Pattillo Higgins

Pattillo Higgins is the person primarily responsible for the January 10, 1901 discovery of the Spindletop gusher, and his name is not even on the monument commemorating the discovery.

His parents were on their way west to the gold fields of California when they were sidetracked by the Civil War and came to settle in the Sabine Pass and Beaumont area. His father, Robert Higgins, was a much respected man in Beaumont and served the community as gunsmith, cabinet maker, millwright, mechanic, silversmith, and dentist.

Pattillo, locally known as "Bud," was born in Sabine Pass in 1863, but the family moved to Beaumont after the Civil War because of the threat of hurricantes. He was known as one of the most mischievous and rowdy of the boys in his age group, and was regularly involved in pranks. He grew into a rough and ready young man who lost his arm in what started as a prank at a local black Baptist church. A local deputy caught him and in the ensuing melee, he was shot in the arm and later developed an infection that led to amputation. He murdered the deputy but was later acquitted.

He worked in the timber industry as a cutter, and later as a log man on the river, although he could not swim. He added to his reputation as a daredevil. In the midst of this, he experienced a religious conversion, and suddenly the rough young man was reading the Bible, writing religious treatises, and giving up wild women and his rowdy ways.

One of the men present at his conversion was George Washington Carroll, who came to believe in Higgins as a religious person and as a business man. Higgins gave up the river and began trading in timber properties. Then he went into the brick making business, and while studying was to improve his brick factory, he traveled to the Pennsylvania oil fields where oil was used as a power source in brick production.

After a period of study, he became convinced that the signs of oil and gas were present in the area of Beaumont called Spindletop. He approached Carroll about forming the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company for the purpose of building an industrial town, to be called Gladys City, whose industries would be fueled by oil and gas from the hill. After several dry holes were drilled, his partners either bailed out or began to fight him about pouring more money into drilling. Higgins always said that the drilling rigs used by the contractors were too light, and he was correct.

However, after much controversy, he left the company, although he still had a small interest (later upheld by the courts) in the field to be discovered by Captain Anthony F. Lucas in 1901. Higgins controlled another patch of land on Spindletop in his own name, and he did prosper as a result of the discovery, but his dream of Gladys City developing into a clean, well-run industrial city was lost.

He went on to wildcat for the rest of his life, and was the responsible for the discovery of many new fields. He married at the age of 40 to a woman he had adopted and made his legal heir some years earlier. He died at age 92 in 1955.