After decades of drilling dry holes, a New Mexico wildcatter reveals rich deposits of high-grade uranium ore.
Stella Dysart spent almost 30 years unsuccessfully searching for oil in New Mexico. In 1955, a radioactive uranium sample from one of her “dusters” made her a very wealthy woman.
In the end, it was the uranium — not petroleum — that made Dysart her fortune. The sometimes desperate promoter of New Mexico oil drilling ventures for more than 30 years, she once served time for fraud. But in 1955, Mrs. Dysart learned she owned the world’s richest deposit of high-grade uranium ore.
LIFE magazine featured Stella Dysart in front of a drilling rig in 1955, soon after she made a fortune from uranium after three decades of failure in petroleum drilling ventures.
Born in 1878 in Slater, Missouri, Dysart moved to New Mexico, where she got into the petroleum and real estate business in 1923. She ultimately acquired a reported 150,000 acres in the remote Ambrosia Lake area 100 miles west of Albuquerque, on the southern edge of the oil-rich San Juan Basin.
Dysart established the New Mexico Oil Properties Association and the Dysart Oil Company. The ventures and other investment schemes would leave her broke, according to John Masters and Paul Grescoe in their 2002 book, Secret Riches: Adventures of an Unreformed Oilman.
The authors describe Dysart as a woman who drilled dry holes, peddled worthless parcels of land to thousands of dirt-poor investors, and went to jail for one of her crooked deals.
Dysart subdivided her properties and subdivided again — selling one-eighth acre leases and oil royalties as small as one-six thousandth to investors. She drilled nothing but dry holes for years. Then it got worse,
Before her good fortune from uranium, Stella Dysart served 15 months in prison for unauthorized selling of New Mexico oil leases. In 1941, she had promoted her Dysart No. 1 Federal well, above, which was never completed.
A 1937 Workmen’s Compensation Act judgment against Dysart’s New Mexico Oil Properties Association bankrupted the company, compelling sale of its equipment, “sold as it now lies on the ground near Ambrosia Lake.”
Two years later, it got worse again. Dysart and five Dysart Oil Company co-defendants were charged with 60 counts of conspiracy, grand theft and violation of the corporate securities (act) in 1939. All were convicted, and all did time. Dysart served 15 months in the county jail before being released on probation in March 1941.
Richest Uranium Deposit
By 1952, 74-year-old Dysart was $25,000 in debt when she met uranium prospector Louis Lothman, a young Texan just two years out of college with a geology degree.
When Lothman examined cuttings from a Dysart dry hole in McKinley County in 1955, he got impressive Geiger counter readings. The drilling of several more test wells confirmed the results. Dysart owned the world’s richest deposit of high-grade uranium ore.
Uranium production in the San Juan Basin, 1948-1975 courtesy New Mexico Geological Survey.
The uranium discovery launched an intensive exploration effort that led to development of the multi-million-ton deposits in the Ambrosia Lake area, according to William L. Chenoweth of the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration.
“The San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico has been the source of more uranium production than any other area in the United States,” he noted in a New Mexico Geological Survey 1977 report, “Uranium in the San Juan Basin.”
Dysart was 78 years old when the December 10, 1955, LIFE magazine featured her picture, captioned: “Wealthy landowner, Mrs. Stella Dysart, stands before abandoned oil rig which she set up on her property in a long vain search for oil. Now uranium is being mined there and Mrs. Dysart, swathed in mink, gets a plump royalty.”
Praised for her success, and memories of fraudulent petroleum deals long forgotten, Dysart died in 1966 in Albuquerque at age 88. As Secret Riches author John Masters explained, “there must be a little more to her story, but as someone said of Truth — ‘it lies hidden in a crooked well.’”
More New Mexico petroleum history can be found in Farmington, including the exhibit “From Dinosaurs to Drill Bits” at the Farmington Museum. Learn about the giant Hobbs oilfield of the late 1920s in New Mexico Oil Discovery.
Citation Information – Article Title: Legend of “Mrs. Dysart’s Uranium Well.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/uranium. Last Updated: December 5, 2024. Original Published Date: April 29, 2013.
