USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume II > Part 15
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The general offices of the company were at Fort Worth, R. D. Hunter being president and general manager and W. H. Ward, secretary.
In the meanwhile the main company, the Texas & Pacific Coal Co., had been enlarging its interests, and its landed possessions now comprised some 40,000 acres. Eight mines had been opened and the town of Thurber had a population of about 4,500. A description of it published at that time applies in most essential respects today, and with some slight modifications may be repeated.
Thurber is reached by stage from Thurber Junction (Mingus), which is seventy-six miles west of Fort Worth on the Texas & Pacific Rail- road, the distance from the junction to Thurber being three miles. The buildings are clustered around the original coal shaft. The Hotel Knox provides the visitor with all the comforts of a first-class city inn, and he finds all the business and social needs of the community well supplied. "Everything about the place forms a part of one harmonious whole. Order reigns and law is respected. Law breakers are not wanted in Thurber and cannot stay there. The town has its own code, which is more rigorous than the statutes, and when that is violated a writ of ouster is served and rigidly enforced.
"The town and people are well kept and evidences of thrift and com- fort abound everywhere; want and distress are unknown. The town furnishes employment and wages sufficient to maintain all its toilers in substantial comfort. Cognizance is taken of the workers' social needs, and the ministration to these is on a much more liberal scale than is usual in a town of this size. Churches, schools and varied amusements
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are provided at its own expense. Care is taken that the life at Thurber shall be made as attractive as it could be for the employe elsewhere, and the coal operator who would endeavor to coax the employes to take em- ployment at another mine would find his task a difficult one.
"A pretty little theater has been built, where performances are fre quently given by companies passing to and from the West."
Today the more common form of entertainment is the moving picture show. In former years there were two excellent home bands under skilled professional direction which some few years ago were consolidated into one, and public concerts are frequently given.
A large artificial lake was constructed, which now covers 155 acres at high water mark, and affords good sailing and shooting facilities : and there are also several smaller lakes. A capacious reservoir supplies the town with water, and on its banks a cosy club house affords a tempting lounging-place. At the present time there are two hotels, the Hotel Plummer, of twenty rooms, which serves meals, and the Marston Hall Dormitory, of thirty rooms, operated on the European plan. Nearby is a good cafe, while there are stores for the sale of goods of all kinds ; also a Mexican restaurant, as in recent years a number of Mexicans have been employed by the company. The other employes include men of all nationalities, mostly English-speaking. The two restaurants are rented out to individual proprietors, as are also several other of the smaller industries, including a photograph gallery, a boot and shoe repair shop. etc. The larger places of business are operated by men in the direct employ of the company, which owns all the land and buildings consti- tuting the town.
There are several churches of different denominations, including the Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist. The Catholic Church maintains a parochial school, established more than twenty years ago, and has an enrollment of about fifty pupils.
There is also a church and a school for negroes.
The original public school building was built in 1906 and has been enlarged several times. The most recent addition was made in 1920. It has an enrollment of 900 pupils. The school is in part maintained by the company, the state appropriation being insufficient to maintain a nine months school of its size. The amount contributed by the com- pany amounts to about one third of the expense.
For many years the company has maintained a well equipped job printing plant, installed with the most modern presses and machinery. In 1894 it established the Thurber Journal, the title of which was sub- sequently changed to the Texas Mining and Trade Journal. This paper was conducted until 1916, when, on account of an unfavorable ruling by the postal authorities at Washington, whereby it was deprived of second-class rates under the mistaken impression that is was conducted merely to advertise the company, and also on account of the increasing price of print paper, it was discontinued, to the great disappointment of the population of the town.
Another local institution is an excellent volunteer fire department, which has taken prizes at various state contests.
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The town of Thurber enjoys, moreover, the advantages of cheap coal and gas and a fine waterworks plant, with telegraph, telephones, postoffice, express service and electric light plant among its public utilities. Its population is now between 3,000 and 4,000. A dairy, formerly operated, has been discontinued, but the company has 2,000 head of range cattle, whence they derive beef for the local market.
