…)
