Oil discovery on widow’s farm in East Texas confirmed existence of largest oilfield in the lower-48 states.
Some people claimed a gypsy told Malcolm Crim he would discover oil in East Texas three days after Christmas. Others said it was because his mother, Lou Della “Mama” Crim, was a pious woman.
On December 28, 1930, the exploratory well Lou Della Crim No. 1 began producing an astonishing 20,000 barrels of oil a day. Even then, few appreciated the true significance of the Rusk County well drilled by Mrs. Crim’s eldest son, Malcolm.(more…)
Cartographer visited petroleum boom towns to draw popular bird’s-eye views.
Thaddeus M. Fowler created detailed, panoramic maps of America’s earliest petroleum boom towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His popular cartographic depictions of oil patch communities in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Texas offered “aero views” seemingly drawn from great heights.
More than 400 Thaddeus Fowler panoramas have been identified. There are 324 in the Library of Congress, including this one of Oil City, Pennsylvania, in 1896. Source: Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C.
Fowler has the largest number of panoramic maps in the collection of the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, D.C. His hand-drawn lithographs have fascinated viewers since the Victorian Age. Being depicted in one of Fowler’s maps, also known as “bird’s-eye views,” was a matter of civic pride for many community leaders. (more…)
December 9, 1921 – Scientists discover Anti-Knock Properties of Leaded Gas –
Working for General Motors, scientists Thomas Midgely Jr. and Charles Kettering discovered the antiknock properties of tetraethyl lead. They had spent years examining properties of knock suppressors such as bromine and iodine, but when tetraethyl lead (diluted to a ratio of one part per thousand) was added to the gasoline of a one-cylinder engine, the knocking abruptly disappeared.
Public health concerns would lead to phase-out of tetraethyl lead in gasoline.
GM’s leaded compound went on sale for the first time on February 2, 1923, at a service station in Dayton, Ohio. High-octane leaded gas would prove vital during World War II — even as concerns about tetraethyl lead’s serious health dangers continued to grow. These concerns resulted in its phase-out for use in cars beginning in 1976. Tetraethyl lead has continued to be used in aviation fuel.
Drilling in the Greater Seminole area of Oklahoma, Amerada Petroleum Corporation discovered the Bethel oilfield and its highly pressurized producing zone, the Wilcox sand. The discovery launched another drilling boom in an area where one year earlier independent producer Joe Cromwell had found the Seminole oilfield at a depth of about 3,500 feet. By 1926, yet another discovery opened the Earlsboro field, followed within days by a discovery well that produced 1,100 barrels of oil a day from the Seminole City field.
December 10, 1844 – Future “Coal Oil Johnny” adopted in Pennsylvania
A baby who would grow up to become famously known as “Coal Oil Johnny” was adopted by Culbertson and Sarah McClintock. John Steele was brought home to the McClintock farm on the banks of Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania.
John Washington Steele
The petroleum drilling boom prompted by Edwin L. Drake’s discovery 15 years later — America’s first commercial oil well — would lead to the widow McClintock making a fortune in oil royalties. She left the money to Johnny when she died in 1864. At age 20, he inherited $24,500 and $2,800 a day in royalties.
“Coal Oil Johnny” Steele earned his name in 1865 after such a legendary year of extravagance that the New York Times later reported: “In his day, Steele was the greatest spender the world had ever known…he threw away $3 million ($50 million in 2021 dollars) in less than a year.”
December 10, 1955 – LIFE features Stella Dysart’s Uranium Well
Mrs. Stella Dysart spent decades fruitlessly searching for oil in New Mexico. Some questionable business dealings led to bankruptcy in the late 1930s, but in 1955, a radioactive uranium sample from one of her failed oil wells made her a very wealthy woman.
LIFE magazine featured Stella Dysart in December 1955.
Dysart was 78 years old when LIFE magazine featured her picture with the caption: “Wealthy landowner, Mrs. Stella Dysart, stands before an 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.”
Just three years before the article, Dysart had been $25,000 in debt when cuttings from one of her “dusters” in McKinley County registered strong Geiger counter readings. Test wells confirmed that she owned the world’s richest deposit of high-grade uranium ore.
