DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Pure Oil Company came to Van Zandt County in 1927, running seismograph surveys across the land. That summer, they liked what they heard underneath the earth enough to lease about seventeen thousand acres in the Van area for exploration.
Core drilling started in January of 1929, and the first derrick went up in a cotton patch — a cotton patch — on the farm of a man named W. T. Jarman, who had lived from 1856 to 1928.
Now, you can imagine what a derrick rising out of a cotton field does to a neighborhood. People came from all around just to watch. Families packed picnic lunches.
They spent entire days standing out there in the sun, watching drilling crews go about their work like it was the finest entertainment in East Texas. And maybe it was. Then came October 13th.
Thousands of people — thousands — showed up and waited all day long. They waited and watched and waited some more. And when evening came, they went home.
Disappointed. Nothing had happened. Not a thing.
Now that right there is the kind of detail a storyteller lives for, because you already know what's coming next. Early on the morning of October 14th, the Number One well quietly came in. No fanfare.
No crowd to cheer. Just the oil, doing what it had been fixing to do all along. Overnight, the village of Van went from a small farming community — a general store, a two-room school — to a boomtown.
Stores, hotels, and dance halls sprung up throughout the town. New schools were built. New roads followed the new people.
The Jarman Number One Well turned out to be the first of five hundred and ninety-one wells in what became known as the Van field. In the first twenty years, over two hundred million barrels of oil came out of that ground. And then, in December of 1985, the Van field yielded its five hundred millionth barrel.
All of it started on a quiet October morning, in what used to be a cotton patch, while the crowd that had waited all day was already back home asleep.
What the marker says
The Pure Oil Company conducted seismograph surveys in Van Zandt County in 1927 and that summer leased about 17,000 acres in the Van area for exploration. Core drilling began in January 1929, and the first derrick was erected in a cotton patch on the farm of W. T. Jarman (1856-1928). The flurry of activity in the area brought many curious onlookers. Families brought picnic lunches and spent entire days watching the drilling crews. On October 13 thousands of people came and waited all day, leaving that evening disappointed that nothing had happened. Early on the morning of October 14 the Number One well quietly came in, launching the village of Van into a boomtown overnight. In 1929 Van was a small farming community, with a general store and a two-room school. Suddenly stores, hotels, and dance halls sprung up throughout the town, and new schools and roads were built to serve the increased population. The Jarman Number One Well was the first of 591 wells in the Van field. In the first twenty years over 200 million barrels of oil were produced, and in December 1985 the field yielded its 500 millionth barrel of oil. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986