Name: Galloway, Texas
Address: Galloway, TX

Galloway, TX RoadyGoat

Galloway, Texas, it’s a little spot you might miss driving through Rusk County. But this place has a history that stretches back further than you might think, a history that's touched by some pretty remarkable people. While it might not be plastered on billboards, Galloway's story is etched into the very soil. Folks around here know that Galloway has been a home to folks who chased big dreams.

The Well That Changed the World RoadyGoat

1901

On January tenth, nineteen oh one, a drill bit punched through the Spindletop salt dome outside Beaumont and unleashed a gusher that blew one hundred thousand barrels of oil a day for nine straight days before anyone could cap it. That was more oil than every other producing well in the United States combined. Beaumont's population of ten thousand tripled in three months. More than five hundred companies were formed within a year. Gulf Oil and Texaco were both born here. Before Spindletop, oil was primarily a lamp fuel and lubricant — the quantities were too small and expensive to burn for anything else. After Spindletop, burning petroleum for mass consumption became economically possible for the first time. The oil age, the automobile age, the modern economy — all of it traces back to a single drill hole outside Beaumont.

8.4 mi away

Hamshire, TX RoadyGoat

Hamshire, Texas. It's a small spot on the map, down in Jefferson County, not far from Beaumont and the Gulf Coast. Folks might drive through on Highway 12 and not think much of it, but this little community has quietly contributed its share to the world. You might not realize it, but a number of notable figures spent formative years right here.

9.7 mi away

Spindletop Gusher

1901

On January 10, 1901, the Lucas Gusher at Spindletop Hill erupted, launching the modern petroleum industry and transforming Texas and the global economy.

Historical Marker → · 8.1 mi away

Richardson, Jiles Perry [Big Bopper]

1958

The Big Bopper, disc jockey, songwriter, and singer, was born Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr., on October 24, 1930, in Sabine Pass, Texas. He was the son of Jiles Perry Richardson, Sr., and Elsie (Stalsby) Richardson. He usually went by the initials J. P. and briefly used the nickname Jape, before settling on the pseudonym, "The Big Bopper," on air and when recording. He is best-known for his hit, "Chantilly Lace," which reached Number 6 on the charts in 1958, and for dying in a plane crash with Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly . His family moved to Beaumont when he was very young. At Beaumont High School he sang in the school choir as well as played on the football team. He graduated from Beaumont High School in 1947 and enrolled at Lamar College. While still a teenager Richardson began working as a disc jockey at KTRM radio in Beaumont, and he soon left college to work full-time. He eventually became program director while still working as a disc jockey. His colorful on-air personality (a stark contrast to the naturally shy Richardson) made him a very popular disc jockey in the Golden Triangle area. Richardson was influenced early by country singers but soon moved into the realm of rock-and-roll. In 1958 he traveled to Houston's Gold Star Studios to record songs for Pappy Daily 's D Records . Richardson recorded his novelty song, "Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor," as the A-side of a single that he hoped would capitalize on the popularity of other novelty songs that had recently been released. For the B-side he recorded "Chantilly Lace," which he reportedly penned as an afterthought in the backseat of the car while driving to the session. At the recording session, he also reportedly formally adopted his nickname "The Big Bopper" as his musical persona. Unexpectedly, the record's B-side, "Chantilly Lace," quickly gained the attention of radio programmers and listening audiences, and Daily released it on his D label and subsequently leased it to Mercury Records for national distribution. "Chantilly Lace" became very successful and would eventually go gold and multi-platinum as an early hit in rock-and-roll history. It was by far the most famous record on Daily's D label. Songs from the Gold Star sessions comprised Richardson's only album, Chantilly Lace . He followed with "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Big Bopper's Wedding," which were also hits but not of the same caliber as "Chantilly Lace." Richardson's song, "White Lightning" became the first Number 1 hit for George Jones in 1959. Later that year, his song "Running Bear" became a Number 1 hit for fellow Texan Johnny Preston . The Bopper wrote about thirty-eight songs during his life and recorded twenty-one of them. Most of his recordings were classified as novelty songs that did not have lasting popularity. His appeal was largely in his flamboyant stage performances. He wore checkered jackets and zoot suits and used a prop phone during "Chantilly Lace" to talk to his girl. In 1958 he also made a pioneering video for the hit song and later coined the term "music video" for the production. In order to maintain his showman image, he did not wear his wedding ring in public and generally kept his marriage to Adrianne "Teetsie" Fryou (married on April 18, 1952), a secret from his fans. The couple had two children. With his newfound fame, Richardson resigned his position as disc jockey at KTRM in Beaumont in order to perform full-time by November 1958. In this capacity, he appeared on the top pop shows of the day and was booked on the "Winter Dance Party" tour with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. On February 2, 1959, Richardson, Holly, and Valens played a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. They were scheduled to play in North Dakota the next day. After the show Holly and Valens chartered a plane so that they could rest before their bands arrived. Richardson, who had the flu, was supposed to take the bus, but at the last minute switched places with Holly's band memb

