Beaumont and the History of the Oil Industry

Today we planned to spend time exploring Beaumont.  We were impressed by the very nice museum/church district in downtown Beaumont.  According to our guidebook, Beaumont has approximately 20 museums.  Who knew?!  Most we did not visit, though several might have been interesting.  For example, there is the Babe Didrickson Zaharias Museum for the Port Arthur native who was voted the world's greatest woman's athlete of the first half of the 20th century.  I still remember reading a biography of her when I was growing up.  We went by the Fire Museum of Texas with its 24 foot high dalmation spotted fire hydrant in front.  There are also tours available through several mansions that would have provided examples of how the rich and famous lived at the beginning of the 20th century.

Texas Energy Museum

However, our focus on this trip was oil.  We spent most of the morning at the very nice Texas Energy Museum.  The term energy here refers to only one thing, petroleum.  That is not unreasonable since the first oil well in Texas was at Spindletop in southern Beaumont.  The Lucas gusher at Spindletop came in on January 10, 1901 and both Beaumont and Texas were changed forever.  The museum had a large number of exhibits in the two story museum, including artifacts from several of the oil companies that got their start in Beaumont, e.g. Gulf, Texaco, and Mobil, or grew substantially due to their involvement with Spindletop, e.g. Humble (later Exxon).

There were also a large number of very well done interpretive exhibits of multiple kinds.  I now know a lot more about the the early history of petroleum exploration, the market for petroleum and petroleum products over time, and how refineries work.  I wish I would have done this before our trip yesterday through Port Arthur.  I might have understood better what I was seeing as we went by the refineries. 

We really did enjoy our time here.  Other than a school group that we mostly avoided, we had the place all to ourselves.

Spindletop Park

After lunch, we were off to find the actual Spindletop site.  There is a poorly publicized little park with a few interpretive panels, but we would never have been able to find it without the coordinates to the virtual geocache that was there, GCMTWY.  Even with the coordinates, finding the park tucked back in among several industrial sites and across a railroad track was an iterative process.  The interpretive information mostly reinforced what we had seen earlier at the Energy Museum, although we did learn one new bit of trivia.  At the time of the original strike and subsequent boomtown in and around Beaumont, potable water was extremely scarce while oil was plentiful.  Water cost $6 per barrel, while oil cost 3 cents per barrel.

The actual site of the Lucas well is several hundred yards away on private property and marked by a flag pole that can be seen from the park.  There used to be a tall monument known as the Lucas Gusher Monument at the well site which was somewhat reminiscent of the San Jacinto Monument.  However, Spindletop has subsided due to sulfur mining and is now covered by marsh and water.  To avoid these problems, the Lucas Gusher Monument was moved many years ago to the location of our next destination, the Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum.  


Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum

 Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum is on the campus of Lamar University and is a collection of approximately 15 clapboard buildings from the oil boom era, including a general store, saloon, post office, stable, blacksmith shop, photography studio, pharmacist/doctor's office, lawyer's office, etc.  Each building is essentially a "mini-museum" containing authentic artifacts that make the building look as it might have in the early 1900's.  The buildings and exhibits tell the story of life in Beaumont as it went from a city of several hundred to a city of 30,000 in a matter of weeks after the Lucas gusher at Spindletop.  Most of the museum and most of the buildings were built in 1976, although a print shop was added within the last year.

Exterior of the Gladys City Boomtown Museum with the Lucas Gusher Monument on the right.  Some of the clapboard buildings can be seen in the background.  The picture was downloaded from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Spindletop-Gladys_City_Boomtown_Museum.jpg

This might have been energy overload for some people, but we really enjoyed our time at these three locations and the opportunity to learn much more about the oil industry, past and present, in Texas.