Word: midlands
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...capital of the West Texas oil industry, the town of Midland (pop. 23,000) had an odd distinction; it had never had a boom of its own. The land around Midland had been drilled repeatedly and found wanting. But last week all was changed...
Prices were soaring in Midland; office space was at a premium. In the suburbs, palatial ranch-style houses were going up almost overnight. Downtown, modest skyscrapers poked into the air. One small operator called Jack Kelsey caught the spirit by buying an 8-ft.-by-13-ft. shack, moving it into his backyard, and putting up a sign-'The Kelsey Building...
...Play. Midland owed its boom to a quirk of nature and a persistent wildcatter named Arthur ("Tex") Harvey. Though Harvey knew that little oil had been found around Midland, he decided three years ago to take a chance anyway. He drilled down 12,000 feet to a stratum in which oil has been found elsewhere in Texas. The hole was dry. Then Harvey wondered what he might have missed on the way down. Working his well back, he got a little oil. Finally, in the fine-grained, hard-packed sands of the "Spraberry trend,"* at 8,000 ft., Tex Harvey...
...Reeves looks what he is: an ex-football player. Just short of six feet, he still has a lithe, athletic bearing, no trace of waistline bulge. A broken neck (compression of the fourth cervical vertebra), suffered in the last quarter of his last game as a guard at Midland College at Fremont, still bothers him occasionally and he gets Mrs. Reeves to massage it. To encourage high-school athletics, Dr. Reeves serves (without fee) as physician for the football and basketball teams...