Tsha Handbook → · 9.0 mi away

Spindletop Oilfield

1901

The Spindletop oilfield, discovered on a salt dome formation south of Beaumont in eastern Jefferson County on January 10, 1901, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry. The Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company, formed in August 1892 by George W. O'Brien, George W. Carroll, Pattillo Higgins , Emma E. John, and J. F. Lanier, was the first company to drill on Spindletop Hill. Three shallow attempts, beginning in 1893 and using cable-tool drilling equipment were unsuccessful; Lanier and Higgins had left the company by 1895. Anthony F. Lucas , the leading United States expert on salt dome formations, made a lease with the Gladys City Company in 1899. Higgins and Lucas made a separate agreement a month later. With Lucas in charge of the drilling operation, another attempt was made on the John Allen Veatch survey on Gladys City Company lands. Lucas was able to drill to a depth of 575 feet before running out of money. He was also having great difficulty with the tricky sands of the salt dome. Despite the negative reports from contemporary geologists, Lucas remained convinced that oil was in the salt domes of the Gulf Coast. He finally secured the assistance of John H. Galey and James M. Guffey of Pittsburg. Much of the Guffey and Galey support was financed in turn by the Mellon interest; their terms excluded Higgins and left Lucas with only a small share of the potential profits. Nonetheless, Lucas pressed ahead in his effort to vindicate his theories. Galey and Guffey played a crucial role by bringing in Al and Curt Hamill, an experienced drilling team from Corsicana. Lucas spudded in a well on October 27, 1900, on McFaddin-Wiess and Kyle land that adjoined the Gladys City Company lands. A new heavier and more efficient rotary type bit was used. From October to January 1901, Lucas and the Hamills struggled to overcome the difficult oil sands, which had stymied previous drilling efforts. On January 10 mud began bubbling from the hole. The startled roughnecks fled as six tons of four-inch drilling pipe came shooting up out of the ground. After several minutes of quiet, mud, then gas, then oil spurted out. The Lucas geyser, found at a depth of 1,139 feet, blew a stream of oil over 100 feet high until it was capped nine days later and flowed an estimated 100,000 barrels a day. Lucas and the Hamills finally controlled the geyser on January 19, when a huge pool of oil surrounded it, and throngs of oilmen, speculators, and onlookers had transformed the city of Beaumont. A new age was born. The world had never seen such a gusher before. By September 1901 there were at least six successful wells on Gladys City Company lands. Wild speculation drove land prices around Spindletop to incredible heights. One man who had been trying to sell his tract there for $150 for three years sold his land for $20,000; the buyer promptly sold to another investor within fifteen minutes for $50,000. One well, representing an initial investment of under $10,000, was sold for $1,250,000. Beaumont's population rose from 10,000 to 50,000. Legal entanglements and multimillion-dollar deals became almost commonplace. An estimated $235 million had been invested in oil that year in Texas; while some had made fortunes, others lost everything. The overabundance of wells at Spindletop led to a rapid decline in production. After yielding 17,500,000 barrels of oil in 1902, the Spindletop wells were down to 10,000 barrels a day in February 1904. Deposits from the shallow Miocene caprock seemed to diminish, but the Spindletop oilfield had not yet dried out. A second boom came when Marrs McLean speculated that production could be found on the flanks of the dome. Miles F. Yount also believed more oil was present at deeper depths. Their convictions proved correct; on November 13, 1925, the Yount-Lee Oil Company brought in a flank well drilled to 5,400 feet. This and other discoveries on the flanks of the salt dome set off another speculative boom. The Gladys C

Tsha Handbook → · 9.0 mi away

Babe Didrikson Zaharias - Beaumont

1911

Mildred 'Babe' Didrikson Zaharias, born in Port Arthur and raised in Beaumont, won two gold medals in the 1932 Olympics and dominated women's golf. She is widely considered the greatest female athlete of the 20th century.