November 18, 1847 — Manufactured Gas illuminates U.S. Capitol –
Lamps fueled by “coal gas” began replacing whale oil lamps in the U.S. Capitol. Manufactured gas distilled beneath the Capitol flowed through newly installed pipes into light fixtures, including chandeliers in both House chambers. James Crutchett had invented the lighting system and convinced Congress to appropriate $17,500 to fund his plan, which included a lantern atop the dome.
A mast with gas lantern was erected on the U.S. Capitol dome in 1847. By 1865, the rotunda interior used 1,083 gas jets. Incandescent lighting began in 1885. Image courtesy Architect of the Capitol.
Onlookers witnessed, “one of the most splendid and beautiful spectacles we ever beheld,” according to David Rotenstein in History Sidebar. Crutchett built a gas plant in the Capitol’s northwest quadrant, placing lighting fixtures throughout the building.
Although the dome’s 80-foot mast and lantern would be removed within a year, a citywide manufactured gas system followed — similar to ones established in Philadelphia and Baltimore (see Illuminating Gaslight).
November 19, 1861 – America exports Oil for First Time
America exported petroleum for the first time when the merchant brig Elizabeth Watts departed the Port of Philadelphia for Great Britain. The Union vesselarrived in London 45 days later carrying a cargo of 901 barrels of Pennsylvania oil and 428 barrels of refined kerosene.
A merchant brig set sail from Philadelphia in 1861 with a cargo of Pennsylvania oil and refined kerosene. Photo of vinegar barrels at Massachusetts port in 1870, courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum.
The shippers were the successful Philadelphia import-export firm of Peter Wright & Sons, which since its founding in 1818 had prospered transporting glass, porcelain and queensware china. The company hired the Elizabeth Watts to ship the petroleum to three British companies. On January 9, 1862, the brig sailed down the Thames River to arrive at London, where it took 12 days to unload the 1,329 barrels of oil and kerosene.
November 19, 1927 – Phillips Petroleum introduces “Phillips 66” Gasoline
After a decade as an exploration and production company, Phillips Petroleum entered the business of refining and retail gasoline distribution. The Bartlesville, Oklahoma, company introduced a new line of gasoline — “Phillips 66” — at its first service station, which opened in Wichita, Kansas.
Originally promoted as a dependable “winter gasoline,” by 1930 “Phillips 66” gasoline was marketed in 12 states.
The gasoline was named “Phillips 66” because it had propelled company officials down U.S. Highway 66 at 66 mph on the way to a meeting at their Bartlesville headquarters. The roadway became part of Phillips Petroleum marketing plans for the new product, which boasted “controlled volatility,” the result of a higher-gravity mix of naphtha and gasoline.
By 1930, Phillips 66 gasoline was sold at 6,750 outlets in 12 states. Because the composition made Phillips 66 gas easier to start in cold weather, ads enticed motorists to try the “New Winter Gasoline.” Visit the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum, which opened in 2007.
November 20, 1866 – Improved Well Torpedo patented
Col. Edward A.L. Roberts of New York City patented improvements to his Roberts Torpedo, an oilfield technology for increasing production by fracturing oil-bearing formations. “Our attention has been called to a series of experiments that have been made in the wells of various localities by Col. Roberts, with his newly patented torpedo,” noted the Titusville Morning Herald newspaper in 1865. “The results have in many cases been astonishing.”
Portrait of Col. Edward Roberts, the Union Civil War veteran who patented well “torpedo” technologies that vastly improved oil production.
The Civil War Union Army veteran would receive many patents for his “Exploding Torpedoes in Artesian Wells” method to increase petroleum production (see Shooters – A “Fracking” History).
November 20, 1930 – Oil Booms bring Hilton Hotels to Texas
After buying his first hotel in the booming oil town of Cisco, Texas, Conrad Hilton opened a high-rise in El Paso. While visiting Cisco in 1919, Hilton had witnessed roughnecks from the Ranger oilfield waiting for rooms. Hilton’s first hotel, the Mobley, offered 40 rooms for eight-hour periods to coincide with workers’ shifts. Thanks to booming oilfields, Hilton was firmly established in Texas. His El Paso Hilton (now the Plaza Hotel) was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
November 20, 1980 – Texaco Well drains Louisiana Lake
Minutes after its drilling crew evacuated, a Texaco drilling platform overturned and disappeared into a whirlpool that drained Lake Peigneur, Louisiana, over the next three hours. The crew had accidentally penetrated a salt dome containing the mining operations of Diamond Crystal Salt Company.