December 10, 1967 – Project Gasbuggy tests Nuclear Fracturing
Government scientists detonated a 29-kiloton nuclear warhead in a natural gas well about 60 miles east of Farmington, New Mexico. It was “fracking”late 1960s style, designed to test the feasibility of using nuclear explosions to stimulate release of gas trapped in shale deposits.
Scientists in December 1967 lowered a 29-kiloton nuclear device into a New Mexico gas well. Photo courtesy Department of Energy.
Project Gasbuggy included experts from the Atomic Energy Commission, the Bureau of Mines, and El Paso Natural Gas Company. Near three low-production natural gas wells, the team drilled to a depth of 4,240 feet and lowered a 13-foot by 18-inch diameter nuclear device into the borehole.
The experimental explosion was part a series of federal projects known as “Plowshare,” created in the late 1950s to explore peaceful uses of nuclear devices. The Project Gasbuggy downhole detonation created a molten glass-lined cavern 160 feet wide and 333 feet tall that collapsed within seconds. The well produced 295 million cubic feet of natural gas, but the gas was radioactive and useless.
December 11, 1950 – Federal Offshore grows beyond Cannon Shot
After decades of controversy and a 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the federal government’s “paramount rights” offshore were established beyond a three nautical mile limit, an 18th century precedent based on the theoretical maximum range of a smooth-bore cannon. The nation’s highest court prohibited any further offshore development without federal approval. In 1954, the Bureau of Land Management held the first Outer Continental Shelf lease sale, earning the government almost $130 million.
Astronaut and geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt stepped on the moon, joining Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan. Lunar experiments included a surface gravimeter to measure buried geological structures near the landing site. Schmitt also returned with the largest lunar sample ever collected.
Geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt examined a boulder at the Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow Valley lunar landing site in December 1972. Photo courtesy NASA.
Schmitt, who in 1964 received a PhD in geology from Harvard, was the first and last scientist on the moon, according to Cernan. When they left the Taurus-Littrow Valley landing site on December 14, 1972, he and the lunar geologist were the last of 12 men to walk on the moon. The 19th century petroleum product kerosene fueled all of the launches.
December 13, 1905 – Hybrids evolve with Gas Shortage Fears
“The available supply of gasoline, as is well known, is quite limited, and it behooves the farseeing men of the motor car industry to look for likely substitutes,” proclaimed the monthly journal Horseless Age.
An early hybrid, this 1902 Porsche used a gas engine to generate electricity to power motors mounted on the front wheel hubs.
The magazine, first published in 1895, described early motor technologies, including the use of compressed air propulsion systems, electric cars, steam, and diesel power — as well as hybrids.
About the time of the first American auto show in November 1900, engineer Ferdinand Porsche introduced his gas-electric “Mixte” in Europe. The hybrid used a four-cylinder gasoline engine to generate electricity. The engine powered two three-horsepower electric motors mounted on the front wheel hubs. The car could achieve a top speed of 50 mph.
December 13, 1931 – Oilfield discovered in Conroe, Texas
Independent producer George Strake Sr. completed the South Texas Development Company No. 1 well eight miles southeast of Conroe, Texas, where he had leased 8,500 acres. By the end of 1932 the oilfield was producing more than 65,000 of barrels of oil a day. But disaster struck in the Conroe field in 1933 when derricks and equipment collapsed into a burning crater of oil. The fire would be put out thanks to relief wells drilled by George Failing and his newly patented truck-mounted drilling method (see Technology and the Conroe Crater).
December 13, 1985 – Route 66 decertified
Route 66, the “Mother Road” of modern highways since 1926, was decertified by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which also voted to remove all Route 66 signs. Once stretching more than 2,400 miles from Illinois to California, the historic route was trailblazed in 1857 by a War Department expedition that included camels as pack animals.
By World War II, automobiles and trucks on the iconic roadway “helped to facilitate the single greatest wartime mobilization of labor in the history of the nation,” according to the National Park Service (NPS). By 1985, Route 66’s narrow asphalt paving and antiquated structure had been bypassed by the interstate system.
