“Street Scene, Oil Excitement” [Stereograph]
“Street Scene - Oil Excitement - Beamont, Tex" (mis-spelled Beaumont)
Name/Title
“Street Scene, Oil Excitement” [Stereograph]Description
Circa 1886 - 1910 real photo stereograph of a crowd of people exhibiting excitement for oil in Beaumont, Texas.Context
Anthony F. Lucas was a salt mining engineer from Louisiana with a great deal of experience in drilling in quicksand. An 1892 attempt to drill for oil in Beaumont had failed due to quicksand, but Lucas was convinced he could be successful there. With his knowledge of geology, Lucas believed that a large salt dome known as Spindletop would have a large pool of oil associated with it. Lucas had a great deal of trouble convincing investors. Despite the success at Corsicana, the conventional wisdom was that, in the words of one Standard Oil executive, “you could drink all of the oil west of the Mississippi.” Lucas ran out of money after unsuccessfully drilling in 1899. Finally, Lucas raised the necessary funds and resumed drilling the following year. At 10:30 a.m. on January 10, 1901, the Spindletop well blew in in spectacular fashion, launching a thousand legends. The volume of water, sands, rocks, gas, and oil that burst from the hole almost tore the derrick to pieces and shot hundreds of feet in all directions. For the next nine days, the well spewed forth a tower 200 feet high of pure, high-quality crude, a full 70,000 barrels a day. The geyser was finally brought under control on January 19, but not before it had become famous all over the world. There had never been a well like Spindletop. The largest previous strike in the United States yielded 60,000 barrels a day, and the only known comparison lay in the far-away Baku Field in Russia. The impact was instantaneous. Beaumont boomed from a population of 9000 to 50,000 in a matter of three months. By 1902, more than 500 companies were doing business in oil storage, pipelines, and refining. But it was not only Beaumont that was transformed by Spindletop – it was the world.Category
Oil & Gas Industry
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