All 50 miners working as deep as 1,500 feet below the surface escaped with no serious injuries as a maelstrom swallowed the $5 million Texaco platform — and 11 barges holding drilling supplies.
Photo from a 1981 government study of the “Jefferson Island Mine Inundation,” Texaco’s accidental drilling into a salt mine one year earlier. Photo courtesy Federal Mine Safety and Health Investigation Report.
“Texaco, who had ordered the oil probe, was aware of the salt mine’s presence and had planned accordingly; but somewhere a miscalculation had been made, which placed the drill site directly above one of the salt mine’s 80-foot-high, 50-foot-wide upper shafts,” noted a 2005 article about the Lake Peigneur vortex.
According to a 1981 government report, “Jefferson Island Mine Inundation,“ evidence for identifying the exact cause was washed away, but Texaco and Wilson Drilling paid $32 million to Diamond Crystal Salt Company and another $12.8 million to a nearby botanical garden. Changed from freshwater to saltwater with a depth reaching 200 feet, Lake Peigneur became the deepest lake in Louisiana.
November 21, 1925 – Magnolia Petroleum incorporates
Formerly an unincorporated joint-stock association with roots dating to an 1889 refinery in Corsicana, Texas, Magnolia Petroleum Company incorporated. The original association had sold many grades of refined petroleum products through more than 500 service stations in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
Magnolia Petroleum operated gas stations throughout the Southeast.
Within a month of the new company’s founding, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New York (Socony) purchased most Magnolia Petroleum assets and operated it as a subsidiary. Magnolia merged with the Socony Mobile Oil Company in 1959 and adopted the red Pegasus logo at gas stations. Magnolia Petroleum assets were part of the 1999 merger that created ExxonMobil.
November 21, 1980 – Millions watch “Dallas” Episode
The cliffhanger episode “Who shot J.R.?” on the prime-time soap opera “Dallas” was watched by 83 million people in the United States and 350 million worldwide. The CBS show debuted in 1978 and revolved around two Texas oil families, one featuring Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing, “the character fans loved to hate,” according to History.com. Hagman’s portrayal of a “greedy, conniving, womanizing scoundrel” and the business dealings of Ewing Oil Company would stereotype the Texas petroleum industry for seasons.
November 22, 1878 – Tidewater Pipe Company established
Byron Benson organized the Tidewater Pipe Company in Pennsylvania. In 1879 his company would build the first oil pipeline to cross the Alleghenies from Coryville to the Philadelphia Reading Railroad 109 miles away in Williamsport. This technological achievement was considered by many as the first true oil pipeline in America, if not the world.
Despite protests from teamsters, a 109-mile oil pipeline revolutionized oil transportation. Photo courtesy explorepahistory.com.
The difficult work — much of it done in winter using sleds to move pipe sections — bypassed Standard Oil Company’s dominance in transporting petroleum. Tidewater made an arrangement with Reading Railroad to haul the oil in tank cars to Philadelphia and New York. In 1879, about 250 barrels of oil from the Bradford field was pumped across the mountains and into Williamsport.
More than 80 percent of America’s oil soon would come from Pennsylvania oilfields, according to Floyd Hartman Jr. in a 2009 article, “Birth of Coryville’s Tidewater Pipe Line.”
November 22, 1905 – Glenn Pool Field discovered in Indian Territory
Two years before Oklahoma statehood, the Glenn Pool (or Glenpool) oilfield was discovered in the Creek Indian Reservation south of Tulsa. The greatest oilfield in America at the time, it would help make Tulsa the “Oil Capital of the World.” Many independent oil producers, including Harry F. Sinclair and J. Paul Getty, got their start during the Glenn Pool boom.
An oilfield pioneers monument was dedicated in April 2008 at Glenpool, Oklahoma. Photo by Bruce Wells.
With production exceeding 120,000 barrels of oil a day, Glenn Pool exceeded Tulsa County’s earlier Red Fork Gusher. The giant oilfield even exceeded production from Spindletop Hill in Texas four years earlier. The Ida Glenn No. 1 well, drilled to about 1,500 feet deep, led to more prolific wells in the 12-square-mile Glenn Pool.
By the time of statehood in 1907, Tulsa area oilfields made Oklahoma the biggest U.S. oil-producing state. Learn more in Making Tulsa “Oil Capital of the World.”
