Texas Almanac, 1990-1991 Page: 59
611 p. : col. ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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HISTORY 59
ture to deal with reducing the 1932 cotton crop. The one-
two punch of drought and depression ruined many farm-
ers and ranchers.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal admin-
istration pushed through Congress the Agricultural Ad-
justment Act of 1933, rescuing many farmers from
certain bankruptcy and allowing them to purchase new
farm machinery. When sand storms blew through the
area in 1933 and 1934, there was little alarm, since those
are normal in a time of drought, and no one could see
what was to follow. However, the "black duster" that
came in April 1935 rolled into West and West Central Tex-
as from Kansas and eastern Colorado like a veil of death.
It was dark in the middle of the afternoon, causing some
people to gather in churches and pray, believing the end
of the world was at hand. There were similar severe
sand storms throughout 1935. Drifts of sand piled up
along fence rows; in other places, all the loose soil was
blown away down to the hardpan.
The farmers unknowingly contributed to their own
plight. Pushing onto the arid plains, they had plowed un-
der the native grasses and planted wheat, cotton and
corn. When the drought caused the cultivated crops to
fail, nothing was left to hold the soil in place.
Like nothing before it, the Dust Bowl made clear the
urgent need to conserve the little water nature allocated
to the plains. From 1935 to 1941, new irrigation wells andOil
Along with cattle, oil is synonymous with western
Texas. Brown County had some of the earliest oil pro-
duction in the West Central Texas area: In the early
1880s, three wells were producing about 100 barrels of oil
a day, which was marketed by the bottle for medicinal
purposes and by the gallon as a lubricant. Water-well
drillers hit oil near Hicks in Shackelford County in De-
cember 1891, but it was no blessing. When drilling for
life-giving water for cattle or crops in this dry, dusty re-
gion, encountering oil was at best a nuisance.
The first commercial oil field in Texas was the Corsi-
cana Field, discovered in 1894. On Jan. 10, 1901, the Spin-
dietop Field near Beaumont blew in, eventually
converting Texas from a quiet agricultural state to an in-
dustrial giant.
When rancher W. T. Waggoner struck oil while seek-
ing water near Electra in Wichita County in 1904, some
interest was stirred, but no frenzy. Oil scouts explored
the region, and a 1909 test well led to minor production
for about two years. Then the Electra Field gusher blew
in on April 1, 1911, and the boom was on. Production
peaked in 1914.
The development of the Burkburnett Field was simi-
larly desultory. Oil was discovered at Gilbert Creek in
northeastern Wichita County in 1913, leading to a short
flurry of activity. S. L. Fowler persuaded several small
investors to back him in exploring for oil on his land.
What doubters dubbed "Fowler's Folly" blew in on July
29, 1918, and set off a wild boom. Promoters sold shares
in both real and fictitious companies as gusher after
gusher was brought in. Although the Burkburnett Field
had produced 40 million barrels by the end of 1919, its
production did not last very long, and it is not considered
one of Texas' major fields. Nevertheless, the 1940 movie,
"Boom Town," starring Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable,
Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr captured the story
of the Burkburnett boom on film.
Natural gas became a viable product from the West
Central Texas region about this time. Gas had been
found in oil and water wells, but it had mostly been
"flared" - burned off at the well-head. Gas from a
Shackelford County well was supplying Moran in 1911,
however, and four gas wells in Brown County were fur-
nishing Bangs with the fuel in 1913. By the end of 1914,
gas from Brown, Coleman and Shackelford counties was
being processed and transported via pipeline to North,
North Central and East Texas. Natural gas in commer-
cial amounts was discovered near the X-Ray community
in Erath County in 1920. Statewide, there were 65 gas-
processing plants operating by 1921, some of which were
in the West Central Texas counties of Palo Pinto,
Eastland, Shackelford, Stephens and Wichita.
Tests drilled in Eastland County in 1912 showed prom-
ise of oil, and in 1915, a good producer was brought in
near Strawn in adjacent Palo Pinto County. But these
were just the overture to the real show. W. K. Gordon,irrigated acreage increased at an unprecedented pace.
