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The first record of Europeans using crude oil, however, was for the caulking of boats in 1543
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Melrose, in Nacogdoches County, was the site in 1866 of the first drilled well to produce oil in Texas.
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In 1867, in the same area, Amory (Emory) Starr and Peyton F. Edwards brought in a well at Oil Springs. Other wells followed, and Nacogdoches County was the site of Texas’ first commercial oil field, pipeline, and effort to refine crude. Several thousand barrels of oil were produced there during these years.
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Jan. 10, 1901, is the most famous date in Texas petroleum history. This is the date that the great gusher erupted in the oil well being drilled at Spindletop, near Beaumont, by a mining engineer, Capt. A. F. Lucas.
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The first offshore drilling was in shallow northern Galveston Bay, where the Goose Creek Field was discovered in 1908. Several dry holes followed, and the field was abandoned. But a gusher in 1916 created the real boom there.