Among the general facilities are: A machine shop, a refrigerating plant and meat market, a bakery and excellent stores for the sale of drugs, hardware, groceries and other necessities. The most necessary profes- sions are also well represented.
After opening a series of mines, up to No. 12, the Texas & Pacific Coal Company began a new series and have sunk three more, which are numbered respectively one, two and three. Very few accidents have occurred, the mines being remarkably free of both water and gas. Indeed, it may be said that they have had the lowest percentage of accidents of any mine in the United States employing an equal number of men.
In early years the coal was sold entirely to the railroads, as under the then existing freight tariffs the Thurber and other Texas mines were unable to compete with the product of mines of other states which took the benefit of interstate rates, although the latter might be twice or thrice the distance of the former from the Texas consumer.
With the readjustment of rates and an intelligent system of equali- zation conditions in this respect have since improved and the company sells its coal not only to railroads but also in the general market. It now has two mines in operation, the output averaging from 10,000 to 12,000 per day.
Col. R. D. Hunter remained as president and general manager of the company until he was succeeded by Edgar L. Marston, who had removed from St. Louis to New York.
In 1914 new developments occurred. The company at that time owned about 70,000 acres in fee-simple, and while prospecting on this land for coal, five miles west of Thurber, it discovered gas at about 600 feet depth. Following up this discovery it drilled in the first oil well in this field, at a depth of 800 feet, three miles west of Strawn, near the right of way of the Texas & Pacific Railroad Co. From this initial enterprise the entire oil development of this region resulted.
This led to the re-incorporation of the Texas & Pacific Coal & Oil Co., and the re-organized concern commenced leasing lands and developing oil properties. In addition to its local interests it now has 225,000 acres of leased lands in Stephens, Eastland, Palo Pinto and Erath Counties. Texas; also some leases in Throckmorton County. It also has about 5,000 acres in Oklahoma and has, on sand land, three producing wells, opened in 1920, near Bristol in Creek County, south of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition it owns a half interest in the Texas Panhandle north of Amarillo, in Hartley and Dallam Counties, surrounding the town of Channing.
Up to the present time it has not brought in any wells in the Pan- handle, but in the Ranger field, where the larger producing wells were first found, it has numerous wells yielding up to 5,000 barrels per day.
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It also has a number of wells in the vicinity of Strawn, in what is known as the "Strawn Shallow."
The properties of the company are enriched by a large production of gas, which is piped into Strawn and Thurber for domestic and in- dustrial use. Near Strawn the company has in operation two casing- head gasoline plants for extracting gasoline from the casing-head gas obtained from the oil wells. The gas for domestic purposes, however. is derived mostly from the dry gas wells.
In 1918 Edgar L. Marston retired from the office of president and was made chairman of the board. He was succeeded as president by J. R. Penn. In 1920 Mr. Marston resigned the office of chairman of the board and is no longer active in the affairs of the company, though he is said to be the largest stockholder. He was succeeded in the office of chairman by Joseph Baldwin of New York, who is still serving. The present officers are : Chairman of board, Joseph Baldwin ; president, J. R. Penn ; vice presidents W. H. Gordon, who is also general manager, E. C. Converse, and E. J. Marston, the last mentioned also serving as treasurer ; secretary, N. W. Willett; assistant general manager, E. S. Britton ; Cashier and paymaster, T. R. Hall. R. A. Sperry is in charge of the oil operations ; R. S. King is comptroller and auditor, and M. A. Williams is land and tax commissioner.
W. K. Britton, who with E. S. Britton and Thos. R. Hall, has been with the company almost from the start is now on a prospecting trip for oil in South America. He came to Thurber as a mining engineer. and has risen to the vice presidency and become general manager of the company. He is regarded in oil circles as the real discoverer of this oil field.
MARBLE AND GRANITE
There are large deposits of marble and granite in Burnett and Brewster counties.
