Continuing my drive northwest from Fort Worth, I took the smaller road on past Wichita Falls to Burkburnett, Texas. A hole in the ground there made history back in the day.
Originally settled by ranchers around 1856 with a population barely topping 100 until 1912. That’s when someone poked a hole in the ground deeper than the wheat plants were planted. Much deeper.
Oil gushed up. Money rained down. People rushed in.
Roughly 20,000 people found Burkburnett on the map and set up tent camps around the oil fields.
I drove past two historical monument signs sticking up on metal poles along the roadside next to each other. Some iron and weathered wood contraptions lay behind the signs. Odd, I thought.
So, I turned ARGO around and went over to take a look. Turns out I was standing on a very important piece of Texas history. Important for two reasons.
The first plaque commemorated Burkburnett, Texas for being one of the more famous Texas oil boom towns. I looked left, right. Just open agricultural fields. Didn't see any boom town.
Seemingly, all that remains of the boom part of it are the plaques planted there by the State of Texas. They mark the site where, nearby, a 2200 barrel oil gusher was struck on the S.L. Fowler farm setting an oil boom in motion. Incidentally, the term, "gusher," is used because these wells were drilled before the advent of pressure control systems. When a high pressure oil reserve underground was reached with the drilling bit, it literally gushed up through the drilled hole into the air. Some times the pressure was so great the pipe would be blown right out of the ground launching it toward the clouds.
I did see later that there were still a few pumpjack's bobbing up and down next to the rusty wire fence line further up the road. After all the years, the aging iron piston pumps are still producing and earning their keep. Some old timers call those pumps nodding donkeys, thirsty birds, crickets and such. Growing up in Texas, my friends and I called them Iron head horses. Iron head horses ... bowing to the ground for the Texas Tea, then raising their heads to Heaven to give thanks.
So why should you care? Well, pause for a moment and think about it. Wherever you live in this modern world your life would be very different right now if this and other oil gushers similar to this one hadn't happened. Different on multiple levels. For starters, you wouldn't be reading this on whatever electronic device you are reading it on. I'll leave the rest to your imagination. And, it goes without saying, if those huge oil strikes had not happened in this state, Texas would be a way different place; a lot more cows and a lot less Dallas and Houston.
Behind the historical plaques lay the remains of a few well worn parts that made up the body of the first drilling rig used there. An iron and wood testament to the black gold that came forth from the earth. A testament to the people who worked the wells to capture the resulting riches. A testament to the joys and conflicts that came with the riches.
One of the resulting conflicts was a big 'un. It was between the neighboring states.
Texas and Oklahoma’s border had been the Red River since the Spanish colonial days. Didn’t much matter where the exact boundary line was located, in the middle of the river or either bank of the Red River … that is, till oil was discovered in Burkburnett.
And yes, that leads to the second main reason Burkburnett is an important part of Texas history ... and … Texas geography.
Yep, you guessed it. Burkburnett was a spit and holler from that Red River. It took the Supreme Court to decide the matter in the early 20’s. "And dang it," Texans would say, "those dang Yankees up in DC gave away part of our state when they made the south bank of the Red River the Texas border." (I used the colloquialism, "dang," in case any children or Baptist are reading this far.)
This Supreme Court decision even had an impact on sports. Well, let’s just say it helped add a little fuel to a certain college football game rivalry. The one played out each year between the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners. A story all by itself for another time.
By the way, Hollywood got in on the action too. A movie was made about the rip-snorter wildcatter history of the area bringing worldwide fame. It was based on a book, Lady Comes To Burkburnett, written about the goings on there during that period. The movie Boomtown, starred Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable. Movie goers got an up close and personal romanticized view of the Texas oil gusher years and Burkburnett’s role in it all.
And better yet, on the scholarly side, some historians point to this period of gigantic oil discoveries in the Lone Star State as the starting point of the "World's Oil Age. They site Burkburnett's gusher, along with the even bigger one that proceeded it, the "mother of the gushers, Spindletop, near Beaumont and, of course, the humongous East Texas discoveries that made H.L. Hunt a very happy man. And a very very rich one. These historic oil finds and others around the state got everyone's attention worldwide in one way or the other.
Finding money in the ground, like say, in the case of gold and oil, gets people thinking when they here the news. And that kind of news travels fast. (Almost as fast as bad news. Almost.)
John D. Rockefeller wasn't from Texas, he was born in upper New York state and lived in Cleveland. But he could read a newspaper. And, having been an assistant bookkeeper, he knew enough math to add and multiply.
Barrels of oilxlots of money per barrelx lots of barrels of oil = lots and lots of money
So, nearly everyone who played a role in the oil booms in someway, but businessmen watching from afar like Rockefeller reaped the big riches eventually. I mention him because he ended up controlling ninety per cent of all the oil in America at one point.
“Rockefeller once explained the secret of success. ‘Get up early, work late … and strike oil.” According to Joey Adams. Well, that's exactly what happened in Burkburnett, Texas. People got up early, worked late and struck oil.
By the way, some historians who have studied this period of oil history and Rockefeller, suggest you might add a dash of greed, or maybe a cup or two, into Rockefeller's "secret success sauce." But that's "a whole 'nuther story."
And so, it’s on down the road I go. Driving past the oil fields and the wheat fields, and through the history of it all. Heading west.