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inexpensive source of energy. Individuals and companies were drilling wells all over the country.
Virtually anywhere entrepreneurs could erect a rig, they were drilling an oilwell. Texas was no
exception.
The area around Beaumont, Texas is flat, coastal plain country. When something interrupts
the flatness, people tend to notice. Consequently, practically everyone in late nineteenth-century
Beaumont knew about Big Hill. Big Hill, whose formal name was Spindletop, was a dome rising
about 15 feet (4.5 metres) above the surrounding plain. Enough gas seeped out of the dome that a
lighted match easily ignited it.
One person particularly fascinated by Spindletop was Patillo Higgins, a self-taught geologist
who lived in the region. He was convinced that oil and gas lay below Spindletop about 1,000 feet
(300 metres) deep. Around 1890, Higgins obtained land on top of the dome and, with several
financial partners, drilled two unsuccessful wells. The problem was that at about 350 feet (100
metres), the bit encountered a thick sand formation that the drillers called "running quicksand."
The sand was so loose it caved into the drilled hole to make further drilling impossible.
Drillers ran casing, just as Drake had, attempting to combat the cave-in. The formation was so bad;
however, that it crushed the casing. Discouraged, but still certain that oil lay below Spindletop,
Higgins put out the word that he would lease the property to anyone willing to drill a 1,000-foot
(300-metre) test well.
Ultimately, an Austrian mining engineer answered Higgins's call. Named Anthony Lucas,
the engineer visited Spindletop and agreed with Higgins that the hill was a salt dome surrounded by
geologic formations that trapped oil and gas. After another frustrating and costly failure, Lucas
finally spudded (began drilling) a new well at Spindletop on October 27,1900. He hired the Hamil
brothers of Corsicana, Texas to drill the well. Aware that the running quicksand would cause
trouble, the Hamils paid close attention to the mix of their drilling fluid. Drilling fluid is a liquid or
a gas concoction that, when employed on the type of rig the Hamils used, goes down the hole, picks
up the rock cuttings made by the bit, and carries the cuttings up to the surface for disposal. The type
of rigs Drake and the early California drillers used did not require drilling fluid, which, as you will
learn soon, all but doomed such rigs to extinction.
At Spindletop, the Hamils used water as a drilling fluid. They hand dug a pit in the ground
next to the rig, filled it with water, and pumped the water into the well as they drilled it. The Hamils
knew from their earlier drilling experiences, however, that clear water alone wouldn't do the job:
they needed to muddy it up. They were aware that the tiny solid particles of clay in the muddy water
would stick to the sides of the hole. The particles formed a thin, but strong sheath – wall cake – on
the sides of the hole, much like plaster on the walls of room. The wall cake stabilized the sand and
kept it from caving in. Legend has it that the Hamils ran cattle through the earthen pit to stir up the
clay and muddy the water. Whatever they did to make mud, it worked and they successfully drilled
through the troublesome sand.
So it was that by January 1901 the new well reached about 1,000 feet (300 metres). On January
10, the drilling crew began lowering a new bit to the bottom of the hole. Suddenly, drilling mud
spewed out of the well. A geyser of oil soon followed it. It gushed 200 feet (60 metres) above the
60-foot-high (18-metre-high) derrick. As Lucas watched the gusher from a safe distance, he
estimated that it flowed at least 2 million gallons (nearly 8,000 cubic metres) of oil per day. In
oilfield terms, that's about 50,000 barrels of oil per day. (One barrel of oil equals 42 U.S. gallons.)
That's a lot of oil.
Thus, Spindletop's first claim to fame was that it flowed absolutely unheard of amounts of oil.
Before Spindletop, a big producer flowed 2,000 barrels (320 cubic metres) per day. The Lucas
well produced 25 times that amount. Spindletop's second claim to fame was that it showed the
effectiveness of a type of rig, which, before Spindletop, drillers had not used much.
The Hamil's equipment was a rotary drilling rig, most drillers used cable-tool rigs. Unlike
cable-tool rigs, rotary rigs require drilling fluid to operate, and particles in the drilling fluid
prevent formations from caving. The Lucas well showed that rotary rigs could drill wells that cable-
tool rigs could not. Consequently, oilwell drillers began using rotary rigs more than cable-tool

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