The granite in Burnett County is gray and red, and has a strength and density unexcelled. The Capitol building at Austin is constructed of this granite and is decorated with marble from the quarries in Burnett County.
Jourdan Marble Mountain, in Brewster County, twelve miles from Alpine, aside from being easy to work, is of the very highest grade and practically inexhaustible in quantity. It ranges in color from pure white to ebony black, including all the fancy colors. It only awaits the magic touch of capital to make it extremely valuable.
HELIUM PLANT
A large plant has been established by the United States govern- ment about four miles north of the city for the extraction of helium from the natural gas brought hither from petrolia gas fields. This product is to be used for the inflation of dirigibles and was promoted during the war for war purposes. Just what the process is it is im- possible to state, as the plant is surrounded by an insurmountable fence and is strictly guarded from approach by the public. The plant is said to have cost between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000.
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HELIUM
The following account of the plant for the extraction of helium from the Petrolia gas field is from the pen of Milton Everett, who has made a thorough and exhaustive investigation of the subject. It was written for the Fort Worth Record of December 26, 1920.
Very few people know that on January 1, 1921, there will be ready for complete and maximum operation in Fort Worth an industrial plant which is the only one of its kind in the whole world, and the operation of which will mean a great deal not only to Fort Worth but to Texas. And when I say the operation "will" mean so much, I mean to say that while this plant in all of its ramifications cost the huge sum of more than five millions of dollars, it is a government- owned plant, originating in the demands of the world war, and its operation after July 1. 1921, depends solely upon whether the Con-
HELIUM PLANT, FORT WORTH
gress will make appropriations for its continuance. It will depend considerably upon the backing of Texas people, their Chambers of Commerce and Texas members of Congress whether or not this plant is continued in operation or goes down and out in a mad scramble in the Congress to "scrap" war-made institutions.
This plant is the permanent plant devised and constructed through the co-operation of the United States bureau of mines, the navy department and the war department to take helium out of the natural gas originating in the Petrolia, Texas, gas pool. The build- ings and machinery now in place and soon ready for operation in north Forth Worth cost nearly $2,000,000, and pipe lines and other items required bring the total of the expense of erecting the complete works to more than $5,000,000. The plant will be ready to begin full operation about January 1, 1921, and will require a force of 150 men, most of whom will be picked in Fort Worth, while something like twenty-five experts will be brought from the Linde Air Products Company of New York, which company will operate the plant for the federal government.
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H. F. Sautter, of the above company, who has been in control of the operations of his company here for some time, will be the general superintendent of the new plant, and H. C. Smith, who has recently come to Fort Worth from the Linde Air Products Company's plant in Chicago, will be assistant superintendent, and the plant will be put in shape to operate at a maximum capacity, which is 30,000 cubic feet of helium per day. But it, of course, depends entirely upon what the new Congress, which meets in March next, will do in the matter of making appropriations, whether the plant will continue in operation after June 30th next. There are many reasons which can not be enumerated here why the Congress should continue the plant in operation at its full capacity, but there will be in the air surround- ing the next Congress a myriad schemes for "scrapping" government plants primarily instituted for war purposes, and Texas' sole plant will go down in the melee if we don't watch out.
WHAT IT MEANS COMMERCIALLY
Decidedly the greatest romance of industrial co-operation of the World war after America entered it was the co-operation of American scientists in the production of helium on a commercial. scale and at a price which would permit its economical use. Prior to April, 1918, there had never been produced in the whole world as much as a hun- dred cubic feet of helium, and this, says the Bureau of Mines, cost from $1,700 to $2,000 per cubic foot. The new Fort Worth plant will produce it ready for use in airships for ten cents per cubic foot, which, to say the least, is quite a "come down" in price. The story of the work of the bureau of mines and the scientific men who co-operated with it and the War and Navy Departments is the finest and most splendid story of American brains at work for their country that any one ever read, and to read it makes one feel proud of his countrymen.
