LUCICH DISCOVERY OF OIL
AT SPINDLETOP, TEXAS
JANUARY 10, 1901 AT 10:30
AM
Adam S. Eterovich
www.croatians.com
Captain
Francis Stephen Lucic was a shipowner and a shipbuilder on the Island of Hvar,
Dalmatia, Croatia. He spent his entire youth on the island, but shortly after
his marriage he and his bride Joanna left his native town of Hvar and went to
the historic and picturesque capitol of the Province of Dalmatia, Split. Here
on September 9, 1855, a son, Anthony Francis, was born to them, who eventually
was to come to the wastelands of Texas and gain international recognition for
his famous Spindletop discovery of oil, and the consequent revolution of
industrial America.
Lucich and Tesla
When
young Anthony Francis reached the age of six, his parents enrolled him in the
Public School of Split. However, when he reached high schoolage, his family
moved to and settled in Trieste. Here Anthony was admitted to the local
Gymnasium, and during this period his father, Captain Lucic, served the navy of
Austria-Hungary. Immediately after young Anthony entered the Gymnasium, his
parents and professors noticed that he possessed unusual interests in the
engineering field which led to his parents' decision to enroll him in the
Polytechnic Institute at Gratz, Austria. Also attending the Institute was
another young man of nineteen, Nikola Tesla. How strange it is that fate should
have brought together these two boys, both of whom made history, one in oil and
other in the field of radio and electricity, and both of whom made their names
immortal in the world of science. It is a coincidence that two men who
contributed so much to the progress of America and the world should have
graduated from the same school, Lucic at the age of twenty, and Tesla only a
year or two older. Even the birth of these geniuses was close. Lucic was born
September 9, 1855, and Tesla July 9, 1856, only ten months later. Young Lucic
was graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in 1875, and enlisted as a
midshipman in the Austro-Hungarian navy, where he was soon promoted to the rank
of second lieutenant.
Lucich-Lucas Goes to America
It
will be fitting, and we believe necessary, at this point to quote the direct
words spoken by the late Anthony Francis. He tells how he left the navy, how he
came to the United States, and how he came to be known as Lucas instead of
Lucic. From an interview with this great man, only a few years before his
death, we quote: "I entered the Austrian navy as a midshipman and was
promoted to second lieutenant. At that time an unpleasant incident made me very
much dissatisfied with the rigor of the service, perhaps because of my Croatian
origin, so that I was glad to accept an invitation to pay a visit to an uncle
of mine in this country. For that purpose I obtained a six months' leave of
absence and came to the United States. That was in 1879, when I was twenty four
years old. My father's name was Lucic-Luchich. The reason of the change was
that when I came to America on a visit to my uncle, my father's brother, as I
have stated, I found my uncle had adopted the name of Lucas, owing to the
difficulty that Americans had in spelling and pronouncing Luchich. So, for the
time, expecting to remain only three or four months, I permitted myself to be
addressed as Lucas. When I decided to reside in the United States I retained
this modification of the name.”
In
1879, when Lucas arrived in the United States, the State of Michigan was a
lumber country, and Saginaw, where Lucas found himself, was its center. Lucas
was offered a "flattering engagement", as a designer in a saw mill,
which he accepted. Here began his interesting career in America. However,
before accepting the offer, Lucas asked for an extension of his leave for
another six months, and this request was granted. At the expiration of his
leave, Lucas decided to stay in the United States, and to become a naturalized
citizen of the country. The necessary papers were filed at the Circuit Court,
Saginaw, and on May 9, 1885, he received his citizenship papers at the
Corporation Court, at Norfolk, Virginia.
Gold Mining in California
But
running a country sawmill was not enough for this man. He wanted to go west and
explore. He spent a number of years trekking through the plains, then the
Rockies, and then the West Coast, stopping every so often to prospect for gold.
During these travels, he visited mines and talked to mining engineers about the
newest techniques in shaft construction and flood control.
Lucas Honeymooning In His Native
Dalmatia
Eight
years after Lucas' arrival in America, he took his young and beautiful bride,
Caroline FitzGerald, on a honeymoon trip to his native Dalmatia, visiting
Split, Trieste, and Pula, where he had formerly served as a naval officer. The
young couple spent one year abroad, and upon their return to this country
established their home in Washington, D. C., where Lucas entered the mining
mechanical engineering profession.
