Spindletop
Episode description
Episode 7 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.
Anthony Lucas's gusher at Spindletop marked "a new era of civilization," yet was the product of the humility, persistence, and practical genius of three Waco-area farm boys. Oil rapidly transformed the Texas economy from stubbornly agrarian and colonial into a first-world industrial power. For the first time in Texas history, Texans began to accumulate capital and were set on a countercyclical trajectory from the rest of the U.S. economy in a way that would only reinforce Texans' contrarian impulses.
Cover photo by John Trost, available online at the American Petroleum Institute.
Sources:
Linsley, Judith Walker, Ellen Walker Rienstra, Jo Ann Stiles. Giant Under the Hill: A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at Beaumont, TX in 1901 (2002).
Soday, Frank J. “The Petrochemical Industry.” The Analysts Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Q3 1951): 17-24.
Spratt, John Stricklin. The Road to Spindletop: Economic Change in Texas, 1875-1901. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1955.