DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture it: 1889, out in Chambers County, and a man named Elmer W. Barber is digging a water well near his home.
Sixty-five feet down — just trying to get himself some water — and what does he find? Inflammable gas. Right there near the top of a salt dome.
And not just any salt dome. This one carried the family name. Barbers Hill, first settled by Elmer's father, Amos Barber, before him.
Now, Elmer — born in 1854, still had all the way to 1935 ahead of him — probably didn't know what to make of that hissing, flammable surprise down in the dark. But the ground beneath Barbers Hill knew something nobody had quite figured out yet. It was keeping a secret, and it was going to make folks wait for it.
Then came 1901. Spindletop blew in, and the whole world got a little oil-crazy. Prospectors started sniffing around Chambers County, seeking leases on that hill.
By 1902, a man named Pattillo Higgins — he'd been an early promoter of Spindletop itself, born in 1863 and not going anywhere until 1955 — drilled on the northwest slope. His well was shallow, like most of the early operations out there. And those early wells?
They yielded little. To make matters worse, the low price of crude oil discouraged large investment. The hill wasn't giving up its secret cheap, and the money men weren't willing to press the issue.
So Barbers Hill sat there, patient as a card player with a full hand, waiting. It waited sixteen years. Then in 1918, the United Petroleum Co. drilled its No. 1 Fisher.
That well came in at seventy barrels a day — the field's first oil in commercial quantities. Seventy barrels a day. After all that waiting, the ground finally said yes.
But even that wasn't the main event. Drilling resumed in 1926, and that's when things got serious. The Mills Bennett Production Co. and the Humphreys Corp. brought in the A.
E. Barber No. 1 — five hundred barrels a day. Five hundred.
And then, later that same year, those same outfits hit the B-2 Kirby well, drilling all the way down to four thousand one hundred and seventy-four feet. That depth cracked something open, and not just in the rock. It triggered a leasing campaign.
A period of rapid expansion that lasted all the way to the late 1930s. During the boom, rows of oil derricks stretched across the landscape, and tent dwellings filled in around them — the kind of roughneck city that springs up fast and lives loud. As the community grew, oil money didn't just stay in pockets.
It helped upgrade and enlarge school facilities. The boom had a civic conscience, at least in part. By 1977, when this story was being set down on the marker, the economy out here had shifted.
Not production anymore — storage. Barbers Hill had gone from pulling petroleum out of the earth to holding it. The hill that once kept its secret so long had become the keeper of someone else's.
Seems like some places just have a talent for that sort of thing.
What the marker says
While digging a 65-ft. water well near his home in 1889, Elmer W. Barber (1854-1935), whose father Amos Barber first settled this area, encountered inflammable gas near the top of the salt dome known as Barbers Hill. After the Spindletop discovery in 1901, prospectors sought leases here. In 1902 Pattillo Higgins (1863-1955), an early Spindletop promoter, drilled on the northwest slope of the hill. His shallow well, like those of other early operations, yielded little, and the low price of crude oil discouraged large investment. The United Petroleum Co. No. 1 Fisher, drilled in 1918, produced 70 barrels a day, the field's first oil in commercial quantities. Drilling resumed in 1926, when the Mills Bennett Production co. and the Humphreys Corp. brought in the A. E. Barber No. 1, yielding 500 barrels a day. The success later that year of their B-2 Kirby, reaching a depth of 4,174 ft., triggered a leasing campaign and launched a period of rapid expansion which lasted until the late 1930s. Rows of oil derricks and tent dwellings were a common sight during the boom. As the population of the community grew, oil money helped upgrade and enlarge school facilities. By 1977, the local economy had shifted from production to storage of petroleum..