First Producing Oil Well in Coke County

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the first producing oil well in Coke County. Now, thirty years is a long time to be pokin' holes in the ground and coming up empty. Thirty years of intermittent drilling in Coke County, hopes raised and hopes dashed, rigs going up and rigs coming down.

But somebody kept believing there was something down there worth finding. Then came 1946. Sun Oil Company staked their well, the No. 1 Allen Jameson, in September of that year.

The Dallas firm of Roberts and Hawkins took on the drilling. And on November 17, they hit oil. Just like that, thirty years of waiting was over.

Now here's the part that ought to make you stop and think for a moment. That well didn't just punch through ordinary rock. It hit pay dirt at six thousand, two hundred and thirty feet, down in fossil-bearing limestone.

Limestone that is two hundred and eighty million years old. Whatever creatures left their bones in that rock, they could not have imagined that one day a drill bit from a Dallas firm would come knocking. In a twenty-four hour test, the No. 1 Allen Jameson flowed one hundred and sixty-eight barrels.

Enough to tell everybody in Coke County that the long wait was done, and a county-wide oil boom had begun. The county didn't just survive that boom, it thrived. Eighteen fields.

More than six point four million barrels annually. Coke County ranking among the top quarter of oil-producing counties in all of Texas. Thirty years of intermittent drilling, one well staked in September, oil struck in November, and a whole county changed.

Sometimes the ground just needs the right crew asking the right question at six thousand feet down.

What the marker says

Sun Oil Company's well - No. 1 Allen Jameson -- was staked in Sept. 1946, and struck oil Nov. 17. Intermittent drilling had gone on in Coke County for 30 years, but this discovery began a county-wide oil boom. Drilled by the Dallas firm of Roberts & Hawkins, the well hit pay dirt at 6,230 feet in fossil-bearing limestone 280 million years old. In a 24-hour test it flowed 168 barrels. Coke County recently ranked among the top quarter of oil-producing counties in Texas, with its 18 fields exceeding 6.4 million barrels annually. (1968)