In the center of downtown El Dorado, on a beautifully landscaped former parking lot, stand three heroic-size bronze statues by sculptor John Deering, along with several massive pieces of antique oil field equipment and four large granite slabs with bronze plaques. This commemorates Arkansas’ oil industry. The bronze plaques tell the story of how oil changed the face of El Dorado and made a lasting impact on South Arkansas.
On Jan. 10, 1921, shortly after 4 p.m. on a cold day, a deafening roar from a drilling rig one mile west of El Dorado announced the discovery of oil in the state. Dr. Samuel Busey brought in the No. 1 Armstrong as an earth-shaking, roaring oil well.
The plume could easily be seen from downtown El Dorado, which at the time was a small farming and lumbering village with a population of 3,800.
People streamed west of town to see oil spewing up through a 75-foot wooden derrick. The next day a train, chartered from Shreveport with two white flags flying from the engine, pulled into El Dorado’s Rock Island station. The following day five charter trains arrived from Little Rock, and within a year were arriving and departing daily from the two El Dorado stations. Oil producers and promoters rushed in, and within a few weeks several rigs were busy drilling offsets to the Busey well.
The well, which lasted 45 days, kicked off the oil boom, and within six months over 275 wells had been drilled in south Arkansas, of which only 26 were dry. As soon as these new wells confirmed the presence of several additional oil fields, the boom was on, and south Arkansas would never be the same.
Within a few months the population doubled, and before the year was out doubled again before peaking two years later at over 40,000. With the population explosion came oil producers from Louisiana and Texas. Along with them on the trains that arrived daily were thousands of promoters and crooks.
Within weeks, barrelhouses sprouted up across from the railroad station on South Washington Street, known as Hamburger Row.
During the first two years of the boom, Hamburger Row reverted to the lawlessness of the Old West. Boys sold moonshine on street corners—$1.25 for a full six-ounce Coke bottle—prostitutes walked the streets, and dope peddlers like Smiling Jack and Weasel tugged at people’s sleeves.
Hamburger Row was filled with characters like Barrelhouse Sue and Two Shot Blondie, who imported prostitutes and made moonshine deliveries; Jake’s Place was the biggest and most notorious of the barrelhouses; Big Ed, a gang enforcer, and Oscar and Joe, two moonshiners, made door to door deliveries. Teams of oxen and mules, some as long as 20 pairs, pulled oil field equipment through the streets, and after a heavy rain the iron-wheeled wagons turned most of the town’s streets into quagmires so dangerous that some mules actually drowned.
A little over a year after the initial oil discovery by Dr. Busey, the Oil Operators Trust No. 1 Murphy, a wildcat well drilled on a feature called the Norphlet dome, blew out and created a crater 500 feet across and 150 deep that swallowed up the rig, derrick, and all of the drilling equipment.
The well caught fire and created a 300-foot-high flare, which made night seem like day in downtown El Dorado 10 miles away. This was the discovery well for the giant Smackover Field.
Many of the Smack-over Field wells came in at over 50,000 barrels of oil a day, and one, the No. 1 Burton, gauged at 74,500 barrels a day.
At the peak of the boom, Arkansas was one of the leading oil producing states in the nation.
During the first five years of the boom more money flowed into El Dorado than the total appraised value of all the property in the state. This influx of wealth allowed the citizens of El Dorado to construct Arkansas’ biggest and most elaborate county courthouse, three magnificent churches, and a downtown full of fine buildings, including what was at that time one of the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi, the Lion Oil Building.
During the oil boom, numerous individuals—known as wildcatters—made their mark on the south Arkansas scene. H.L. Hunt, at one time the richest man in the world, opened a barrelhouse on Hamburger Row, made his financial stake there, then started investing in oil wells. Over several decades he built the corporation into an international financial giant.
Chelsey Pruet expanded an interest in a single drilling rig into a multimillion-dollar oil and gas exploration company. C.H. Murphy was a successful businessman in El Dorado, and his timber and land holdings allowed him to invest in the drilling of oil wells.
Charles Murphy Jr. took over the Murphy Oil properties in 1947, and over several decades built international oil giant Murphy Oil Corporation, now a Fortune 500 company. Texan Pat Marr offered a money-back guarantee to make a gusher, and pulled it off. Colonel T. H. Barton started with a gas-gathering system, and later purchased a small refinery and expanded it into the Lion Oil Company.
Other south Arkansas businessmen who invested in the oil boom and became successful were Emon Mahony, H.C. McKinney, and Boyd Alderson, the longtime chairman of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission who was responsible for the orderly development of the industry in the 1970s through 2004.
Oil Heritage Park, designed and paid for by contributions from the local oil industry, individuals, and companies, was constructed to acknowledge how its impact has benefited the city of El Dorado and the state of Arkansas, and how it continues to add value to thousands of lives.
Email Richard Mason at richard@ gibraltarenergy.com .