Historical Marker → · 7.4 mi away

Beaumont, TX

1901

Beaumont, the county seat of Jefferson County, is in the northeast part of the county, at 30°05' north latitude, and 94°06' west longitude, on the west bank of the Neches River and Interstate Highway 10, eighty-five miles east of Houston and twenty-five air miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. With nearby Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the Gulf Coast. Beaumont developed around the farm of Noah and Nancy Tevis, who settled on the Neches in 1824. The small community that grew up around the farm was known as Tevis Bluff or Neches River Settlement. Together with the nearby community of Santa Anna, it became the townsite for Beaumont when, in 1835, Henry Millard and partners Joseph Pulsifer and Thomas B. Huling began planning a town on land purchased from the Tevises. The most credible account of how the town was named is that Millard gave it his wife's maiden name, Beaumont. At Millard's urging, the First Congress of the Republic of Texas made Beaumont the seat of the newly formed Jefferson County and granted it a charter in 1838. Under a second charter municipal government was organized in 1840, but it was soon abandoned. Another attempt at municipal government in 1860 was short-lived. Continuous municipal government dates from incorporation under a general statute in 1881. Beaumont was a small center for cattle raisers and farmers in its early years, and, with an active riverport by the late 1800s, it became an important lumber and rice-milling town. The Beaumont Rice Mill, founded in 1892, was the first commercial rice mill in Texas. Beaumont's lumber boom, which reached its peak in the late 1800s, was due in large part to the rebuilding and expansion of the railroads after the Civil War . By the early 1900s the city was served by the Southern Pacific, Kansas City Southern, Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, and Missouri Pacific railroad systems. The population grew from 3,296 in 1890 to 9,427 in 1900. The Spindletop oil gusher of 1901 produced a boom that left Beaumont with a doubled population (20,640 in 1910), great wealth, and a petroleum-based economy that expanded as refineries and pipelines were built and new fields discovered nearby ( see SPINDLETOP OILFIELD ). Three major oil companies-the Texas Company (later Texaco ), Gulf Oil Corporation , and Humble (later Exxon )-were formed in Beaumont during the first year of the boom. The Magnolia Refinery ( see MOBIL OIL COMPANY) became the city's largest employer; by 1980 it was Mobil's largest manufacturing plant. Beaumont became a major seaport (variously second or third in tonnage in Texas in the 1970s) after the Neches was channelized to Port Arthur in 1908. By 1916 the channel was deepened, a turning basin dredged, and a shipyard constructed. The Gulf States Utilities Company, which serves southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana, made its headquarters in Beaumont. Discovery of a new oilfield at Spindletop in 1925 brought another burst of growth. The population of Beaumont was 40,422 in 1920 and 57,732 in 1930. This era also had its darker side: in the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan gained strength in Beaumont, and from 1922 to 1924 it controlled local politics. By the end of the 1920s, however, it had lost much of its membership and consequently its power. Though stagnant through the Great Depression , Beaumont's economy prospered during World War II with shipbuilding and oil refining. With the new boom came overcrowding, which may have contributed to the Beaumont race riot of 1943 , in which interracial violence led to the declaration of martial law and the virtual shut-down of the city in June. Beaumont's economy grew with petrochemicals and synthetic rubber in the post-war era and reached a plateau about 1960, when the growth slowed. In the mid-1950s the city, which had been segregated since Reconstruction , saw the civil rights movement begin to gain momentum, as the local chapter of the NAACP won two consecutive desegrega

Tsha Handbook → · 8.8 mi away

Lucas Gusher

1901

Erected by the State of Texas to Commemorate The Lucas Gusher. Discovery well of the Spindletop Oil Field and the first important well on the Gulf Coast. It blew in on Jan. 10, 1901, flowing 100,000 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 1020 feet. The oil production which resulted made Beaumont a city and the Sabine District a major oil refining and exporting center of the world. The Lucas Gusher was drilled by the Hamill Brothers, contractors, under the direct supervision of Captain Anthony F. Lucas for Guffey and Galey of Pittsburgh, on the McFaddin, Weiss and Kyle lease. 1936

Historical Marker → · 9.1 mi away

Galloway, Texas

Music in Galloway

Songs About Galloway

Artists From Galloway

Rivers & Roads in Song near Galloway

History of Galloway

Galloway, TX RoadyGoat

The Well That Changed the World RoadyGoat

Hamshire, TX RoadyGoat

Spindletop Gusher

Richardson, Jiles Perry [Big Bopper]

Spindletop Oilfield

Babe Didrikson Zaharias - Beaumont

Beaumont, TX

Lucas Gusher

Things to Do in Galloway

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