DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, six hundred feet to the north of where we're standing right now. October 3, 1930. Oil comes in on a well in East Texas, and the whole region holds its breath.
Now, a lot of folks might've stopped right there — said fine, good, we found some, let's move on. J. Malcolm Crim of Kilgore was not that kind of man.
Crim believed there was more. More oil, down in the earth beneath that East Texas red clay, just waitin' on somebody bold enough to go lookin'. And by October 17 — fourteen days after that first discovery — drilling had begun.
The land belonged to his mother, Lou Della Crim, and that detail matters, because her name is the one that history remembered. The well came in on December 28. Lou Della Crim No. 1.
Now here is where you want to slow down and really let the numbers land, because they are almost too big to believe. Kilgore had seven hundred people. Seven hundred.
And then Lou Della Crim No. 1 came roaring up out of the ground producing twenty thousand barrels a day — and in three days, three days, the population of Kilgore went from seven hundred to ten thousand. Ten thousand people in three days. The town didn't grow.
It erupted. And beyond Kilgore, beyond the chaos and the derricks and the mud and the money, Lou Della Crim No. 1 proved something the industry needed to know: the East Texas oil field wasn't just a find. It was a major one.
Over four hundred and eighty square miles of it stretching under the ground. The well pumped on for decades, faithful as a heartbeat, until it was plugged in 1961. Lou Della Crim's name on that well turned out to be one of the most consequential signatures in Texas history — and she never had to sign a thing.
What the marker says
(600 feet south) Following the discovery of oil in East Texas on October 3, 1930, J. Malcolm Crim of Kilgore believed there was more oil to be found in the area. By October 17 drilling had begun on land belonging to his mother, Lou Della Crim. The well came in on December 28 and was named Lou Della Crim No. 1. Its discovery caused the population of Kilgore to boom from 700 to 10,000 in three days and, ultimately, proved that the East Texas oil field was a major one, covering over 480 square miles. Lou Della Crim No. 1 initially produced 20,000 barrels per day. It was plugged in 1961.