East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore, TX – A Museum of an Oil Museum That’s Not Really About Oil
Texas Tea isn’t fit for human consumption but its discovery led to more consumption by more people than ever before in the history of humankind. It arrived as sticky black goo seeping from the ground at Oil Springs in
Nacogdoches County. Almost everywhere Texas wildcatters looked they found the stuff. Its discovery changed the world and Texas forever. First used as a convenient lubricant on steam, water or muscle-powered machines, oil became the fantastic fuel that created a modern America. With new engines running on gasoline America had real power and limitless possibilities.
Demand for oil exploded in the teens and twenties. Every little scrap of land anywhere that might yield oil was turned into a boom field. The lure of an oil strike gripped Texans as it did dreamers and wildcatters all across the U.S., men who dreamed of pockets filled with silver dollars made from Black Gold. From Nacogdoches to Spindletop to Corsicana and the Permian Basin in West Texas, derricks went up, wells went down, oil revenues filled more bank accounts than anything in Texas ever did.
An aging wildcatter named “Dad” Joiner started poking holes in the ground near Henderson in Rusk County in the twenties. He dropped his first well 1927. No luck. He hit paydirt on his third try in 1930 after nearly loosing everything when his leases were due to run out. Working on borrowed time Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner brought in the first well on the most productive oil field in history.
After Joiner’s discovery every town in East Texas was overrun by wildcatters, speculators and all the kinds of folks who show up for boom times. In Kilgore it’s often said that the town grew from 800 to 8000 in a span of just twenty-four hours. Though the original wells were not drilled in Kilgore the town was greatly impacted—to say the least—by Dad Joiner’s discovery not only by the inflow of people but because the town itself sat right on the field. Downtown Kilgore was dubbed the “world’s richest acre” for the oil pumped from beneath it. There was even a well drilled through the floor of a bank!
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