Opulent Oil
By: Avery, Pablo, and Caleb
Economic and social effects of oil
A economic effect of oil is that it gives people an opportunity of a job. A social effect it brought more people to towns and cities where oil was found. Another social effect is that since so many people were crowding in the cities there were diseases being passed around, sewage problems, and scarcity of resources.
Spindletop oil well in Beaumont, Texas gushing out oil.
A oil derrick in Amarillo, Texas pumping oil.
Oil prices in different states in the U.S.
Train transporting crude oil.
Spindle top overview
On January 10, 1901, an enormous geyser of oil exploded from a drilling site at Spindle top Hill, a embankment created by an underground salt deposit located near Beaumont in Jefferson County, southeastern Texas. This amazing discovery reached a height of more than 150 feet, and was producing 100,000 barrels of oil a day, more than any oil well in America combined. This fascinating “gusher” was the start of a booming oil industry. Around the spindeltop hill hundreds of industries around America soon grew, some including Gulf Oil, Texaco and Exxon, they can all trace their origins there. Tens of thousands of people flocked to the embankment soon after the strike. This discovery was the new transformation of southeastern Texas and what used to a be a lonely backwater had now became a rushing boomtown within a couple months. During its first year spindeltop hill produced a little more than 3.5 million barrels of oi; going to it 2nd, oil production rose to 17.4 million. The oil industry didn’t only offer a host of jobs to oil workers. The refining and marketing organization that oil workers depended on also made fortunes. To meet the shortages of homes/places to stay, hotel owners rented rooms for about eight-hour shifts. One business that resurrected from the oil investment was the lumber industry. The oil boom created a dramatically demand for products needed by the oil industry to pump oil, one of these being lumber. Derrick’s high mechanism that held drilling supplies was vastly made from wood. Also wood was needed to build new homes and stores, because of this the Piney Wood in East Texas expanded in the early 1900s. Most of the population had a drastic change because of the thousands of new prospectors arriving in Texas, searching for their own fields of black gold.