Oil in Southeast Texas

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Southeast Texas was something of a backwater. Its economy, like that of most of the South, was subsistence agriculture, but the lumber business was also important. Mills in Beaumont and Orange produced lumber for shipment to the rest of America and overseas. Southeast Texas had another resource - oil - but the amount underground remained a mystery.

People knew of oil in the area for hundreds of years before any substantial production began. In 1543 the Spanish used the oil from seeps near Sabine Pass for caulking their ships, although local Indians certainly knew of oil much earlier. To the north, settlers near Nacogdoches used seeping oil for lubricants before 1800. In 1847 the settlers at Sour Lake noticed that oil was bubbling to the surface, and after the Civil War Dick Dowling tried unsuccessfully to drill a well near there. There were numerous discoveries in east and central Texas in the later years, especially at Corsicana in 1896. Wildcatters drilled at Spindletop in 1893 and 1896 and at Sour Lake in 1896. However, there was no significant oil production along the Gulf Coast until the gusher at Spindletop in 1901. Total Texas oil production was 836,000 barrels in 1900, a small fraction of national production (63 million barrels).