Rushing gas came out with such tremendous force that a crater was torn some two hundred feet in diameter and made the ground and housetops snowlike with white sand for some six miles. The gas was dry. It ignited. A flame some one hundred and fifty feet in diameter shot up two hundred or more feet high and tossed up boulders as large as a peck measure as one would a baseball. The light could be seen forty miles and when I approached to within warming distance of the flame the earth trembled like a mass of jelly.
In northeast Texas, some small production was discovered on Tar Island in Caddo Lake in 1914. Caddo Lake is on the Marion-Harrison County line.
Three years later, oil discoveries began shifting to West Texas.
At Ranger in Eastland County on October 17, 1917, oil was discovered. Uncontrolled, the producers allowed their wells to flow thousands of barrels a day, and in many cases wells were practically exhausted within six months. Though the Ranger field is still producing today, the great period of activity lasted only about five years.
From Ranger, oil exploration drifted to the north in Stephens County. The Stephens County field is reported to have produced up to 90,000 barrels a day at its zenith.
Other oil developments in West Texas in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century came at Blue Ridge field in Fort Bend County in 1919, in Potter County near Amarillo in 1919, and in Wilbarger County in 1920.
Near the coast in 1919, the West Columbia field in Brazoria County came in. Reports say that a 29,600-barrel well was drilled in July, 1920. Though small, the field was quite productive.
The Mexia field was discovered in 1920, and the Powell field near Corsicana was reopened in 1924. As a result, Texas oil production shot above 200,000,000 barrels in 1927. Early in the 1920’s, oil was discovered in the Texas Panhandle. In 1925, Spindletop field near Beaumont was redeveloped, and proved more productive than when first discovered.
In the last half of the 1920’s, oil was discovered in Howard and Winkler Counties in West Texas. Other discoveries included Raccoon Bend on the coast, Van Zandt County in East Texas, and Bee County in 1929.
But the most prolific field of all was the East Texas field, which C. M. (Dad) Joiner brought in in October, 1930. Haunted by two failures, Joiner drilled a well in Rusk County where geologists said no oil existed. The overwhelming success of the well resulted in the wildest battle for leases in the history of the petroleum industry.