December 14, 1981 – Dowsing No Help in finding Minnesota Oil
Seeking oil investors, a Minnesota promoter proclaimed that dowsing with copper wires had located petroleum deposits in Nobles County, according to the Minneapolis Tribune, which reported the promoter had hired, “a Texas oilman and evangelist to lead a prayerful search for oil.” Despite no geological evidence, local investors paid $175,000 to drill a well that found no indication of oil or natural gas after reaching a depth of 1,500 feet.
Minnesota is one of 17 states without any oil or natural gas production, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
The Minnesota Geological Survey had reported in 1980 that of the state’s 17 exploratory wells drilled, “in suitable geologic settings,” none discovered commercial quantities of oil. The survey concluded, “the geologic conditions for significant deposits of oil and gas do not exist in Minnesota.”
Conrad Hilton saw a line of roughnecks waiting outside a Texas hotel — and recognized an opportunity.
Hilton Hotels began in 1919 after Conrad Hilton witnessed a crowd of roughnecks waiting in front of a small hotel in Cisco, Texas. He had intended to buy a bank in the booming Ranger oilfield. “He can keep his bank!” declared the businessman before buying the Mobley Hotel.
On October 17, 1917, the McCleskey No. 1 well hit an oil-bearing sand at 3,432 feet deep and launched the world-famous Ranger oilfield boom. Thanks to this “Roaring Ranger,” in just 20 months the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company — whose stock had skyrocketed from $30 to $1,250 a share — was drilling 22 wells in the area.
Conrad Hilton visited Cisco, Texas, intending to buy a bank. When the deal fell through, he went from the train station across the street to a two-story red brick building called the Mobley Hotel. He noticed roughnecks from the Ranger oilfield waiting in line for a room.
Eight Eastland County refineries were soon open or under construction, and Ranger’s four banks added $5 million in deposits. The Ranger oilfield and other nearby North Texas discoveries gained international fame by eliminating critical oil shortages during World War I — allowing the Allies to “float to victory on a wave of oil.”
Ranger’s Main Street in the 1920s. The North Texas town’s petroleum boom came at a time when the industrialized world depended more and more on oil.
Investment capital and aspiring millionaires soon overwhelmed the little town of Ranger as well as nearby Cisco, where the Texas Central Railroad crossed the Texas & Pacific.
The new Texas oilfield gave birth to countless stories of fortunes made with gushers and good luck. But one tale endures of a fortune made because oil was easier to find than a good place to sleep.
The McCleskey No. 1 well struck oil in October 1917, reached a daily production of 1,700 barrels — and launched an economic boom in Eastland County, Texas.
Conrad Hilton learned the banking business in his hometown of San Antonio, New Mexico (still a territory when he was born there in 1887). As a young man with only $2,900 capital, he founded the New Mexico State Bank of San Antonio. His tenacity in pursuit of investors and deposits paid off.
In two years, Hilton built his bank’s assets to $135,000. He believed he had found his life’s work. World War I interrupted his plans, prompting Hilton to sell his bank and serve his country.
A postcard provides a view of downtown Cisco, Texas, in the 1920s.
Upon returning from France after the Armistice, Hilton began anew. He set out for Albuquerque, determined to start again in the banking business. But times had changed and banking opportunities had dried up. Despite Hilton’s best efforts, he couldn’t break back into the business.
Then a longtime Albuquerque friend, Emmett Vaughey, suggested Texas, where the Ranger oilfield was making millionaires. Persuaded and confident, Hilton boarded the train bound for Wichita Falls.
However, just as Hilton had discovered in Albuquerque, there was no room for a “new guy” in the solidly locked-up banking community of Wichita Falls. The same was true even further south, in Breckenridge.
Disappointed but determined, Hilton continued down the Texas Central Railroad to the Cisco railway station, just east of Ranger’s booming oilfield in Eastland County. He was 31 years old and determined to build a banking empire.
Conrad Hilton described his first hotel as “a cross between a flophouse and a gold mine.”
