page_title: Texas oil boom
section_title: Discoveries spread
hierarchical_section_title: Texas oil boom / Growth of "Big Oil" / Discoveries spread
caption_attribution_description: English: Part of a panoramic photograph of the Goose Creek Oil Field, 1919. Cropped from the larger panorama to fit alongside the lead of the article.
context_page_description: The Texas oil boom, sometimes called the gusher age, was a period of dramatic change and economic growth in the U.S. state of Texas during the early 20th century that began with the discovery of a large petroleum reserve near Beaumont, Texas. The find was unprecedented in its size and ushered in an age of rapid regional development and industrialization that has few parallels in U.S. history. Texas quickly became one of the leading oil-producing states in the U.S., along with Oklahoma and California; soon the nation overtook the Russian Empire as the top producer of petroleum. By 1940 Texas had come to dominate U.S. production. Some historians even define the beginning of the world's Oil Age as the beginning of this era in Texas.
  The major petroleum strikes that began the rapid growth in petroleum exploration and speculation occurred in Southeast Texas, but soon reserves were found across Texas and wells were constructed in North Texas, East Texas, and the Permian Basin in West Texas.
context_section_description: Exploration of salt domes across the plains of the Texas Gulf Coast took off with major oil fields opening at Sour Lake in 1902, Batson in 1903, Humble in 1905, and Goose Creek (modern Baytown) in 1908. Pipelines and refineries were built throughout much of Southeast Texas, leading to substantial industrialization, particularly around Houston and the Galveston Bay. The first offshore oilfield in the state opened in 1917 at Black Duck Bay on the Goose Creek field, although serious offshore exploration did not begin until the 1930s.
  Initially, oil production was conducted by many small producers. The early exploration and production frenzy produced an unstable supply of oil, which often resulted in overproduction. In the early years, a few major finds led to easy availability and major drops in prices, but were followed by limited exploration and a sudden spike in prices as production dwindled. The situation led exploration to spread into the neighboring states of Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas, who competed with Texas for dominance in oil production. The Glenn Pool strike near Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1905 established Tulsa as the leading U.S. oil production center until the 1930s. Though Texas soon lagged behind Oklahoma and California, it was still a major producer.
  During the late 1910s and 1920s, oil exploration and production continued to expand and stabilize. Oil production became established in North Texas, Central Texas, the Panhandle, and the Permian Basin in western Texas. The finds in North Texas, beginning with the 1917 strike in Ranger west of Dallas-Fort Worth, were particularly significant, bringing substantial industrialization to the area. Texas soon became dominant as the nation's leading oil producer. By 1940, Texas production was twice that of California, the next largest U.S. producer.
  In 1930, Columbus Marion Joiner, a self-educated prospector, discovered the East Texas Oil Field, the largest oil discovery that had ever been made. Because East Texas had not been significantly explored for oil before then, numerous independent prospectors, known as "wildcatters", were able to purchase tracts of land to exploit the new field. This new oil field helped to revive Dallas's economy during the Great Depression, but sharply decreased interest in West Texas as the new supply led to another major drop in oil prices. The uncontrolled production in the eastern field destabilized the state's oil industry, which had been trying to control production levels to stabilize prices. Overproduction in East Texas was so great that then-governor Ross Sterling attempted to shut down many of the wells. During one of the forced closures, he ordered the Texas National Guard to enforce the shutdown. These efforts at controlling production, intended to protect both the independent operators and the major producers, were largely unsuccessful at first and led to widespread oil smuggling. In the later 1930s, the federal government intervened and brought production to sustainable levels, leading to a stabilization of price fluctuation. The income provided by the stabilization allowed less populated West Texas and the Panhandle to be more fully explored and exploited.
caption: Goose Creek Oil Field, c. 1919
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