Upper Gulf Coast Oil Trail: Spindletop's Children

On a January morning in 1901, a drilling crew on a low rise south of Beaumont watched six tons of pipe come rocketing out of the ground, followed by a black column of oil that climbed more than a hundred feet into the air. The Lucas Gusher at Spindletop flowed an estimated one hundred thousand barrels a day before it could be capped — more oil than anyone had ever seen from a single well — and it launched the modern petroleum age. This driving trail follows Spindletop's children: the boomtowns, oilfields, and refineries that spread across the Upper Gulf Coast in the decades after that first gusher. From the reconstructed boomtown at Beaumont you'll trace the arc north and west through the salt-dome fields around Baytown and Mont Belvieu — where the Humble Oil & Refining Company built one of the great refineries of Texas — and on to the little railroad town of Humble, whose name a young oil company borrowed and carried to the top of the industry. It is a long day's drive across the country that oil built. Fill the tank, and follow the derricks.