DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the first oil well in Cooke County. Now settle in, because this one starts quiet — just flat farmland, a drill, and a secret the earth was keeping. Out on the Bud W.
Davis Farm, one mile east of where this marker stands, something happened on November ninth, nineteen twenty-four, that nobody in the surrounding farm community was quite ready for. C.A. Doudrick's Big Indian Oil Company put a hole in the ground, and Cooke County's first producing oil well came in.
Just like that, the world changed. What had been a farm became something else entirely — the beginning of a multi-million dollar industry. The beginning of a whole new way of life.
Word got out fast, the way word always does when money's involved, and the carnival atmosphere that followed — well, that part writes itself. Sightseers poured in. Reporters poured in.
Everybody wanted a look at the thing. And here's the detail I love, the one that tells you everything you need to know about human nature: one enterprising man set himself up at the lease and started charging admission. Admission.
To look at an oil well. And he was doing it, too — right up until a worker questioned him about it. How long that arrangement lasted, the marker doesn't say.
But long enough to make the history books, apparently. The discovery well itself? It kept right on producing, steady and quiet, long after the carnival packed up and left.
All the way until nineteen seventy, when it was finally plugged. Forty-six years of work, started with one dramatic day and one man with his hand out at the gate.
What the marker says
Located on the Bud W Davis Farm (1 mile E), Cooke County's first producing oil well came in on Nov 9, 1924, heralding the beginning of a multi-million dollar industry and a new life style for the surrounding farm community. Carnival atmosphere prevailed while sightseers and reporters flocked to the lease. One enterprising man charged admission until questioned by a worker. The discovery well, drilled by C.A. Doudrick's Big Indian Oil Company continued to produce until 1970 when it was plugged.