Jal House Rock or Get Your Potash in Gear!

Kress Texas Critter

"Critter" is a term for a small locomotive used for switching at industrial facilities. This one is a Shuttlewagon Commander SWX420 and can move up to 20 loaded rail cars at a time. 

McKee refinery fire

(Wikipedia) ... The volunteer fire crews from nearby Sunray and Dumas were fighting the fire in a conventional manner while the decision was made to reduce the amount of liquid in the burning tank. This increased the volume of the tank filled with explosive vapors. A few minutes before seven in the morning, an hour after the blaze began, the tank ruptured as the remaining fluid in the tank boiled, increasing the gas pressure past the bursting point. Continued

Old House 177

Ancho, New Mexico

(Wikipedia) ... With the arrival of the railway in 1901 and the discovery of gypsum and clay, the Ancho Brick Plant was established and began producing bricks. The plant eventually grew to 16 kilns. In 1906, the Ancho Brick Plant supplied several tons of bricks which were shipped by railway to San Francisco to help rebuild the city after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Continued

Historic 1866 Texas well produced just 10 barrels of oil

(American Oil and Gas Historical Society) In December 1859, less than four months after Edwin L. Drake’s first U.S. oil well drilled in Pennsylvania, a similarly determined petroleum explorer named Lyne (Lynis) Taliaferro Barret began searching in an East Texas area known as Oil Springs. The 1848 invention of “coal oil” — kerosene — had prompted demand for an illuminating fuel made from oil, inspiring speculation and drilling. Continued

Wildorado, Texas

If you're interested in the history of 20th century grain storage (and who isn't?),
Wildorado, Texas is an interesting little town.

Guide to Oil and Gas Museums

(American Oil and Gas Historical Society) Hundreds of technology exhibits at community petroleum museums offer insight to the nation’s energy heritage, which began with an 1859 oil discovery drilled 69.5 feet deep in Pennsylvania. Many museums are staffed with volunteer docents who worked in the industry and can teach young people about the complex modern business.
In addition to museums that often feature transportation (planes, trains, automobiles, and service stations), the 33 oil and natural gas producing states include many local museums with cable-tool derricks, drill bits, pump jacks, and equipment of all shapes and sizes. Continued

Feds regulate "hot" oil

Overproduction? What overproduction?
(Photo courtesy of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society)

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1935, the Connally Hot Oil Act became law. The act came about as a result of the federal government's attempts to deal with the problem of "hot" oil--petroleum produced in violation of state and federal quotas and regulations.
In the early 1930s the overproduction of oil, largely a result of the East Texas oil boom, was adversely affecting the oil market. Continued

Gail Borden

 

(Wikipedia) Gail Borden Jr. (November 9, 1801 – January 11, 1874) was a native New Yorker who settled in Texas in 1829, where he worked as a land surveyor, newspaper publisher, and inventor.
He created a process in 1853 to make sweetened condensed milk. Earlier Borden helped plan the cities of Houston and Galveston in 1836.
… Probably of equal importance for the future of milk production were Borden's requirements (the "Dairyman's Ten Commandments") for farmers who wanted to sell him raw milk: they were required to wash the cows' udders before milking, keep barns swept clean, and scald and dry their strainers morning and night. By 1858, Borden's milk, sold as Eagle Brand, had gained a reputation for purity, durability and economy.
 Continued

All Pumped Up – Oilfield Technology

 

(American Oil & Gas Historical Society) In a valley in northwestern Pennsylvania in 1859, Edwin Drake drilled America’s first commercial oil well, launching the U.S. petroleum industry. For his oil well pump, he borrowed a common water well hand pump to retrieve the new resource from 69.5 feet. As the American petroleum industry was born, it wasn’t long before necessity and ingenuity combined to find something more efficient for producing oil from a well. Continued

Golden West Flour Mill in Clovis Burns Down

It's gone

Rust and Grain

Wildorado, Texas

El Paso civic leader and cigar manufacturer born in Prussia

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1857, Ernst Kohlberg was born in Beverungen, Westphalia, at that time a province of Prussia.
He left home in 1875 with Solomon C. Schutz, who had business interests in the El Paso area.
Kohlberg agreed to work for Schutz without salary for six months to a year in order to defray the costs of his passage to Texas.
The two reached Franklin, as El Paso was then called, by stagecoach. Continued

Magnolia Petroleum

Photo Garageart.com

(Wikipedia) The Magnolia Petroleum Company was an early twentieth century petroleum company in Texas founded on April 24, 1911 by the Sealy family of Galveston, as a consolidation of several earlier companies. Standard Oil of New York (Socony) exchanged its stock for all of the Magnolia stock (except seven shares for the Directors) in December 1925 though it continued to operate as an affiliate of Socony. Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Company in 1931, becoming Socony-Vacuum Oil Company. Magnolia Petroleum continued to operate as a subsidiary of Socony-Vacuum.
In 1959, Magnolia was fully incorporated into the Mobil division of Socony-Vacuum, which later changed its name to Socony Mobil and, ultimately to Mobil Oil Corporation. Continued

Screwmen, Spidermen, and Cotton’s Gilded-Age Gargantua

(History Bandits) … With the invention of the compress, continued railroad expansion, and the advent of electrical telegraphic communication, the cotton industry moved away from formerly monopolistic coastal cities, such as Houston, Galveston, and New Orleans, and moved inland to larger markets, now accessible by rail and interior water sources, such as St. Louis, Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City, and Dallas.
Following the Civil War, farmers flocked to the frontier regions of Texas, which led all states in cotton production by 1889. By 1990, Texas gins accounted for thirty-four percent of the nation’s production. Continued

New carbon black plant opens in Panhandle

Carbon black worker, Sunray, TX
(Library of Congress)

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1926, the Texas Railroad Commission allowed the Phillips Petroleum Company to construct a carbon black plant in the Panhandle. ...
Carbon black, produced from natural gas that has more than 1 ½ grains of hydrogen sulfide, became in demand in the early twentieth century, especially in the production of automobile tires. Continued

Black gold gushes in East Texas

 

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1904, the Batson-Old oilfield, located on Pine Bayou in southwestern Hardin County, reached its peak daily production.
That day the field yielded more than 150,000 barrels of crude. Continued

Signage: P.G.C. CO-OP Feed

Wildorado, Texas (Sixgun Siding)

(Special Collections Library, Texas Tech) The Producers Grain Corporation (PGC) was a regional grain marketing cooperative headquartered in Amarillo, Texas.
It was organized by twenty-nine country elevators in April 1938. It opened international trade markets for the Great Plains sorghum production primarily to Japan (Zen Koren) and Mexico (Conasupo) during the 1950's and 1960's.
PGC collected grain from Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, and New Mexico.
It had corporate operations in Lubbock, Fort Worth, Plainview, Corpus Christi, Texas and Colton, California.
Feed mill operations beginning in 1945 served the ranchers and farmers of West Texas, western Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.
The company celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1988. After financial difficulties in the early 1980's, PGC sold to Agri Industries. Link

Feds regulate "hot" oil

Overproduction? What overproduction?
(Photo courtesy of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society)

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1935, the Connally Hot Oil Act became law. The act came about as a result of the federal government's attempts to deal with the problem of "hot" oil--petroleum produced in violation of state and federal quotas and regulations.
In the early 1930s the overproduction of oil, largely a result of the East Texas oil boom, was adversely affecting the oil market. Continued

Wildorado Grain Elevator 1

Wildorado, Texas