Revolution of the Texas Economy

Black Gold and the Revolution of the Texas Economy The last years leading up to the turn-of-the-century provided Texas with economic promise.

Transportation and the agricultural industries generated revenue for the state and migration continued from the East. The railroads opened the Frontier and provided easy access to the farthest reaches of Texas.

While these industries flourished, a fledgling industry struggled on the Texas Gulf Coast. Oilmen through the 1890s drilled wells around Beaumont finding little success. In 1901, Spindletop, near Beaumont, blew, unleashing 100,000 barrels of oil a day for nine days. The discovery of oil on the Gulf Coast sent the state, and the South, into a frenzy and wildcatters began drilling for oil all over Texas. In 1896, Texas oil wells produced about 1,000 barrels per day, by 1902 they produced 21 million and in 1929, Texas crude oil production value surpassed the cotton crop and became the leading supplier of oil.

It took several years for oil to make its way into the western part of the state, but by 1919, wells came in at Wichita and Wilbarger Counties, several years later in Scurry County, and counties all over Northwest Texas and the rest of the state. Oil transformed small agricultural towns overnight into boomtowns putting places like Cisco, Ranger, and Brownwood on the map. When oil flowed so did the money, but if a well dried up, the boomtown faded as quickly as it came about. “Black Gold� was king, and it thrust a predominately agricultural state into the industrial age. The first oil companies relied on the railroads early to ship oil to the refineries on the Gulf Coast. Rail towns, like Abilene that had once depended on the large cattle herds, now benefitted from the boom. The growing wealth contributed to the economic and urban growth throughout the state, attracting outside business and encouraging economic development from inside. The state seized the opportunity to collect more revenue, building roads, improving the education system, and establishing institutions of higher learning. The automobile benefited from the boom as well. Automobiles depend on gasoline, a by-product of refining crude oil into Kerosene.

Texas oil fueled economic change around the United States and throughout the world, becoming the single largest producer of oil in the U.S. by the end of World War I. The oilman joined the cowboy and the farmer as a part of the Texas identity, an identity that the world now recognized and that shaped the growing American image.