November 22, 2003 – Smithsonian Museum features Transportation
A permanent exhibit about U.S. transportation history opened at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. “Get your kicks on 40 feet of Route 66,” the Smithsonian exhibit noted on opening day of the $22 million renovation of the museum’s Hall of Transportation.
Opened in 2003 after a $22 million renovation, the Transportation Hall of the National Museum of American History exhibits 340 historic objects in 26,000 square feet. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Hundreds of artifacts are displayed in chronological order, allowing visitors “travel back in time and experience transportation as it changed America,” the hall today includes examples of the first models of Oldsmobile, Franklin, and Cadillac. Also preserved is the Duryea brothers’ 1893-1994 model considered to be the first American car driven by an internal combustion engine.
The first U.S. seagoing Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) ship went into service as Warren Petroleum Corporation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, sent the Natalie O. Warren from the Houston Ship Channel to Newark, New Jersey. The vessel had an LPG capacity of 38,053 barrels in 68 vertical pressure tanks.
The Natalie O. Warren, a converted freighter, had an LPG capacity of 38,053 barrels in 68 vertical pressure tanks.
The one-of-a-kind ship was the former Cape Diamond dry-cargo freighter before being converted by the Bethlehem Steelyard in Beaumont, Texas. The experimental design led to innovative maritime construction standards for such vessels.
Warren Petroleum became the largest producer and marketer of natural gasoline and propane in the world by the early 1950s, according to an exhibit at the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. LPG tankers today carry 20 times the capacity of the early vessels.
How a red Pegasus soared into Dallas petroleum history.
The Mobil Oil Pegasus perched atop the Magnolia Petroleum building in Dallas from 1934 until 1999, when rust and growing structural issues forced its removal. On the first day of 2000, a carefully crafted duplicate returned to the Dallas skyline.
Thanks to its widespread popularity, Mobil Oil’s high-flying trademark returned to its Texas home with one red Pegasus on each side of a sign painstakingly recreated by the American Porcelain Enamel Company. As the year 1999 drew to a close, the duplicated Pegasus soared again. (more…)
Driller of first U.S. oil well accidently ignited it 41 days later.
Along Oil Creek at Titusville, Pennsylvania, the wooden derrick and engine house of America’s first well specifically drilled for oil erupted in flames on October 7, 1859. The already famous well had been completed on August 27 by Edwin L. Drake, a former railroad conductor hired by the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut. (more…)
A 1930 wildcat well and two others miles away revealed the largest oilfield in the lower 48 states.
The East Texas oilfield, one of the greatest petroleum discoveries in United States history, arrived during the Great Depression.
With a crowd of more than 4,000 landowners, leaseholders, stockholders, creditors and spectators watching – the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well erupted oil near Kilgore, Texas. It was October 3, 1930.
“Thousands crowded their way to the site of Daisy Bradford No. 3, hoping to be there when and if oil gushed from the well to wash away the misery of the Great Depression,” noted one Kilgore, Texas, historian. Photo courtesy Jack Elder and Caleb Pirttelli, The Glory Days.
Incredible to most geologists, another wildcat well 10 miles to the north — the Lou Della Crim No. 1 well, drilled by Malcolm Crim on his mother’s farm — began flowing on December 28, 1930. A month later and 15 miles north of that well, a third, the Lathrop No. 1 well, drilled by W.A. “Monty” Moncrief, delivered another gusher.
At first, the great distance between these “black gold” discoveries convinced geologists — and virtually all of the major oil companies — that the wildcat wells had found separate oilfields.
J. Malcolm Crim of Kilgore names his wildcat well after his mother, Lou Della.
However, to the delight of many small, struggling farmers who owned the land, it finally became apparent that the three wells were all part of one giant oilfield.
H.L. Hunt and Oklahoma Wildcatters
In 1905, when Haroldson Lafayette “H.L.” Hunt was just 16 years old, he left his Illinois farm family and headed west. Along the way, he worked as a dishwasher, mule team driver, logger, farmhand, and even tried out for semi-pro baseball.
H.L. Hunt’s oil career began in Arkansas and East Texas and spanned much of the industry’s history, notes Hunt Oil Company. Photo circa 1911.
