Oil Fire 1941

[Tex]

Gay neighbor went to the estate sale of a photographer in Kilgore whose work he knew that I liked. Mr. Elder, the photographer, had photographed much of the East Texas Oil Field during the boom, and gay neighbor picked up a couple of things for me.

This is a fire in downtown Kilgore in 1941. East Texas was the largest field in the world at the time, but more importantly, it was a rare water drive field and could put out the oil as fast as it could be hauled off. Wartime demand created a lot of makeshift pipelines and less than ideal fixes, therefore fires were inevitable. This photo shows folks hosing down a building to try to keep it from burning.

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[Tex]

Another shot taken in 1941 of the world's richest acre (I believe he printed a color negative). This 1.2 acre tract in downtown Kilgore eventually produced over 3 million barrels of oil. The old rule required a certain acreage per well but made an exception for tracts which were subdivided prior to the field rules. The old downtown row of buildings were on 25 foot lots, so Houston operator Bob Smith bought the buildings, knocked them down and drilled wall to wall oil wells. One was drilled in the old bank vault floor.

The record will probably never be broken because the rules were changed as a result of the Kilgore boom.

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[Merlot Joe]

Neat photo's Tex.