BOOM AND BUSTED

One person's wildcatter may be another person's con-artist, a truism illustrated with entertaining delight by the story of the East Texas Oilfield discovery and Marion "Dad" Joiner, driller-cum-confidence artist hoping to make good on deceptive investment practices. Joiner failed to make his million but he also drilled the gusher that would change East Texas forever. Joiner's Daisy Bradford Number 3 was the first well to poke into the largest reservoir of oil inside U.S. boundaries, a source that continues to deliver oil today. But that's not the whole story of the East Texas oil boom. The rest of it can be found inside the East Texas Oil Museum, located in the Texas Forest Trail city of Kilgore. The museum includes dioramas, artifacts, and multimedia exhibits depicting the people and industry that turned the region into Boomtown, U.S.A. during the 1930s. The discovery would permanently change much of East Texas forever, but its era is captured in detail within the museum exhibits where you can time-travel back to oil boom heyday.