Granite Monument
On
October 9, 1941, during the convention of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas
Association at Beaumont, Texas, a fifty foot granite monument honoring Lucas
was unveiled at Spindletop. The inscription on the front reads, along with
other tributes to Lucas:
Petroleum has revolutionized Industry
and transportation; It has created untold wealth, built cities, furnished
employment for hundreds of thousands, and contributed billions of dollars in
taxes to support Institutions of government. In a brief span of years, it has
altered man's way of life throughout the world.
Anthony F. Lucas Medal
The
memory, of Captain Lucas-Lucich has been honored in other ways too. The
American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, in order to
recognize "'distinguished achievement and practice of finding and
producing petroleum" established in 1936 the "Anthony F. Lucas
Medal" as an award to all outstanding persons whose achievements.
contribute to the development of oil".
Celebrating the Birth of Texas Oil
The
real story of early Texas oil begins in Southeast Texas, along the Upper Gulf
Coast in a number of towns between Orange, near the Louisiana border, and
Freeport, south of Houston. In fact, it was a 75,000-100,000 barrel-a-day
gusher on the edge of Beaumont that launched oil as one of the largest global
industries of the 20th century. The Lucas Gusher blew on January 10, 1901, on
Sour Springs Mound in the now famous Spindletop oil field.
Working In Louisiana And Texas
In
1893 we find Lucas employed as a mining engineer at the salt mine in Petit
Anse, Louisiana, where for three years he practiced the engineering and mining
of salt. To understand the conditions under which the great sources of salt
were found in Louisiana, and the mining ingeniousness of Captain Lucas, we will
again quote him. "I found the salt deposit only twenty feet below the
drift soil, and the shaft one hundred and eighty feet deep. The mine and mill
were in very bad condition, owing to the fact that water had found its way into
the mine and caused a large cave. The mill was antiquated, it required constant
care to check the caving and water in the mine, and the ravages of the salt on
the mill machinery." When the mining in this chamber was completed,
another under-cut was started laterally, and we thus had always in reserve one
or more chambers full of broken salt, sixty feet wide, sixty feet high, and two
to three hundred feet long, each containing from three to five thousand tons,
at a cost of less than fourteen cents per ton of salt mined. The salt was of
unusual purity, 98.590 to 99% sodium chloride, the remainder being gypsum.
Lucas At Beaumont, Texas
Captain
Lucas experienced many disappointments and discouragements from the day he
arrived in Beaumont, Texas, until he realized his dreams. Captain Lucas
insisted on drilling at Beaumont, and we give his own version of what took
place in his struggle to obtain financial support to drill at Spindletop.
"I went to Beaumont, Texas, about seventy miles
west of Lafayette. There I was attracted by an elevation, then known locally as
Big Hill, although this hill amounted merely to a mound rising only twelve feet
above the level of the prairie. This mound attracted my attention on account of
its contour, which indicated possibilities for an incipient dome below, and
because at the apex of it there were exudations of sulphuretted hydrogen gas.
This gas suggested to me, in the light of my experience at Belle Isle, that it
might prove. a source of either sulphur or oil, or both. I decided to test it,
therefore, and leased all the ground that I could secure. The hillock covered
only 300 acres, of which I secured, 220 acres; but I leased altogether about
27,000 acres in the vicinity in order to have ample scope for exploration,
although this proved unnecessary, as no oil was ever found beyond the contour
of the dome. This elevation had already been explored by three companies and
none succeeded in penetrating below 250 feet in depth. A bed of quicksand was
struck at about 200 feet. Knowing that they used cable drilling apparatus, I
decided that that must have been the reason for their failure, so I set to work
with rotary-drilling tools. The rotary drill at that time was almost unknown
and was used only for artesian water wells of shallow depth on ranches and rice
plantations. I penetrated the quicksand and soon realized that I was correct in
my surmise of the reason why my predecessors had failed. I managed to pass the
quicksand and bored to a depth of 575 feet, encountering an oilsand but losing
the well by gas collapse. I thought best, however, before proceeding with
heavier rotary-drilling machinery, to seek geological and financial aid, so I
went to a number of capitalists and laid before them my plans and expectations;
but they turned me down. In spite of this shocking experience, however, and
with firm determination, Captain Lucas began to drill. The crew consisted of A.
