Frank Yount

Miles Frank Yount, who was born in 1880, was a laborer at the time of the Lucas gusher. He worked at many jobs including ditch digging and rice harvesting. Eventually he would gain great wealth in oil, and, according to Clark and Halbouty's Spindletop, earn a reputation of total honesty.

Shortly after the Lucas Gusher, Yount became a water-well driller but soon turned to oil at Sour Lake, though he made little money. Yount chartered his first company, the Yount OIl Company in 1909. Among the officers were Harry Phelan, who was secretary and treasurer. The company failed in 1910, and Yount left Beaumont to go to the Texas Panhandle to resume water-well drilling. Then he returned and opened a Moon car dealership and a real estate agency, both of which also failed.

Yount decided to get back into the oil business. He and local businessmen created the Yount Oil Company in 1914, but the partnership was troubled by constant arguments. Yount then turned for assistance to Thomas P. Lee, and he and his new partner finally had success in the oil business. By 1920, the company's capital stock was worth $500,000, and the name of the company was changed to the Yount-Lee Oil Company.

In 1922, the company brought in the first great flank well on the Texas Gulf coast in the Hull field. The company made huge profits over the next several years. Yount believed that there was much more oil at Spindletop, if flank wells could be drilled deep enough. He was right, and the McFaddin No. 2 began to produce oil at 2518 feet on November 13, 1925. That evening, Magnolia's radio station announced the discovery, and the second Spindletop boom began. Soon the Hill was ringed with wells, but the lawless atmosphere that had characterized the first boom was not repeated. Nearly 60 million barrels were produced during the next five years, almost all by the Yount-Lee company. Over 10,000 men found employment in the oil field.

That boom helped Beaumont grow. Many new buildings were built, including the county courthouse, the Jefferson Theater, and the Edson hotel.

In his last years Yount won a reputation for civic enterprise and high wages. On one Depression Christmas he helped Beaumont meet its city payroll. Yount also formed a real estate company to buy property at good, not depressed, prices. On some of the property he built the Mildred building complex in Beaumont.

Yount died in 1933, aged 53, of a heart attack.