Galveston County Museum: 2017

Driving & Thriving

by Special Correspondent Tom Bassing

On a humid mid-May day in 1922, Galveston oilman Earl Patton positioned his crew and a gasoline-fired drill rig atop a broad salt dome in High Island.

He and his father, William C. Patton, the founder of the eponymous Patton Oil Co., remained convinced of High Island’s potential.

Seeping gas and sulfur traces in adjacent marshes had provided evidence of the oil. And minor plays had proved its presence, although at a time when the unprecedented bounty of Spindletop Hill had soaked the market, driving the commodity’s price below its price to produce.

On Jan. 10, 1901, at Spindletop — itself a salt dome some 30 miles south of Beaumont in the next county over from High Island — the speculator E.F. Lucas had struck oil at a depth of 1,139 feet. The so-called Lucas Gusher blew crude 150 feet into the air for more than a week before the well was brought under control. >>Read the entire story @ http://www.galvestoncountymuseum.org/driving-thriving/