DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna let those words do the heavy lifting. Now, folks, you want to talk about a story where nobody got what they asked for — and ended up with something better? Pull up a chair, because Corsicana, Texas has got one for the ages.
It was 1894. The city of Corsicana needed water. Plain, ordinary water.
So they did what any sensible municipality would do — they hired some men to go find it. H. G.
Johnston, E. H. Akin, and Charles Rittersbacher took the contract, picked up their equipment, and started drilling down into the earth west of town.
They drilled. And they drilled. And somewhere around one thousand and thirty-five feet down, something came up that was most definitely not water.
Oil. Oil in commercial quantities. The first of its kind discovered in the mid-continent area west of the Mississippi River.
Now just sit with that for a moment. Three men under contract for a water well. A city council somewhere above ground probably checking their watches, wondering when their pipes were going to run.
And down at one thousand and thirty-five feet, Johnston, Akin, and Rittersbacher had just quietly changed everything. Corsicana came looking for water in 1894. What they found instead was the birthplace of the petroleum industry west of the Mississippi.
Sometimes the ground has bigger plans than you do.
What the marker says
West of the Mississippi River. In this well, drilled by H. G. Johnston, E. H. Akin, and Charles Rittersbacher under contract for a water well for the city of Corsicana in 1894, the first oil in commercial quantities in the mid-continent area was discovered at 1035 feet.