Among the lakes and reservoirs launched by Depression-
era projects were Santa Rosa Lake, Wilbarger County;
Lake Nasworthy, Tom Green County; Lake Brownwood
and Brownwood Reservoir, Brown County; and Red
Bluff Dam, Reeves and Loving counties. The first major
project of the Brazos River Authority, the Morris Shep-
pard Dam impounding Possum Kingdom Reservoir, was
completed in 1941 with the help of th ole Work Projects Ad-
ministration. The reservoir comprised 700,000-acre-feet
of water covering parts of Palo Pinto, Young, Stephens
and Jack counties.
Cattle prices, which had slumped following World
War I, were slow to recover. The Depression sent them
downward again, and grass dried up all over the range
with the onset of the Dust-Bowl drought. For the first
time in history, the government offered aid to the cattle
industry through agricultural credit agencies. This was
of some benefit but prices continued their slide. The
plight of t he rancher became so severe that in 1934, the
federal government proposed a remedy that up to that
time would have been unthinkable: to buy up and kill off
some cattle to save others. The fiercely independent cat-
tlemen hated having to accept government help, but
they had little choice.
In western Texas in the 1930s, man-made hardships
were added to the burden nature had placed on the land.manager of the T&P Coal Company at Thurber, per-
suaded the company to finance a deep test near Ranger
in Eastland County. His second test hole blew in on Oct.
21, 1917, and spawned a major boom. Company officers
reorganized the company, changing its name to Texas &
Pacific Coal and Oil Company. The population of Ranger
exploded from 1,000 to more than 16,000 within a few
years of the discovery.
The Desdemona Field, southeast of Ranger, was dis-
covered in Eastland County in September 1918. Produc-
tion peaked in 1919, then dropped sharply because of
overproduction.
There was exploration in Stephens County between
1911 and 1913 by three men who had discovered oil in
Archer County, but they filed for bankruptcy after two
test wells. A well near Caddo in 1916 proved to be a small
producer. Then in 1918, the Texas Company's Sandidge
well blew in with an initial flow of 15,000 barrels a day.
Before the flow could be controlled, it had covered the
ground with four or five inches of crude oil, and the op-
erators had to build dams to contain it. After that, the
Lauderdale No. 1 came in a good producer northwest of
Parks, and Breckenridge was propelled into a Ranger-
style oil boom. Within a short time, the population mush-
roomed from just over 1,000 to more than 15,000, and
there were 200 derricks within the city limits. By 1923, 2,-
000 oil rigs were visible from the roof of the court-
house.
The Texas Railroad Commission became involved
in the state's petroleum industry in 1917, when the leg-
islature declared oil pipelines to be common carriers
subject to regulation by the commission. The Oil and
Gas Division of the TRC was formally organized in 1919
and 1920 following passage by the legislature of an
"Act to Conserve Oil and Gas Resources of the State of
Texas." It was the basis for most of the regulation that
followed.
The authority of the TRC increased over a number
of years until it was eventually charged with (1) regu-
lation of railroad, express, dock, wharf and terminal
companies and interurbans that carry freight; (2) set-
ting rates for freight and passenger traffic; (3) super-
vising and regulating bus and truck transportation
over public highways and setting rates; (4) regulating
brokers who sell transportation or make contracts and
arrangements for transportation; (5) regulating and
setting rates for gas utilities; (6) regulating common
carrier oil and gas pipelines and crude petroleum stor-
age tanks; (7) making and enforcing rules to conserve
oil and gas and to prevent excess production, including
the regulation of drilling equipment, and the locating,
spacing, operation and production of oil and gas wells.
Regulations and rulings of the TRC have generally
favored and supported the interests of the smaller
independent operators over those of the major oil cornm-
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Kingston, Mike. Texas Almanac, 1990-1991, book, 1989; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth162512/m1/61/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.