The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-09-13
TEXAS OIL GUSHERS LIKELY TO
LARGELY SUPERSEDE COAL.
The Product of the southwestern
Field viii Furnish Power for
Locomotives and Steamships.
New York World.

ducuon or more than SOo,voo bafrelS a Gay
of petroleum, and the vast field hardly
more than sampled" is responsible for the
unparalleled excitement among oil opera
tors.
The possibilities for the future that loom
up before the minds of the eager specula-
tors are staggering to the imagination even
of the promoter.
Indeed, the development OF the Texas
oil fields has been by such gigantic steps
that the story of Jack and his beanstalk
is made almost plausible. Eight months
ago Beaumont staid community of
5000 or 10000 people, all engaged in the
peaceful pursuit of health. wealth and
happiness by the conventional methods in
a particularly fine field with it's prolific
rice, its never-ending timber and its other
natural resources. To-day there are thir-
teen oil wells gushing great streams of
crude petroleum and sending forth such
volumes OF the oil that the source of great
est trouble to the operators is the lack Of
tanks to hold the stuff on the short storage
between production and shipment.
Old days at Pithole, Titusville and Oil
City in the Western Pennsylvania "oil dig
gings' thirty-fve years ago are recalled
by oil men Of those days only for contrast
as mild and tame compared with the eX-
element here.
1t was during the oil excitement Of 1867
that prospectors who had probed the earth
in almost every State at last visited east
ern Texas. They found oil near Beaumont
But in those days the methods of drilling
for oil were crude, and the prospectors
found only an inferior quality OF petroleum
the fields were practically abandoned.
The use of oil for fuel had not been
thought of then. Coal was cheap, wood
was cheaper, and the industries of the
country were in their infancy creating
more demand for fuel to their
furnaces and FORCES and factories than
the forests and the coal mines supplied.
Indeed the great majority of factories,
mills and shops were located on the banks
Of flowing streams and got their motive
power from the mill-race and transporta-
ton was mainly by water, canal boats.
barges and sailing vessels doing most OF
the carrying.
The development Of the immense rail-
road system of the country and the per-
lection Of methods for mining coal drove
water out of the business a motive
power and means of transportation.
NEED OF CHEAP FUEL.
The country has now reached a third
stage. 1t needs something cheaper for fuel
than coal or wood. something which under
the boilers of the great factories and mills
will develop a power greater than that of
the mill race and cheaper than can be
developed by coal.
The old oil men of 1867 with long men,
Believing that with the advanced methods
of to-day both in Goa king the crude petro-
leum out of the earth and in refining 1t,
the oil fields of eastern Texas abandoned in
1861, could be operated profitable, they re-
That was last winter. The men knew there
was oil i'm the earth near Beaumont, and
they sunk their shafts. They knew they
would get a good flow Of the oil which was
declared inferior in quality a generation
ago. But they were not prepared for what
did happen.
In was on Jan. 10 last when a man, hat
less and almost breathless. ran into the
little city of Beaumont. painting and cry
ing that up on Spindle Top was fountain
stream of oil six inches thick, and going
up, UP two hundred feet into the air. and
that when it came it blew the machinery
out of the hole.
Before a cap could be put on that hole
to save the waste till tanks and reservoirs
could be constructed half million gallons
of oil had flowed and formed lake in the
hilltop.
That first well "gushed" 10000 barrels a
day, and is gushing yet Hence came the
new word ''gusher' in the Vernacular or
the oil diggings.
Since then twelve other oil gushers have
been opened, and the daily output of Texas
oil is estimated at 100000 barrels, or S32OOOOO
year.
The immediate result was the overcrowd-
| ing of every train that ran into Beaumont
from either of eight different directions,
and the greatest oil excitement ever known.
| The quiet little city has trebed in size, and
land that Wouldn't bring SO an acre last aSt
New Years is finding eager buyers a $4,000
an acre now. Operations now going on
| promise fully 100 oil wells in full blast by
next New Years. If they are all gushers!
A MARKET WANTED.
Necessity is credited with being the moth
er of invention. and the necessity for dis
posing Of this unparalleled product of pc
troleum Immediately went about her duty
like a setting hen.
She has Matched a most respectable brood
of chicks, and Texas may go right on gush-
ing oil. She will not flood her neighbors
nor impair the oil market, for necessity's
children will take care of her oil in new
/ WAYS and the Lone Star State will help to
| solve a problem which has been troubling
the far-sighted, and will perform a service
of incalcuable benefit to the country and
| the people.
Texas oil will run the mills and factories,
| furnish the power for railway locomotives,
and ere long will keep the pot a-boiling on
| the kitchen stoves of the country.
| The oil that is gushing from these Texas
| fountains can be produced at cost Of
| only 20 cents a barrel at the wells, and the
| cost of transportation from the field Is
reduced TO the lowest possible figure by the
| hot competition of five railroads, and the
easily possible and comparatively inexpen-
| sive opening of deep waterway from the
fields of Beaumont TO the gulf, twenty
| miles away. Beaumont is on the Neches
river, emptying into Sabine lake. A mar
|
! and the gulf. ship canal across that
strip would make entrances for oil ships
TO the city of Beaumont.
| Experiments in local furnaces cloye by
| the "gushers" developed the important
| fact that oil as a fuel under the boilers
| could be used at an actual saving of Il
per cent over coal. AS a result Texas oil
| has supplanted coal quite generally as
| fuel for the manufacturing concerns of
| that part of the country, and is rapidly
| finding favor at more distant points, not
| withstanding the fact that necessity has
| not yet fully developed the chick which
| is to transport the oil TO distant points
| cheaply enough to make oil the only fuel
| oping though. as indicated by the canal
| project for making the well oil town "A
| seaport, though twenty miles from the nat
| ural shore.
| Other chicks of Dame Necessity are de-
| veloping along many lines of invention
! Just at this time, when the multiplication
/ OF automobiles and locomobiles and other
| self-propelling vehicles has put an alarm
| ing horde of gasoline tanks into the streets
| and highways, and that, too. with fire as a
| concomitant calling forth forbidding
| volatile and dangerously explosive oil. a
| young Massachusetts, inventor, Arthur
| Franklin Reynolds by name. has solved a
| double problem
OIL-BURNING APPARATUS.
| He has invented a burner for gasoline
| carriages, wagons and locomotives which
will burn petroleum at a less cost than
gasoline. This alone will make a great
market for the Texas product for the only