Spindletop News

From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern , opening at the Kimbell Art Museum on November 22, 2009, surveys the history of private art collecting in Texas from the oil boom days of Spindletop to the present day.

Patillo 'Pat' Higgins Jr. inspects his Buffel grass. A variety he discovered was named for him by a U.S. Department of Agriculture plant geneticist.

On January 10, 1901, near Beaumont, Texas, an unremarkable knoll of earth the world would soon call Spindletop shot a geyser of oil a hundred feet into the air, confirming the belief of Pattillo Higgins that black gold lay buried there.

Lone Star Scorecard #5 - "Stoned," "Songs About Texas," and "Dallas" Everything's bigger in Texas.

Veteran Austin author Mike Cox is having quite a boom year as a writer. The second volume of his two-volume series on the Texas Rangers, "Time of the Rangers" , has just hit the bookstores, and a trade paperback edition of volume one is due out this month.

Not to be confused with the region of Southeast Asia that pumps the world full of opium, or the British research universities that pump the world full of knowledge , Texas' Golden Triangle is so named for the Spindletop oil strike of 1901, and the soft light of the gas flares from the many oil refineries that sprung up in the strike's wake.

This week's restaurant report comes to us from the Beaumont Health Department. The inspectors found only a few restaurants with problems this week.

Aside from the city's namesake, no 19th-Century Houstonian was more famous than Dick Dowling, the Irish-born saloonkeeper/businessman and Confederate war hero.

THE BIG RICH: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes. By Bryan Burrough.

WHEN I was a young boy walking a log across Mill Creek with my Aunt Ida, she would point to some dark bubbles in the creek or an oily film on the surface and she would declare, "Son, they need to drill an oil well there." There wasn't an oil well within a hundred miles, but my Aunt Ida would have been a wildcatter.

WHEN I was a young boy walking a log across Mill Creek with my Aunt Ida, she would point to some dark bubbles in the creek or an oily film on the surface and she would declare, "Son, they need to drill an oil well there." There wasn't an oil well within a hundred miles, but my Aunt Ida would have been a wildcatter.

Beaumont bonanza If you want to take the family on a weekend getaway without breaking the bank, stay relatively close to home by visiting Beaumont, which is about a six-hour drive southeast of Fort Worth.

A company that has been working with Southeast Texans for several years, has now received a grant to enhance the quality of life for people who suffer with a mental illness.

Neil McMahon at Bernstein Research says it's not peak oil, but peak well flow that is the problem.

Kids in Nederland are going back in time this summer. Way back. The Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum will share an interactive "Pioneer" demonstration at 10:30 a.m. June 17 at the Hebert Library in Nederland.

The Market Basket supermarket chain, headquartered in Nederland, won the 2009 Spindletop Award from the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce today.

Saturday, June 6, 2009 marked the solemn 65th anniversary of D-Day. That's when allied forces landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France.

The Beaumont Convention & Visitors Bureau will sponsor the 4th Annual Spindletop Spin to downtown Beaumont June 6. Nearly 450 cyclists will converge at Beaumont's Crockett Street Entertainment District to take part in the bicycle ride, a fundraiser benefiting the Jefferson County Bar Association Pro Bono Office, local businesses, and the community ...

Sitting in the truck bed for a slow ride up the Maury Myers Bridge gave plenty of time for Jordan Bond's nerves to build.

The term "film festival" evokes imagery of popping paparazzi flashbulbs in the mountain town of Sundance, or tanned starlets strutting down a glitzy red carpet in Cannes.