With $5,011 in his pockets, Hilton walked to the first bank he saw in Cisco and found to his delight that it was for sale — asking price — $75,000. Accustomed to finding financial backers and undeterred by the $70,000 shortfall, he wired the absentee Kansas City owner to close the deal.
First Hilton Hotel
Conrad Hilton was poised to build the banking empire he had long dreamed of when the Cisco bank seller sent him a telegram tersely raising the sale price to $80,000.
In his autobiography, Be My Guest, Conrad Hilton recalled telling the startled telegraph operator, “He can keep his bank! Then I strode out of the station and across the street to a two-story red brick building boosting itself as the ‘Mobley Hotel.’”
Henry Mobley, the hotel’s owner, was making the most he could off of the Ranger oilfield boom. His lobby was constantly packed with tired workers, maneuvering for space and impatiently awaiting their turn to rent a room. Mobley rented the hotel’s 40 beds in eight-hour blocks corresponding to shifts.
The Mobley Hotel, purchased by Conrad Hilton in 1919, today serves as a community center — and tourist attraction.
Hilton joined the crowd in line, suddenly alert to an unanticipated opportunity. He approached Henry Mobley, who was convinced that the real money was in oil, not in the “glorified boarding house” business. Before long, they closed a $40,000 deal and Conrad Hilton had his first hotel. He would never return to banking.
Later in the year, with profits earned from the Mobley Hotel, Hilton bought the Melba Hotel in Fort Worth, and the following year the Waldorf in Dallas.
Although petroleum production from the Ranger field collapsed in 1921, taking with it scores of businesses and a number of failed banks, Hilton’s business continued to expand.
By 1923. Hilton owned five Texas hotels; the Dallas Hilton in 1925 became the first to use the Hilton name. By 1930, he was the largest hotel operator in the region.
The Depression and the years that followed brought Hilton many challenges. While memories of the Ranger boom slipped away, his business grew to dominate the hotel marketplace.
The Mobley building endures as a Cisco landmark and museum. Two of the hotel’s original rooms have been restored.
According to a National Register of listed sites narrative about the Mobley Hotel, Hilton considered his purchase the “ideal hotel to practice on.” Two principles now basic to all Hilton hotels were first tried in the Mobley: maximum reduction of wasted space and “esprit de corps” among the employees.
Hilton is remembered not as a banker but as a preeminent hotelier…and an oilfield entrepreneur. The restored and renovated Mobley Hotel, which Hilton once referred to as “a cross between a flophouse and a gold mine,” has become home to the Cisco Chamber of Commerce and serves as a community center, museum, and park.
Hilton later said he regarded his oil boom town purchase as his “first love” and “a great lady.”
In the years after World War I, as more “motor hotels” opened for automobile travelers, Hilton’s hotel competitors coined the term motel by 1925.
Adding to the lore of Cisco, Texas — in addition to being near the 1917 “Roaring Ranger” oilfield and home of Hilton’s first hotel — on December 23, 1927, a man disguised as Santa Claus made an ill-fated attempt to rob a bank two days before Christmas.
Marshall Ratliff donned a Santa Claus disguise and tried to rob the First National Bank with three armed accomplices. A running gun battle with police and citizens ensued before Ratliff was captured.
The mortal wounding of a guard during an escape attempt sealed bank-robbing Santa’s fate.
“After the gun smoke cleared, six people were dead, eight others wounded, two little girls and a young man had been kidnapped, and two bloody gun battles had been fought, launching the largest manhunt in Texas history,” explained Damon C. Sasser in “The Bloody Cisco Santa Claus Christmas Caper.”
In November 1928, Ratliff attempted to escape from the Eastland County jail and mortally wounded a guard before being subdued. The next morning, enraged citizens dragged Ratliff from the jail and strung him up from a nearby utility pole. When the first rope broke, they got a new one that did not.
Recommended Reading:Be My Guest(1957); Ranger, Images of America (2010). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/first-hilton-hotel. Last Updated: October 10, 2024 Original Published Date: July 1, 2005.
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.
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(2013). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.