W. Hamill, his brother Curt, Henry McLean, and Peck Byrd. Work began on October
27, 1900. In order that we may know what actually occured on the historic date
when oil was struck, let Al Hamill tell us in detail.
".
. . On December 9 it was my turn to get up at midnight for my 18-hour shift. As
usual, I tried to make all the hole I could. The evening before, we had put up
an additional joint of drill pipe. At about three o'clock in the morning I
noticed the pump working more freely, and the rotary turning very easily, so I
began to let the pipe down, and soon had most of it down. As daylight began to
appear, I could detect oil on ditch and slush pit. When Curt and Byrd appeared
with my little bit of breakfast, the slush pit had a big showing of oil on it.
We at once sent Byrd for Captain Lucas, who lived about a mile and a half from
where we were drilling. "On his arrival, he showed some excitement and
asked how much of a well I thought it would make. The only experience any of us
had was in drilling small wells in the Corsicana Field, but I thought it would
easily make 50 barrels a day. Captain Lucas asked us to put up another joint of
drill pipe to see how much oil formation there was. After making about 35 feet
through the soft sand, we struck hard going at about 880 feet.
Lucas Gusher January 10, 1901
"January
1, 1901, we were back on the job. In the following seven days we made 140 feet
of hold, making a total of 1,020 feet. There we seemed to hit a crevice. In
letting pipe down in one place, it would go at least six inches farther than it
would by giving the pipe a quarter turn. In rotating, our pipe would hang up
and jerk the rotary chain to pieces. We kept grinding away without making any
headway. ". . . We put the new bit (fishtail) on, and had about 700 feet
of the drill pipe back in the hole when the rotary mud began flow up through
the rotary table. It came so fast and with such force that Curt, who was up on
the double boards, was drenched with mud and water and had a hard time getting
out of danger. "Soon the 4-inch drill pipe started up through the derrick,
knocking off the crown block and shooting through the top of the derrick and
breaking off in lengths of several joints at a time as it shot skyward. After
the mud, water, and pipe were blown out, gas followed, but only for a short
time. Then the well was very quiet. We ventured back, after our wild scramble
for safety, to find things in a terrible mess. There were at least six inches
of mud on the derrick floor, and our equipment had suffered some damage.
Naturally, we were all disgusted. We started shoveling the mud away-when,
without warning, a lot of heavy mud shot out of the well with the report of a
cannon. It was followed for a short time with gas, then oil showed up on head
flows. In a very short time oil was going up through the top of the derricks,
and rocks were being shot hundreds of feet into the air. Within a very few
minutes, the oil was holding a steady flow at more than twice the height of the
derrick. As soon as I pulled myself together, Peck Byrd was again started on
the run for Captain Lucas. It was not long until we saw Captain Lucas coming
over the small hill with his horse at full run. About this time he decided his
horse was too slow, so he jumped from the buggy, picked himself up, and ran up
to me shouting: 'Al! Al What is it?' When I told him 'oil', he exclaimed:
'Thank God,' and grabbed me and hugged me good and hard.”
At
that moment a new epoch was born in the oil industry, and the name of Captain
Anthony Francis Lucas was immortalized! While the tremendous gas pressure and
volume of oil were running wild, and the well was blowing 200-odd feet into the
air and pouring an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil onto the ground,
the country as a whole became electrified. Fifty thousand people descended upon
Beaumont to see the wonder, the shooting oil of Spindletop, four miles away.
The Lucas well was heard 'round the world'." The well went wild, and for
full ten days shot oil into the air, making a lake of about 100 acres. This
discovery of oil led to the development of a big oil field, which later became
known as Spindletop. It has produced over fifty million barrels of oil, and is
still producing."
Proper Financial Reward
"I
did, but my chief reward was to have created a precedent in geology whereby the
Gulf Coast of the Coastal Plain has been and is now a beehive of production and
industry. Owing to the fact that Mr. Guffey and the Mellon group had a lot of
money and I had not, I accepted their offer and sold my interest to them for a
satisfactory sum.”
Big Money
In
Beaumont, big money sought to profit. Under corporation law in Texas at the
turn of the century, John Henry Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company (which owned
90 percent of oil resources and 50 percent of production in the U.S.) could not
buy oil property in Texas. So Rockefeller created one of his "blind
tiger" corporations, a method he often used to anonymously back front men
in business deals. Standard Oil put up the money to back George Burt, who
arrived in Beaumont on a train one day and bought what eventually became the
Mobil Oil holdings. The Texas Legislature forced Burt to sell his holdings when
his Standard Oil connection was discovered. After the Standard Oil antitrust
case of 1911, Mobil was allowed to buy in Beaumont.
