The Spindletop gusher launches the Texas oil boom

On January 10, 1901, a drilling crew on Spindletop Hill, just south of Beaumont, Texas, hit oil at a depth of 1,139 feet. The well did not simply seep — it erupted. Mud bubbled up, six tons of drill pipe shot skyward, and then a stream of oil blew over 100 feet into the air.

The well, led by salt-dome expert Anthony F. Lucas, gushed for nine days before it could be capped. At its peak it flowed an estimated 100,000 barrels a day — more than every other oil well in the United States combined at the time.

The gusher that blew at Spindletop was not the first successful well in the country, but it changed everything that followed.

The strike turned Beaumont into a boomtown almost overnight and seeded companies that would become giants like Texaco and Gulf. Spindletop is widely credited with launching the modern petroleum industry and ushering in the age of cheap, abundant oil.