The Age, Volume 30, Number 6, June 2008 Page: 1 of 1
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VOLUME XXX
WALLISVILLE, TEXAS
JUNE 2008
NO. 6
THE AGE
Established at Houston, May 15, 1871 by
Daniel L. McGary. Moved to Wallisville
March 15, 1897. Discontinued in 1908.
Reestablished by the Wallisville Heritage
Park, December 1,1979. $1.68 per paper;
$20.00 for one-year subscription.
Wallisville Heritage Park
Post Office Box 16
Wallisville, Texas 77597
The Barbers
Hill Oil Field
Account of the Barbers Hill Oil
Field Offers a Colorful History of
the Mont Belvieu Area.
By Kevin Ladd
The Barbers Hill Oil Field, which
first attracted prospectors in 1902,
represents an extraordinary chapter in
the history of the Texas petroleum
industry. It began with Pattillo Higgins,
the legendary founder of the Spindle-
top Field. It included any number of
booms and busts along the way, and
the salt dome on which the field was
located has provided the town and the
school district with several decades of
riches. This article will provide a brief
overview of these events.
ELMER WATSON BARBER
The best place to begin this story is
in the year 1889. The first tangible
evidence of oil at Barbers Hill came
about in a rather haphazard manner.
Elmer W. Barber, a 35-year-old man
with a growing family, decided to dig a
new water well at his home on top of
the salt dome that year. At a depth of
65 feet, Barber encountered
flammable gas. This was not good
news in 1889. The well nonetheless
produced small quantities of gas for
several years, and stories about it
circulated throughout Southeast
Texas for the next several years.
The discovery of the Spindletop
field in January 1901 was largely
credited to Pattillo Higgins (1866-
1955), a businessman, Sunday school
teacher and self-taught geologist.
Shortly after the Lucas gusher came
in, Elmer Barber contacted Higgins
immediately. Barber told him a few
things about his property that made it
similar to the Spindletop area, which
immediately got the attention of Mr.
Higgins. Of course, hundreds of oil
prospectors were avidly watching for
the next move by Higgins. In order to
divert attention, Higgins relied on a
local physician, Dr. Amon R. "Amie"
Shearer, who secured many of the
leases fpr him.
The first leases at Barbers Hill were
actually acquired by Dr. George W.
Collier in February 1902, a year after
the Beaumont field came in. Some of
these oil and gas leases were later
transferred to Higgins, who began
drilling his first well there in June
1902.
A WILDCATTER'S NIGHTMARE
4'
If Spindletop offered Higgins great
success; Barbers Hill gave him the
exact opposite. The June 1902 drill-
ing operation proved to be the first of
five highly unsuccessful wells. This
was.embarrassing to the young man,
particularly in light of the increased
media attention surrounding him at the
time.
His first drill site was on the north
side of the salt dome near the Elmer
Barber home at a place called the
"buffalo pits." Bob McDaniel, author of
a biography of Higgins, wrote of this
well: it - apparently produced strong
showings of oil and gas, enough to
keep him drilling but never enough to
turn a iprofit. Higgins, In fact, had
moved into a wildcatter's nightmare, a
series of holes that, although not dry,
never produced enough to cover the
expense of drilling."
Other? wells were equally bother-
some. iHis second well, begun in
November 1902, was plagued by an
inexperienced crew. One calamity
was quickly followed by another.
In February 1903, the Liberty Vindi-
cator reported: "The great amount of
hard nock encountered and the
breaking of drills and machinery, has
caused delay with Higgins No. 2 at
Barbers Hill."
In August 1903, more bad news:
"The Higgins well No. 2 has been
moving along OK, until the morning of
the first, when the drill twisted off in
the rock at about 918 feet. Mr. Higgins
was here, and left on the evening of
the first for Beaumont to secure
fishing tackle to get the drill out. It may
be a tough job as just the drill and
collar band are in." After much cost,
the well was abandoned.'
He began drilling Higgins No. 3 in
October 1903. The bit struck oil sand
and rock at 322 feet. When oil began
to flow up the pipe, the Higgins crew
used what was usually called the
"Mother Hubbard" technique to throttle
the flow, which involved stuffing of a
burlap sack into the end of the casing
pipe. The sack blew out. The sand
rose 80 feet up into the casing and
choked off the flow of oil. Higgins
tried tpf restore production several
times over the next few months before
abandoning the well in May 1904.
The fourth and fifth wells each
encountered problems that forced
Higgins to abandon them as well. His
presence at Barbers Hill convinced
many others to obtain leases and drill
there. Most of these lost a large
amount of money.
