On January 10th, 1921, shortly after 4:00 P.M., on a cold January day, a
deafening roar from a drilling rig one mile west of El Dorado announced the
discovery of oil in Arkansas. Dr. Samuel Busey brought in the Armstrong #1
as an earthshaking, roaring oil well. The plume of oil could be seen from
downtown El Dorado, a small farming and lumbering village of 3800. The
town would never be the same. Church bells rang, the sawmill whistle
sounded, and people streamed out of town to see oil spewing up through the
75-foot wooden derrick, and the next day a special five coach train,
chartered from Shreveport, with two white flags flying from the engine,
pulled into El Dorado's Rock Island station. The following day five charter
trains arrived from Little Rock, and within a year twenty-two trains daily
were arriving and departing from the two El Dorado Stations. Excitement
surged through the little town as rumors spread of poor farmers being made
millionaires overnight. Oilmen and promoters rushed in from Texas and
Louisiana with drilling equipment, and within a few weeks rigs were busy
drilling offsets to the Busey well. Landmen scoured countryside, buying up
leases, and the oil fever spread like wildfire. The Garrett Hotel lobby
became the center of oil lease trading, and the influx of people was so great
the
hotel put up cots in the lobby. The Busey well lasted only forty-five
days, but it kicked off the oil boom: within six months over 275 wells had
been drilled in South Arkansas and only 26 were dry holes. As soon as these
new wells confirmed the presence of additional oil fields, the boom was on
and oh what a boom it was.
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