Helium has been known for a long time by the scientists as a small constituent of the air, there being one volume of helium in each 250,000 volumes of air. Since 1907 it has been of knowledge in the laboratory of the University of Kansas that a small quantity of helium existed in certain Kansas gas fields. That was about all the knowledge our scientific men had of helium when we went into the war, except that it had the peculiar property of being inert-that is to say, that it was different from the other gases in that it would not burn or explode. Yet such quick progress was made that experi- mental plants were erected in Fort Worth, and we actually had on the docks in New Orleans ready for shipment to Europe 750 cylinders of 200 cubic feet each when the armistice was signed. The thing "helium" was of course known by the scientific men of Germany as well as our own, and the remarkable fact is that while Germany had been experimenting with "Zeppelins" or airships for years, and actually used them in commerce as well as war, their scientists were not astute enough to reckon with the one needed thing to make them a real success as a war engine-a non-explosive and extremely buoyant gas with which to inflate them.
Helium, the inert gas and the only inert gas produced anywhere in the world in commercial quantity, has a weight of one-seventh of
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that of air, or 1.378 of air. It is about twice the weight of hydrogen, but, as explained by the bureau of mines, its buoyancy is nearly equal to that of hydrogen, which has been used in airships heretofore and is highly explosive. The Petrolia natural gas produces .094 per cent of helium, of which it is expected that the new Fort Worth plant will separate about .08 per cent. The Fort Worth plant will use in the separating process between 3,000,000 and 3,500,000 cubic feet per day to produce 30,000 cubic feet of helium, and there is a wonderful commercial opportunity behind the commercial production of this gas, in the fact that it means the practicability of regular, safe and speedy air transportation to any and all parts of the world, and it will be something to say that all of the possibilities in this direction come from a Fort Worth institution.
WAS KEPT SECRET
Knowing that German chemists had as much knowledge in 1918 of the gas "helium" as did the American chemists, our people took great pains to hide from the Germans the fact that we were pro- ducing this gas in commercial quantities, and during the war our "helium" operations were carried on under an assumed name, that of "argon," and the experimental plants were called "argon" plants. No doubt many German chemists in the service of the government puzzled their brains to solve the mystery of what was being done in the American "argon" plants. We remember yet that our army people during the war said that they could sail over Germany and destroy their cities and bases of war supplies, and we wondered how they were going to do this. If Germany had had a supply of helium for their war Zeppelins which they sent over to England on raiding expeditions, we know now that they would have had the power to wipe English cities off the face of the earth. We know now that the airships using the highly explosive hydrogen did a great deal of dam- age, although they were compelled to stay away up in the air because of the danger of incendiary bullets, one of which, hitting the gas bag of an airship, would destroy the whole ship in an instant, as indeed a number were destroyed. If they had been using the inert helium they would have had but little to fear from ground defensive plans, and they could have destroyed city after city with comparative safety to themselves. Probably when the truth leaks out in the years to come it will be found that the Germans got a tip on our plans for raiding their cities with airships using helium, which made them de- termine so quickly to give up the fight. Just to show we mean business, it may be said that there are now at the Fort Worth helium plant 105,000 steel cylinders manufactured especially to ship helium, each of which can hold 200 cubic feet of the gas. I expect it would be a good plan now if we Fort Worth and other Texas people began mixing a little war paint preparatory to preventing Congress from stopping through a lack of information the operation of our Fort Worth helium plant.
In dismantling "scrapping" war, which is sure to take place in the new Congress which meets in March, we may not only get the worst of it, but Congress may make a great mistake at the same time.
CHAPTER XL. PETROLEUM
Petroleum was first found in Texas in Nacogdoches County, a section famed for its pioneer lore and strongly fused with the history of the Lone Star State. This discovery was made about thirty years ago, the oil being found in shallow strata from 180 to 200 feet deep and later on strata some 700 feet below the surface. The production at that time was from one to two hundred and fifty barrels daily, and a refining company and pipe line was constructed to care for the pro- duction. It did not prove very profitable on account of the difficulty of transportation and the oil being of an inferior quality useful only for lubricating purposes.