During his travels, young H.L. Hunt learned to gamble and played cards in bunkhouses, hobo camps, and saloons. But his life change when an Arkansas wildcat well, the Busey-Armstrong No. 1, erupted oil on January 10, 1921. Hunt joined the speculative rush and drilling frenzy that followed. He began with $50 in his pocket.
The Arkansas oilfield discovery catapulted the population of El Dorado from 4,000 to over 25,000 (learn more in First Arkansas Oil Wells).
While Hunt was pursuing oil in Arkansas, an unlikely pair was doing the same in Oklahoma. Sixty-five-year-old Columbus Marion Joiner was a former lawyer and Tennessee legislator who had spent years making a living as an oil lease broker in Oklahoma. He had lost a $200,000 fortune in the financial panic of 1907 — and began pursuing the wealth a successful wildcatter and promoter might find.
Columbus Marion Joiner believed in geologist A.D. Lloyd, especially after Lloyd located wells in Seminole, Oklahoma, oilfields.
A friend of Joiner, Joseph Idelbert Durham, had studied medicine and worked as a government chemist in the Idaho gold rush. Durham had also prospected for gold in the Yukon and Mexico before peddling patent oil medicines in “Dr. Alonzo Durham’s Great Medicine Show.”
Taking the name “A.D. Lloyd,” Durham proclaimed, “I’m not a professional geologist…but I’ve studied the earth more, and know more about it, than any professional geologist now alive will ever know.”
Joiner believed in “Doc” Lloyd and his confidence was reinforced when Lloyd accurately located the rich Seminole oilfield. Joiner drilled to within 200 feet of discovering this previously untapped reserve — but stopped short when his money ran out. Empire Gas & Fuel Company brought in the field’s discovery well on a nearby lease.
After a similar near miss in Oklahoma’s Cement field and a stretch of bad luck, the broke but optimistic Joiner headed to Dallas, where oilmen and oil money were plentiful. Meanwhile, A.D. Lloyd was off to Mexico, promoting new oil ventures.
Back in the Oil Business: H.L. Hunt, Inc.
H.L. Hunt’s success in Arkansas enabled him to investigate other investment possibilities, and with El Dorado oilfield production diminishing, he was lured to Florida real estate. He sold his interests to the Louisiana Oil and Refining Company, retaining a few wells in the El Dorado and Smackover fields.
Dedicated in 1955, a monument in Shreveport, Louisiana, commemorates the state’s rich petroleum heritage. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Hunt ultimately abandoned the Florida real estate market and returned to Arkansas, where in 1934 he formed H.L. Hunt, Inc. He was back in the oil business, the no-limit game he loved. Hunt traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana, and checked into the Washington-Youree Hotel, where the marble lobby hosted crowds of competing oil operators, promoters, and “lease hounds” — all looking for an edge in the high-risk world of petroleum exploration.
Speculators and promoters often profited where the true wildcatters could not. Not far to the west of Shreveport, Rusk County in northeastern Texas had seen its share of lease trading — despite the widely held conviction that there was no oil to be found there.
Geologists from major oil companies found no petroleum-rich salt domes (as in the 1901 Spindletop gusher at Beaumont to the south), anticlines, or other indications of oil. Seventeen wildcat wells had been dry holes.
“Dad” and “Doc” in Rusk County
Columbus Marion Joiner was undeterred. In 1927, he was 66 years old. He had just $45 in his pocket when he left Dallas to pursue opportunities in Rusk County. To poor farmers scratching out a living on drought-tormented land, Joiner seemed larger than life — a Bible-quoting genuine oil entrepreneur from Dallas who neither drank, smoked, nor cursed.
Within a few months, the affable but shrewd Joiner had acquired leases on several thousand acres and resumed his collaboration with A.D. “Doc” Lloyd.
Investments from hopeful Rusk County, Texas, farmers and merchants brought historic results — and made Kilgore, Longview and Tyler boom towns during the Great Depression. Kilgore celebrates by decorating derricks that once dominated its skyline.
Joiner formed a “Syndicate” from 500 of his lease block acres and began selling one-acre interest certificates to anyone who could scrape together $25. Joiner could be quite charming to the ladies and persuasive to gentlemen.
“Animatronic” rural electric lineman Buddy has welcomed visitors to “Boomtown, USA,” since 2012. Photo courtesy East Texas Oil Museum at Kilgore College.