From 1902 to 1906, some 14 wells
were drilled on the extreme top of the
salt dome, and each of these shallow
wells ranged from 560 to 1,805 feet
deep. For the next ten years, not
much happened on the Hill. Ope-
rators, faced with declining prices for
crude oil, concluded that the Mont
Belvieu dome could not produce oil.
In 1916, the Gulf Oil Production
Company and Humble Oil & Refining
Company jointly drilled four wells; all
were on the southern slope of the salt
dome. The fourth of these obtained
the first real production at Barber's
Hill, some 40 barrels per day, from a
depth of 1,571 feet. This well,
however, was abandoned after salt
water infiltrated it.
FISHER NO. 1
The first major discovery came on
Sept. 14, 1918, and the well was
known as Fisher No. 1. The initial
production was 70 barrels a day, and
the well continued to produce for 15
months. This was the first successful
completion in 16 years of drilling.
A major development, however,
came with the construction of the
Goose Creek and Dayton Railroad,
built from 1917 to 1919 and which
connected those two places. Ross S.
Sterling was the chief force behind
this railroad, four miles of which
passed through Western Chambers
County.
The high price of oil at that time
attracted other operators and drilling
action was heavy. From 1918 to 1920,
there were 43 wells drilled but dnly 14
produced oil. From 1921 to 1924, 48
more wells were attempted! but
results were still disappointing. "All of
these wells were on the southwest
slope of the salt dome. *
A. E. BARBER NO. 1 *
Drilling again ground to a standstill
until 1926, when the Mills Bennett
Production Company and the
Humphrey Corporation jointly drilled
the A. E. Barber No. 1 on the north-
western side of the dome. The
discovery well flowed 500 barrels per
day. Later that same year the two
companies drilled on the northeast
flank. This well, the Kirby No. 2,
became the discovery well on that
side of the dome and also set off
some excitement with the discovery of
a 43-foot Miocene pay sand. This well
initiated a new leasing campaign
among the major companies.
The great boom for Barbers Hill
came in 1929 when the Republic
Production Company brought in Kirby
Petroleum Company No. 1, from sand
at a total depth of 5,194 feet. The well
flowed 3,420 barrels per day. A
second major well came in that same
year when the Yount-Lee Oil Com-
pany struck pay sand on the south
flank of the dome at a total depth of
5,318 feet. Out of 77 wells drilled on
the south flank, 71 were producers.
BOOMTOWN
Barbers Hill afterward became the
proverbial boomtown. Don W. McLeod
arrived there in 1929 when Wilson
Supply Company of Beaumont sent
him there to sell oil field supplies.
McLeod could find no rooms to rent or
beds to sleep in, and slept on the floor
of the store his first night.
F. M. Busch, who came there in
1920, described the town this way:
"On their spare time the oil field
workers used to come into town.
They'd drink a little and hang around,
and they'd get so restless for some-
thing to do that they'd all gather round
in bunches and have fights.
"[We had] bootleggers all over the
place. And naturally there were
gamblers. Never will forget the time
that gangsters set up slot machines
out on the other side of town. Then
this other bunch came in and tried to
take over, and things got a little rough
for a while there.
"We had lots of fun, and lots of work
and lots of oil, but the boom didn't last
long. While it was going we had 15 or
16 grocery stores, five drug stores,
and rooming houses all around here.
One fellow used to keep oi! field
workers in his hay barn."
By September 1929, the Barbers
Hill field had an average daily
production of 20,000 barrels, second
only to Spindletop. Drilling reached its
peak in 1930 to 1932, then gradually
declined. By the late 1930s, drilling
had scaled back considerably.
During the late 1930s the town
boasted six hundred residents and
thirty-six businesses. J. H. Harry, then
the high school principal, counted
them as follows: two cafes, two
drugstores, three barber shops, a
variety and hardware store, one
cleaning and pressing shop, one
garage, two beauty parlors, one
garage and filling station, one oil well
cementing firm, one oil field supply
store, one lumber yard, one machine
shop, six filling stations, one grocery,
one drive-in beer parlor, one package
store and domino hall, one picture
show, four general stores and
markets, one rooming house, a sand
and gravel company, a bank, and one
general and maternity hospital owned
by Dr. A. R. Shearer.
WARREN PETROLEUM
The prosperity of Barbers Hill today
is owed greatly to the salt dome on
which it is located. Warren Petroleum
Company built an underground salt
dome storage terminal in 1955. The
terminal now contains twenty-six
underground caverns with a total
storage capacity of 44 million barrels
of propane, butane, ethane, natural
gasoline and other products extracted
from natural gas liquids. The
company is now called Dynegy
Midstream Services. Some three
dozen other companies operate
similar facilities on the Hill today.
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Wallisville Heritage Park (Organization). The Age, Volume 30, Number 6, June 2008, periodical, June 2008; Wallisville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth404215/m1/1/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Chambers County Library System.