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January 5, 2014
WOLF CREEK HERITAGE MUSEUM NOTES by Virginia Scott MUSEUM HAPPENINGS Our new year is starting off with busy schedules and conflicts in scheduling. Unfortunately, some of our volunteers are suffering from the flus, others are out of town, and we have meetings,etc. that require our attendance so if you drop and see a closed sign, forgive us. We hope to be back to normal soon. Our building is going well and we appreciate everyone's generosity in donating to our building fund. We have almost reached our goal. Construction is going fast and looks like we could be having our opening reception by March or April. Our exhibits this year will focus on our collections. However we will not have an exhibit in Jan and Feb so that we can prepare for the new addition and inventory our art and textiles for exhibits this year. We are pleased to develop these exhibits to be able to show you the museum's collections. HISTORICAL MUSINGS When the museum first started with the historical commission in the early 90's, the newsletter contained articles by anyone in the county wishing to submit an article. So I invite any of you to submit a story about the county or a remembrance for this part of our weekly column. This week I offer the reprint of a column by Denny King in our Lipscomb Heritage newsletter, summer,1991: "Early Day Oil Exploration" by Denny King The first oil well in Lipscomb County was drilled 64 years {1927 87 years today} ago on section 504 belonging to Alex Barton. After drilling to a depth of about 4,500 feet, the hole was dry, but the drilling had provided several months of excitement for the community. The well was located on a hill by the mailbox of the old H.L. King home which burned in 1942. harry and Grace King remembers that almost any time of day there was someone there to watch the drilling. They would catch some of the drilling water in a coke bottle and look and taste for traces of oil in it. One of the workers had false teeth which he would sometimes spit out to the amazement of some of the youngsters who had never seen false teeth. V.L. Snyder of San Antonio put up the money to drill the first well. Mr. Snyder and his two daughters boarded with the Kings during the frilling and Mr. Snyder told interesting stories about his days as a bounty hunter. (I am skipping his story). One of the Snyder daughters became ill and he was running out of money with the well showing no promise, so they stopped drilling and returned to San Antonio. Wouldn't it have been interesting if the well had been in the right spot and Lipscomb County had had its oil boom in 1927?" Thanks Denny for a great article. I wonder what Mr. Snyder would say about the drilling activity of today. I will tell Mr. Snyder's bounty hunter story next week. |
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