Small investments from hopeful Rusk County farmers and merchants provided Joiner just enough month-to-month money to get by and sometimes pay on his considerable lease rental debt. Promoting oil certificates in an area largely dismissed by professionals called for a slick pitch, and Joiner’s self-taught geologist friend, “Doc” Lloyd, could help.
While Humble Oil Company geologists and geophysicists were reporting that Rusk County offered no possibilities, Joiner was mailing his own report to potential investors: “Geological, Topographical and Petroliferous Survey, Portion of Rusk County, Texas, Made for C.M. Joiner by A.D. Lloyd, Geologist and Petroleum Engineer.”
The East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore is “a tribute to the men and women who dared to dream as they pursued the fruits of free enterprise,” according to Joe White, who founded the museum in 1980 — the 50th anniversary of the oil field’s discovery. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Using clear and correct scientific terminology, “Doc” Lloyd’s document described Rusk County anticlines, faults, and a salt dome — all geologic features associated with substantial oil deposits and all completely fictitious. Equally imaginary were the “Yegua and Cook Mountain formations” and the thousands of seismographic registrations ostensibly recorded.
The impressive looking but fabricated report was accompanied by a map depicting a “salt dome” and a fault running squarely through the widow Daisy Bradford’s farm, the exact site of the 500 acre Syndicate lease block that “Dad” Joiner was promoting.
Dry Hole, Dry Hole, Woodbine Formation
“Doc” Lloyd’s assessment had the desired effect and the increased sales of certificates enabled Joiner to patch together a rusty, worn-out rig and begin drilling the Daisy Bradford No. 1 in August 1927.
To sustain operations and in pursuit of new investors, Joiner created more Syndicates and sold far more certificates than he could possibly redeem, in one case selling the same certificate to eleven different investors. This didn’t present a problem unless Joiner actually brought in a producing well, but if he did, finding oil was the kind of “problem” wildcatters wished for.
In February 1928, the Daisy Bradford No. 1 well failed at 1,098 feet when the drill pipe became irretrievably stuck. Joiner continued overselling certificates to finance drilling.
In March 1929, his Daisy Bradford No. 2 suffered a like fate at 2,518 feet — far deeper than the hodgepodge of old equipment was thought capable.
Haroldson Lafayette “H. L.” Hunt (third from right) is a former dishwasher, mule team driver, logger, farmhand, and semi-pro baseball try-out. C. M. “Dad” Joiner (third from left) shakes the hand of geologist A. D. “Doc” Lloyd at the 1930 discovery well of the East Texas oilfield. Recognizing the significance of the discovery before his competitors, H. L. Hunt will move quickly — and take significant risk — by purchasing the discovery well and nearby leases from Joiner.
Daisy Bradford No. 3 was spudded just 375 feet from the failed second attempt at a site determined when broken equipment prevented moving any farther. Before long, Joiner’s “poor boy” operation was down to burning used tires in the old boiler to gain a few pounds of steam pressure and drill a few feet at a time.
In September 1930, Hunt and Joiner met for the first time when Daisy Bradford’s brother invited Hunt to observe a drill stem test at Joiner’s third well (drill stem tests can determine if oil is present in a formation and the rate at which it can be produced).
Hunt was always on the lookout for new opportunities and drove to the site with his friend from El Dorado, merchant and clothier P.G. “Pete” Lake.
The test was done on September 3, 1930. When the drill stem test brought a surge of mud, oil, and natural gas, Hunt was impressed. He raised enough money to lease three tracts to the east and one to the south of Joiner’s well as the news spread and the scramble for a piece of the action began. The Woodbine sand formation will make petroleum history.
In legal trouble, Columbus “Dad” Joiner, discoverer of the giant East Texas oilfield, will meet with H.L. Hunt at the Baker Hotel in Dallas — and sell 5,580 acres for $1.34 million.
In two weeks, more than 2,000 land deals were recorded; two weeks later, Daisy Bradford No. 3 blew in as a gusher in front of about 5,000 spectators who cheered madly, celebrated their newfound fortunes, and congratulated “Dad” Joiner. It wasn’t long however, before the greatly oversold Syndicate certificates created a convoluted legal nightmare of immense proportions for the now famous “Dad” Joiner.
On the 31st of October, a Dallas court put Joiner’s holdings into receivership. Seventy-year-old Columbus Marion Joiner took refuge in a Dallas hotel as swarms of claimants and creditors looked for him.
