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Pattillo Higgins	Capt. Anthony Lucas

The Gladys City Oil and Gas Manufacturing Company was the
first company organized in 1892 to develop the potential of the Spindletop area. It was the brainchild of Pattillo Higgins, who
first interested George Washington Carroll and then George Washington O'Brien and J. F. Lanier. Carroll, Higgins, and
O'Brien were local men with interests in land leases, lumber properties, and various aspects of the lumber business. J.F.
Lanier was an out of town investor. This company was developed
through the dreams and actions of Higgins who became con-
vinced, while looking for ways to improve his brick factory, that there was oil on the salt dome. The Gladys City Company was
a key to the field's development. After several dry holes in the 1890s, they found Captain Anthony Lucas to lease from them
and drill once again. Lucas was the person who brought in the gusher in 1901, using investment capital through the Pittsburg
firm of Guffey and Galey from the Mellon banking interests.

The map on the table (right) is a copy of an original map made
in November, 1902. There are 285 wells represented on this map. The shaded line running in a roughly oval shape represents the margin of the hill. The dots represent the wells. There are four
major clusters of wells on land not leased or owned by the
Gladys City Company.

To recognize the significance of this company, Gladys City includes their office building as a part of this reconstruction.
The roll-top desk (right) in the building is a fine period piece with
a pigeonhole structure for storing business papers, stationary,
and other supplies.

There is another desk in the room that dates from the 1920s,
and on the walls are copies of stock certificates and original documents establishing the Gladys City Company. Higgins'
map of Gladys City is on the south wall. This map, drawn in
1892, was Higgins' dream for Gladys City as an industrial metropolis. Unfortunately, it never came to pass. Gladys City became only a rowdy boomtown.

Higgins named the town after Gladys Bingham, a little girl in
his Sunday school class, and in return, gave her two shares
of stock in the company. The photo to the right depicts Gladys
at eighteen.

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