When I visited Daughter in Texas last month, I had time while she was teaching to check out some local points of interest. I've been curious to learn more about the vast oil fields of East Texas so I decided to visit the nearby town of Kilgore, where the depression-era oil boom began.
I spent a few hours visiting the super-interesting East Texas Oil Museum, and I'll share those photos in a separate post. I also stopped by downtown Kilgore which still has a few oil derricks for visitors to see. A derrick sits atop an oil well and supports the drilling apparatus. At Christmas, these oil derricks are lit like Christmas trees!
This is a scale model of how closely the derricks were erected during the oil boom...on the main street of downtown Kilgore! Nowadays, safety regulations prevent derricks from being set up so close to each other. But back then, it was "anything goes"!
Because of the amount of money generated by the Kilgore oil wells, this area was dubbed the World's Richest Acre. This is what sleepy Kilgore looked like before oil was discovered there.
After drilling, Kilgore was filled with oil derricks -- and all the developers and workers to operate them and the related businesses. The town was forever changed. At one point there were 1,000+ wells within Kilgore, making it the most densely drilled area in the world.
When you drive through parts of Texas and other oil-producing states, you'll often see pump-jacks which mechanically lift oil from some wells. They bob up and down like little ducks! If you're lucky enough to find oil on your property, you're entitled to the revenue it generates. So you'll see pump jacks in parking lots, front yards, ditches, and fields...wherever oil is found. In downtown Kilgore, you can see a pump jack up close!
Oil production continues to be big business in East Texas, and it was very interesting for this Iowa girl to learn more about it!
jp
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