Word: gushers
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...morning of Jan. 10, 1901, on a low hillock called Spindletop just outside Beaumont, Texas, gas rumbled out of its prehistoric tomb, shot up a black plume of petroleum and launched the oil age. The heavy oil spouted 200 feet into the air in the greatest gusher Americans had ever seen. Men saddled their horses and rode off, shouting: "Oil, oil on the hill." As one of the men passed 38-year-old Pattillo Higgins, he reined in, yelled: "People are saying you're the wisest man on earth. Hell, ain't you surprised?" "Not exactly." replied Higgins...
That was a turning point in the history of the U.S. economy. The first Spindletop gusher transformed the U.S. oil business from a tight little enterprise hobbled by the Standard Oil monopoly and near-exhausted wells (each pumping an average 10 to 50 barrels daily) into an enterprising giant. That first well alone turned out as much oil as 37,000 eastern wells combined, and by year's end production of Spindletop's 138 wells more than equaled that of the rest of the world. Before Spindletop, Russia was the world's No. 1 producer; afterward...
...Whole Honor." Ironically, much of this bypassed Pattillo Higgins. Even before the first Spindletop gusher blew in, he had been elbowed aside by Anthony Lucas. It was called the "Lucas well," not the Higgins well. Higgins had to sue to get his share from the Lucas well, finally settled for about $300,000. When he tried to form a new company in 1902, suspicious Beaumonters, wary of the sharpsters that had flocked in, were calling the whole operation "Swindletop." In the boisterous, bawdy oil boom, Beaumont refused to honor the man who had started it all, just...
...years after the Lucas gusher blew in, Pattillo Higgins worked to develop Texas oil lands, made a comfortable living at it, although he never became the big oil baron that he might have been. Through the years, he never lost his urge to prospect for oil. When he was nearly 90, he was still setting out in his old model A with pick and shovel, to probe among the rocks...
...Corp. come in and develop oil fields to a current 500-barrel-a-day output, with an eventual royalty of 20% for Sicily. Though the Communists originally voted for the Si cilian law, they have now reversed them selves and are trying to convert the oil issue into a gusher of votes...