【正文】 emoval, an integral part of the “taming of the west,” was the Government’s policy of moving as many Indians as possible onto reservations, many of which were located in Indian Territory. A few years after the Cherokees, it came the Osages’ turn to go. They pointed out to the Government that there was no land left that was not already assigned to a tribe. The terse response was, “Find some land, buy it, and go—or else.” What they found was million ac of hilly, rocky scrub, little suited for farming or much else, at the northern end of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokees were more than happy to unload it on the hapless Osages for 75$/ac. Happy that is, until the Nellie Johnstone 1 was drilled in 1897.The first producing well in the Territory, it signaled the opening of the vast Oklahoma oil fields and for a time made the Osages the richest per capita nation in the world. But it was during a few hours on the afternoon of January 10, 1901, on a marshy bit of waste land near Beaumont, Texas, that the world was changed forever. SpindletopSpindletop—to oilmen the name still evokes feelings akin to Columbus first sighting of the New World or Neil Armstrong first setting foot on the moon. For it was on this worthless bit of Texas swamp that the first American gusher blew in with a mighty roar that was heard around the world. For if Drake’s well signaled the birth of the oil industry. Spindletop gave birth to Age of Liquid Fuel, and in so doing changed the lives of everyone on Earth. Now there was no looking back.Spindietop—although that is not the name they would have chosen—was the culmination of the dreams of two highly unlike, but equally colorful oilmen: Captain Anthony Lucas, a transplanted Slav mining engineer, and Patillo “Bud” Higgins, a onearmed Texas Hellraiser turned Sunday School teacher.As a youth, Higgins had lost an arm as the result of a prank. One evening he and a group of panions had tossed a hornet’s nest into a tent where a Baptist revival meeting was taking place. An overly zealous deputy sheriff pursuing the group fired a shot that stuck young Higgins in the arm. The wound became infected and his arm had to be amputated. Higgins was a carousing brawler however, and to him the loss of a limb seemed to mean little. He headed for the timber country where he proceeded to show the other loggers he could outfight, outdrink, and outwork anyone with two arms and fists. His reputation grew until the townspeople dreaded to see him e in out of the woods on Saturday nights. But on one such evening fate stepped in again. He was passing another Baptist tent meeting much like the first one, when he paused for a moment, stayed to listen, and as a result “got religion.”O(jiān)ne of the pillars of the church, George W. Carroll, was deeply impressed by Higgins’ conversion and offered him a job in his land and real estate business. Higgins accepted, and quickly became a successful and respected member of the munity. One day, after a heavy rainstorm, Higgins happened to notice an unusual deposit of red clay that contrasted sharply with the black soil of the area. He had a sample analyzed and found it was the type of clay from which bricks could be made.Figure 15 Patillo Higgins [courtesy Amoco Torch]Sensing a ready market for bricks, Higgins had a group of investors join him in building a kiln. The business showed a profit, but was inefficient, so Higgins went north to study established kiln operations. In Pennsylvania and Ohio he learned the kilns were fired by natural gas and by oil, more stable and efficient fuels than wood or coal. In seeking more information, he learned that many of the geological characteristics that oilmen looked for in their search for petroleum were present in a small mound that rose from the marshes south of Beaumont. When he returned to Texas, he studied the area carefully and became convinced that the mound was sitting above oil—much oil. He approached George Carroll with his theory. Carroll agreed to support him, and in 1892 they formed the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company. Together with his dream of oil, Higgins had another dream—that of a whole new planned city. One with oil wells of course, but so laid out that there would be orderly growth and beauty as well as industry. For five years, using crude water well equipment, the pany sought oil with no success. Finally, Higgins sold his interest to Carroll, and spent three years trying to form another group to drill on his land.Deeply in debt, and with his remaining friends thinking him more than a little strange, Higgins, as a last resort, advertised for help in a trade journal. The man that answered the ad was as colorful as Higgins himself, but between them they would usher in the Age of Liquid Fuel.(Fig 15)Anthony Luchich was born on island of Hvar, in the Adriatic Sea. After graduating from the Graz School of Mining Engineering and being missioned in the Austrian Navy, he came to the United States for a visit. Liking what he saw, he applied for citizenship, Changed his name to Lucas, married an American girl and settled in Louisiana where he worked as a mining engineer.(Figure 16) Figure 16 Captain Anthony (courtesy Amoco Torch)After gaining experience in working with subsurface structures, Lucas formed a theory that gas, oil and sulfur would accumulate under salt domes. Since he visited Beaumont, he was familiar with the mound or dome, that Higgins talked about in his ad. Sensing an opportunity to test his beliefs, he decided to join Higgins, and the two were soon at work on yet another attempt to find oil at Gladys City, as Higgins called his dream town.However, this time there was a difference. Lucas decided to use steampowered rotary drilling rigs. Rotary rig certainly not new, the first having been patented in 1833, and by 1901 more than 10 wells in Texas alone had been drilled with them. But most of these were crude devices powered by nothing more than a mule wa