President Bush to Speak
A
new Spindletop derrick has been erected at the Gladys City-Spindletop Boomtown
at a cost of $350,000. The Boomtown is a functioning museum and a replica of
the original. Former President George Bush is scheduled to speak at the
Boomtown at the centennial event on January 10. As part of the ceremony, a
derrick in the town will spew water 150 feet above a slicker-covered crowd of
thousands.
The Liquid Fuel Age
Michel
T. Halbouty, a Houston oil man and co-author of the 1952 book Spindletop: the
True Story of the Oil Discovery That Changed the World says "We will be celebrating an event that
affected the entire world. It changed the way people would live all over the
world. It revived the industrial revolution, which had been dead for a while.
It caused the United States to become a world power. It revolutionized
transportation through the automobile industry. It started the Liquid Fuel Age,
the greatest age in the history of the world."
Lucich Dies
After
a brief illness, at the age of sixty-six years, Captain Lucas passed away on
September 2, 1921, at Washington, D. C. The inscription on his tombstone at the
Rock Creek Cemetery states that he was born in Spalato, Dalmatia, and that he
was of "Illyrian parentage."
Symbolic
monuments to the great mining engineer Captain Lucas appear everywhere. Every
oil well, every derrick, every gasoline station, reminds us of the great
contribution to the progress of America and the world which was made by a man
of Croatian descent. Croatia may well be
proud of her native-born son, Captain Anthony Francis Lucas-Lucich.
Bibliography
Anon. “The Birth of A Great
Discoverer-Captain Anthony Francis (Lucich) Lucas.” American-Croatian Historical Review, July 1946. Excellent article
on Lucich and the discovery of oil.
Badovinac, John. “Croatian Engineer had
a Hand in Establishing Gulf Oil
Corporation.” Zajednicar, Feb. 4,
1976. Antonio Lucich makes first great oil strike in America in Texas.
Chriss, Nicholas C. “Legendary Oil
Field That's Still Pumping.” S.F.
Chronicle, Feb. 12, 1978. Discovery of oil in Texas by Antonio Lucich.
Conway, John. “Celebrating the Birth of
Texas Oil.” Texas Electric Coop.,
January 2001.
Dubrowski, Jerry. “U.S. Oil Addiction Began
with 1901 Gusher.” San Francisco
Chronicle, January 12, 1991. Anthony Lucas-Lucich discovers oil.
Gol, Nenad. “Otkrivac Nafte U Teksasu.”
Matica Zagreb, November 1965. Antun
Lucic discovers oil in Texas.
Halbouty, Michel. Spindletop: The True Story of the Oil Discovery that Changed the World.
Dallas, Texas, 1952.
Hallowell, Christopher. People of the Bayou. New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1979. About Antonio Lucich-Lucas who made first discovery of oil.
Hina. “Oil Well Pioneer Honored.” Croatia Weekly, June 3, 1999. Anthony
Lucas-Lucich discovers oil.
Kane, Harnet T. The Golden Coast. NY: Bonanza, 1959. Antonio Lucich-Lucas struck
oil January 10, 1901 at Spindle Top, Texas near Beaumont. Has good picture in
book.
McBeth, Reid S. “One item typed on Life
of Anthony F. Lucas at Archives.” Archives
Univ. of Texas at Austin 1936. Oil discovery in Texas. Lucas-Lucich.
NCAB. “Anthony Lucas Discoverer of Oil
in Texas.” National Cyclopaedia of
American Biography (1936): p262. Lucas-Lucich was born in Dalmatia.
Richard, T.A. “Interviews With Mining
Engineers.” Mining and Scientific Press-
San Francisco 1922. About Captain Anthony Lucas. Lucich discovery of oil in
Texas.
United Press. “The Day Spindletop Blew
In.” S.F.Chronicle, Jan 10, 1976.
Antonio Lucich Oil Discovery.
Zajednicar. “Splicanin Antun
Lucic-Lucas Otkrio Naftu U Texasu.” Zajednicar,
Mar. 2, 1966. Lucic from Split discovered oil in Texas.