Book Description

The East Texas of the late 1920's was dotted with sleepy, small towns filled with thousands of hard-working farmers living mostly hand-to-mouth. At first glance, this area appeared to be even more "depressed" than the rest of the country. This part of Texas had once been covered by thick forests of pines. No one could imagine the explosion of wealth and prosperity that was soon to arrive. In 1930, on a peaceful Sunday morning, while most East Texans were in church, a rumble in a field near Kilgore, Texas was to change the region forever. With the successful completion of the Daisy Bradford Well No. 3, one of the world's richest oil fields had arrived. The East Texas Oil Field covers approximately fifty miles north to south and approximately twelve miles east to west. Those who were dirt poor, as Mrs. Daisy Bradford was, were turned into millionaires. The more affluent, such as H. L. Hunt, became billionaires. The East Texas Oil Field, as the name implies, is located in the extreme eastern part of Texas. The discovery of this field was made on October 3, 1930 by C. M. Joiner. The field comprises approximately 130,620 acres and covers portions of Rusk, Cherokee, Smith, Gregg and Upshur Counties The production is derived from sand members of the Eagle-Ford-Woodbine group, of Cretaceous age. The structure of the reservoir is a broad, western-dipping, truncated homocline. Though the importance of the East Texas Oil Field has diminished in the last seventy years, it is still a vital and important part of East Texas.