Then as now, drilling for oil was a very expensive proposition, with only a small hope of receiving a return on the investment. However, revenue from one producing well could recoup the expense of several dry holes and still turn a profit. Early drilling was done both by small "wildcat" operators and big oil companies like Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon-Mobil) and American Petrofina (since merged with France's Total Corporation).
Lots of money was made and lost in Titus County drilling for oil and trading leases, but the hardy men continued drilling until oil was finally discovered near Talco, Texas in February, 1936. Once found, retrieving the oil from underground is both expensive and dangerous work, and was even more dangerous back then. Many men were injured or killed over the years during the search for oil and its production.
There were so many wells dug and play-by-play stories printed about them that we quit documenting each one due to time and printing costs. However, we feel that the stories of the local oil men's perseverance deserve recognition, because without their continued optimism to drill just one more hole, Titus County would still be a very poor rural area.
The discovery of oil changed many aspects of the entire face of Titus County, and provided the jobs and money needed to improve life for many of its citizens. Nothing before or since, with the sole exception of open-pit mining of Titus County's coal, has changed the entire county so drastically. The historic changes that oil discovery brought to Titus County is the reason we use the photo of a wooden oil derrick as our website logo.
Before oil was discovered, Titus County's economy was solely agriculturally based in one way or another. Much of the county's population was farmers who were suffering hard times after cotton prices fell in the 1920s. The Great Depression of the latter 1920s and early 1930s damaged our economy even further. Many good people lost their farms and homes, and many more were on the verge of doing so. Local merchants suffered along with the farmers, and quite a few went bankrupt when customers were unable to pay for goods purchased on credit. The Hoffmann Heading and Stave Factory, which built wooden barrels and shipped them around the world, was our largest industry with a workforce of some 200 people at its peak.
As expected, and rightfully so, the few people who either owned the wells or were lucky enough to own the land that yielded successful production became very wealthy from oil. However, in the larger picture, the discovery of oil provided both existing and new Titus County residents with (pardon the pun) a steady stream of income that was used to build the county into what it is today.
The sudden influx of people arriving in Titus County during the oil boom had both positive and negative impacts, as is always the case with rapid growth. In my opinion, the positives far outweighed the negatives.
Most Mt. Pleasant streets and Titus County roads of the 1930s were no more than dirt trails. Many were impassible in wet weather, and sometimes afterward until mud ruts could be graded smooth again. Titus County highways were crooked and narrow, and many of the wooden bridges needed repair. The roads were not designed for or capable of handling heavy traffic. The sudden influx of people and traffic traveling the roads and highways, which included many heavy trucks and oilfield equipment, caused the State Highway Department to take another look at Titus County. The new traffic spurred the Highway Department to build new and better highways and bridges that probably would not have been constructed for many more years had things remained as they were before the oil boom. Highway 271 North connecting Mt. Pleasant and Talco was built to replace "the Talco Highway," which is now Texas Farm Road 2152 (the Green Hill Road).
The advalorem tax money from oil operations gave the county government badly needed funds to support services that had lacked for many years. Not only did the county receive cash from taxes, but commissioners suddenly had access to cheap oil that allowed them to pave dirt roads into all-weather roads and build one of the best county road networks in the state of Texas for rural citizens.
Land lease and royalty income gave poor farmers on the verge of losing their homes and family farms the money needed to pay back taxes and keep their land.
Money circulated through the business community as workers paid for lodging, food, clothing, and other things needed for daily life. The influx of money stabilized our banks and allowed Titus County to prosper.
"Momentum builds momentum," and Talco oil production and Titus County's resulting progress attracted industry to the area. The Talco Oil and Refining Company refinery (later Dorchester) was constructed in Mt. Pleasant in 1937 to process the oil produced in Talco. The refinery provided well-paying jobs for several hundred local men from the time it was first built until it closed in 1984.
Other smaller businesses located in Mt. Pleasant to provide goods and services needed by the oil companies and their employees. Mt. Pleasant grew as new housing was constructed to house the new people arriving to work in the oil fields and associated businesses.
"Every cloud has a silver lining, and every silver lining has a cloud." The oil boom brought a few negatives with it, too.
At the start of the oil boom, inflation was rampant in Mt. Pleasant. There were not nearly enough houses for everyone who needed them. Housing costs rose so high, so quickly, that the Chamber of Commerce ran ads and articles pleading with local property owners to lower their rents in order to make housing affordable. They pointed out that the result of not doing so would be to drive quality people moving into the area to other towns where rent was affordable, as had happened in Longview and Tyler during their oil boom. Humble and Mobile oil companies built "camps" for their workers in Talco. The camps were small neighborhoods of small houses that workers could rent at a reasonable rate. The camps were located adjacent to the employees work on company property.
There are many good people associated with the oil industry, but particularly in the early 1900s, it also attracted many transient type undesirables who followed the oil field work because it paid well and in some cases allowed them to hide from the law. Criminal activity in Titus County increased as the boom gained momentum. This was particularly evident when martial law was declared in the Kilgore field, which "put the heat" on these people and caused them to move elsewhere. All in all, most of the crimes were petty property crimes, but were aggravating nonetheless.
There was also considerable ecological damage in the early days of oil drilling and production. Excess oil and salt water were simply dumped into unlined pits, or more often into lowlands, sloughs, and creeks for disposal. The salt water killed considerable fish and vegetation that it came in contact with. Some of the damage took many years to heal. As time and technology progressed, the oil industry became more cognizant of the damage they were causing, and today take great care not to damage the environment around their leases. They have also returned to previously damaged sites and reclaimed the land to god condition.
The story of oil in Titus County is one of the longest on this website, and is one reason that the update we hoped to post in latter 2007 had to be delayed until first quarter 2008.
We divided the oil topic into several sections because of its length. As we said, quite a few wells were drilled between 1900 and 1936. On the next page are stories of several "dry holes" to provide insight into the perseverance of early drillers who created an interest in Titus County oil. Some people will want to read each story, others only a few, and some won't be interested at all in that section. By separating the oil topic, you can conveniently read as many or as few as you choose.
Section two contains the story of the February, 1936 discovery of oil in the Talco field, which within itself is a rather long story that required several pages.
Finally, section three is the story of Mt. Pleasant's refinery, which began life as the Talco Oil and Refining Company, was then sold to American Petrofina, and finally Dorchester.
This update contains materials from all of our research up to present. We plan to enhance and add to these stories as we are able to do further research and obtain more photos relating to different phases of Titus County oil.
