Max Hartshorne Visits the Lone Star State
Editor, Max Hartshorne writes about the “Wildlife and Nightlife in the Heart of the Oil Patch.” While in the Lone Star State, Max gets a taste of southern hospitality and checks some nightlife. Enjoy the excerpt below:
“Beaumont was once bigger than Houston,” a local tourism official told me. The city was founded in 1850, and soon after they began to drill for oil. In 1901, after much persistence and despite flocks of naysayers and near bankrupcy, Colonel Anthony Lucas did just that. Pattilio Higgins lost a hand to a marshall’s bullet, but he was the man who hired Lucas to drill for oil at Spindletop. Higgins named the boomtown Gladysville.
Today you can visit Spindletop, where a replica of the old boomtown was built and where every year they replicate that famous gusher that spewed 100,000 barrels of oil into the air every day before it was capped.