The second discovery was made near Corsicana in 1894 and has continued in successful operation until this writing. About fifteen million barrels of high grade petroleum have been taken from the wells around Corsicana up to this time. Refineries and pipe lines were constructed in 1898 by Mr. J. S. Cullinan, pioneer oil man of Texas. This field has been very successful in that it-has had a steady production of high grade oil. The field is being extended at this time in a very conservative and business-like way, without any of the excitement or wildcat projects that have attended other fields.
In 1901 Texas leaped into fame as an oil producing state by the bringing in of a gusher by a man named Lucas, in what became known as the "Spindel Top" field near Beaumont. The first well was a veritable gusher, spouting oil to the top of the derrick and yield- ing about 75,000 barrels per day. No provision had been made for storing or marketing the oil and an earthen dam was hastily con- structed, across a ravine, and millions of barrels of oil flowed into this temporary reservoir, which afterwards sold for three cents per barrel.
The excitement incident to this discovery was beyond words. Every train brought great numbers of people to Beaumont, and the little village became a seething mass of promoters and prospectors. Millions of dollars were invested in leases and purchases of land, the installation of rigs, construction of tanks and pipe lines, most of which proved a total loss. In a very short time the well ceased to flow. Several wells adjacent to the Lucas well found oil, and pumps were installed to bring it to the surface, but these, too, failed after a brief period.
The oil was of a very superior quality and found a ready market at profitable prices as soon as means of transportation were provided. The boom soon subsided, but the production in moderate quantities continues to this day, and those who operated on a conservative basis reaped large rewards.
After the excitement at Beaumont died out prospectors moved to Sour Lake, Batson, and other nearby points, hoping to repeat the experience of "Spindel Top." Oil was finally discovered at Humble,
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eighteen miles northwest from Houston, on the H. E. & W. T. Rail- way, and hundreds of wells were sunk and great quantities of oil obtained. This is still a productive and profitable field.
THE SOUTH TEXAS OIL FIELD
The geological formation in which the mineral oils of what is known as the Coastal pools and the formations overlying these oil deposits are different in many respects from the other oil fields of the United States.
With a very few exceptions the oil is found in very loose sand formations, similar in consistency to the quick sands in a river bed. The strata encountered between the surface and the oil deposits are
A TYPICAL FIELD
principally other loose sands, shales and hard clay, or gumbo, usually a light blue in color.
These conditions require the use of the Rotary system of drilling instead of the walking beam and cable tools, such as are used in the northern and western part of the state.
Long before oil was developed in this region several efforts had been made to that end, but had failed to get the prospect wells down to the necessary depth for want of the necessary machinery and lack of funds.
In 1895 the Savage Bros. of West Virginia undertook to drill a lake at Sour Lake and failed.
In 1892 Patillo Higgins, of Beaumont, located the Spindle Top field. He organized a company, of citizens of Beaumont, for the purpose of development, and was so sure in his conviction that it was an oil field that the letter heads of his company showed a fairly accurate picture of what the field looked like ten years later. All
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the tanks, loading racks and derricks were placed in this prophetic picture with startling accuracy.
The company contracted with Mr. W. B. Sharpe, then of Corsicana, to drill a well, but after drilling little more than 500 feet he encountered difficulties both physical and financial, which forced him to abandon the work. If he could have gone about 400 feet deeper the Coastal oil field would have been developed eight years earlier. It is an interesting part of this story that Mr. Sharpe after- ward made a fortune in the Coast County oil business, and until his death was one of the most active and successful operators.
The Spindle Top pool was finally opened by Capt. A. F. Lucas, financed by Guffey & Gaily of Pittsburg.
The first well came in January 10, 1901, with a roar and shock that surprised no one more than the men doing the work. It was estimated to flow from 50,000 to 70,000 barrels per day, but since none of the oil was saved it was impossible to know how much it produced. It was afterward demonstrated, however, that other wells in this field filled steel tanks at the rate of 50,000 barrels per day, so this estimate was not excessive.
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