Word: spindletops
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Gusher. Both Texas industry and Wildcatter Glenn McCarthy were born at Spindletop-a gently sloping salt dome near Beaumont, from which gushed the first big flood of dark, heavy Texas oil. Like many another boom field which was to follow, the Spindletop discovery was the result of one man's faith, energy and stubbornness...
Three dry holes had been drilled in the dome before the arrival of an engineer, prospector and onetime Austrian naval officer named A. F. Lucas. Lucas drilled a fourth "duster at Spindletop." Undiscouraged, he set up new equipment and began again, determined to pierce 500 ft. of quicksand which lay beneath the surface soil...
Jackpots. After Spindletop, in the superlatives of the oilfields, came a jillion jackpots-roaring booms at Electra, Ranger, Burkburnett, Desdemona and Mexia proved that oil was where you found it. The automobile age created a rising demand, and after the Lucas No. 1, Texas wildcatters never stopped their probing in the earth's baffling substrata. Glenn McCarthy, a man with a lust for money and fame, became one of them...
...wealth required for the projection of other men's ambitions and dreams. They bought up real estate, financed railroads. They underwrote the development of the miraculous new light and silvery aluminum. With nephew William Larimer, son of Thomas' second son James, Andy and "R.B." financed the gigantic Spindletop gusher in Texas...
...that Mr. Farish is much older than Mr. Teagle. Mr. Teagle is 59, Mr. Parish 56. Mississippi-born, a graduate of the University of Mississippi (Class of 1900), a short-time Mississippi lawyer (in Oxford), Mr. Farish joined the oil rush to Texas after the discovery of the famed Spindletop field at the Century's turn. Working as a roustabout, he saved his pennies, kept an eye peeled for big money. He went into partnership with Robert Lee Blaffer and out of their small beginnings grew Humble Oil Co., the mighty company which Standard now controls. Mr. Parish...