Following the drill stem test and aware of previous dry holes drilled to the east, H.L. Hunt became convinced that a substantial oilfield lay to the west. His conviction was reinforced when dry holes were drilled both southeast and northeast of Daisy Bradford No. 3, abruptly chilling the lease market.
Meanwhile, just a mile west of Joiner’s find and surrounded by his leases, Deep Rock Oil Company was drilling a test well on the Claude Ashby farm. Hunt believed that if this well came in, it would confirm that Daisy Bradford No. 3 was part of a much larger oilfield. A dry hole would prove the major oil companies’ belief that Joiner’s Woodbine sand reservoir was a fluke.
Hunt assigned three oil scouts to closely monitor and report to him on progress of the Ashby No. 1 well. Since his own credit was exhausted, he tried to interest Deep Rock and others in deals to buy out Joiner, but Daisy Bradford No. 3 was by then flowing intermittently. It would yield only about 200 barrels of oil and stop altogether for an agonizing 18 to 20 hours before resuming,
Hunt remained convinced Joiner’s contested leases set atop an oilfield, but just how big an oilfield was beyond Hunt’s or anybody else’s imagination. He later wrote, “Joiner was a true wildcatter and was much more interested in drilling wildcat wells than developing proven or semi-proven oil acreage. He was becoming weary of all the carrying on which was being made against him.”
Hunt’s “Business Coup”
Hunt borrowed $30,000 from his old El Dorado clothier friend, P.G. Lake, and set about to convince the harried and hiding “Dad” Joiner to sell. They met in Dallas’ Baker Hotel on November 25-26, 1930, while Hunt’s scouts continued to watch the Deep Rock well’s progress.
By the summer of 1931 about 900,000 barrels of oil per day are being produced from 1,200 wells in Rusk County. H. L. Hunt’s purchase of Daisy Bradford No. 3, above, provided the financial base for Hunt Oil Company.
At about 8:30 p.m. on November 26, Hunt’s scouts reported that the Deep Rock well had found the oil-rich Woodbine sand, confirming his belief in the oilfield. Four hours later Joiner sold all his holdings (including about 5,000 leased acres) to Hunt for $1,335,000 including all the $30,000 in cash Hunt had borrowed. It was far more money than Joiner had ever seen and provided him a way out of the legal mess of oversold certificates and competing claims.
It was for Hunt, as he later described, his “greatest business coup,” despite the 300 lawsuits that followed. As presiding District Judge R.T. Brown said, “If you want a successful gathering of long-lost kinfolks, just manage to find oil on the old homestead. They will come out from under logs, down trees, from out of the blue and down every road and byway, but they’ll get there — even some nobody ever suspected were kinfolks.”
The East Texas oilfield produced more than five billion barrels of oil by 2010 — and has continued to produce. The 1930 well found a field 43 miles long and 12.5 miles wide.
In the 10 years of litigation that followed, Hunt sustained every title. Eighteen days after his deal with Joiner, Deep Rock’s Ashby No. 1 came in at 3,000 barrels of oil a day.
The “Black Giant”
On a Sunday two weeks later, Lou Della Crim No. 1 came in 13 miles to the north, near Kilgore, Texas, flowing at over 22,000 barrels of oil a day. In January 1931, the similarly petroleum-rich Lathrop No. 1 well came in about 15 miles farther north, in Gregg County. Remarkably, the Ashby, Lou Della Crim, and Lathrop wells were all part of the same gigantic field, covering over 140,000 acres!
Hunt’s deal had put him in the midst of the unprecedented “Black Giant” known as the East Texas oilfield. In 1972, James A. Clark and Michel T. Halbouty published The Last Boom, noting, “The fortune Hunt built in East Texas served as the foundation for one much larger, for he could no more stop hunting for oil than could Joiner — and he seemed to find it as often as not.”
Production from the giant oilfield yielded five billion barrels of oil by 1980, and thanks to Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, that was the year the East Texas Oil Museum opened at Kilgore College, not far from the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well.
Citation Information – Article Title: “East Texas Oilfield Discovery.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/east-texas-oilfield. Last Updated September 27, 2024. Original Published Date: October 22, 2012.
(2016); 
(2007); 
(1993); 
(1978); 
(2015). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
(2013). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.