Boom Times
mining the archives
PHIT has digitized some ancient tapes from the last century.
We discovered the original of Boom Times and The Hot Oil War in the Texas Humanities boxes at the Briscoe History Center. PHIT paid to have it digitized and it is now available on YouTube and our PHIT website. Please take a look. It is quite an historical treat.
I will be telling short stories from the two videos about the East Texas Oil Field over the next few months.
The East Texas Oil Field was discovered in Sept. 1930 in the middle of the Great Depression. At the time, it was the biggest oil field in the world. In the 1930s, it produced half of the world’s oil. Honestly, the last I heard, it is still producing oil.
The tiny East Texas town of Kilgore ended up sitting right in the middle of the field. People flocked to that community to take part on the bonanza.
Kilgore had a population of only 700 folks in early 1930. The first well was drilled in September and the second in November. By December, the population of Kilgore was 10,000.
Derricks erupted all over the city. Legend had it that you could actually walk across the city without touching the ground just by hopping from derrick to derrick. I am not sure that is true, but legends are hard to disprove.
Economic booms of that magnitude cause civil and economic strife.
PHIT wandered into East Texas in the early 1980s to interview folks about their experiences in a boom town.
We collected lots of wild stories.
We broke the documentary into two parts. One focused on the civil turmoil of a small city being inundated by hordes of roughnecks and swindlers and gamblers and families just seeking a job in an economic depression.
The second part focuses on the economic turmoil that the torrent of oil caused in the market. The explosive production drove the price of oil to the point that one producer was willing to trade three barrels of oil for a glass of beer. Beer of course was illegal, but that is beside the point. Law sort of disappeared for a while in Kilgore.
Which brings us to our first vignette of Boom times.
The State of Texas originally sent in one Texas Ranger—Lone Wolf Gonzaullas to clean up the civil chaos. He made a big impact on the small town that was rapidly becoming larger. One of our interviewees remembered him well. Catherine Brown arrived early and remembered a lot of stories. “It was a wild and wooly time.”
Ralph Yarborough, who later became Senator Yarborough, worked in the Attorney General’s office. He was sent in to help with oil theft. His comment about the overall situation was, Yarborough’s comments were that in the oil field, it was “every man for himself and the devil that the hindmost. That was the philosophy of the East Texas Oil Field.”
That devil was Lone Wolf, Captain Gonzaullas.
Lone Wolf liked to work alone, but that was mostly legend and tall tales. There were actually two Rangers that came to Kilgore to clean it up. “Not quite Lone Wolf” doesn’t have the epic ring to it. And Lone Wolf liked to play up his legend. In the 1950s, he had moved to California and he became the consultant for the TV serial, “Texas Rangers.”
“Gambling houses, slot machines, whiskey rings, and dope peddlers.” That was what was attracted by boom times. And it was Lone Wolf’s job to escort them out of town.
Lone Wolf walked down the street looking at people’s hands, and if the hands were smooth, then that person would be arrested. Hands needed to be rough to work in the oil fields. Gambling houses were run by smooth handed people.
Catherine Brown laughed when she remembered a couple of stories about Lone Wolf. One incident occurred when Captain Gonzaulles arrested a local merchant for having smooth hands. The merchant protested and protested but Gonzaulles wouldn’t release him. Eventually the bank president had to come and vouch for him. Both bank presidents and gamblers have smooth hands. The bank president was lucky he didn’t get arrested.
Lone Wolf arrested so many people that the jail…which remember was a jail for 700 total population…think Mayberry’s jail from the Andy Griffith Show…couldn’t hold them. Gonzaulles had developed a technique of a trot line to hold his prisoners. A huge metal chain with little trace chains at intervals with padlocks on each trace chain. Captain Gonzaullas would sometimes tie them to a tree. The boom was so big and the gamblers and dope peddlers so prolific that he had to commandeer churches to store them until the train came.
Bios of Lone Wolf all talk about that trot line and his official biography says that he put his chained prisoners in an abandoned church that was full of animal droppings. Catherine Brown remembers it differentlyi. She says that there were three churches and that the Ranger used all three churches, until, one night, they all caught on fire. Two were totally destroyed and the third heavily damaged. No one says anything about the people inside.
Mrs. Brown said that the “pioneers” were very upset about this, but because there was so much money, three new and better churches were erected. And the “pioneers” were happy once again.
Wild and wooly times indeed!
The video has very low audio.