Episode Details

The 1901 Spindletop gusher didn't just change Texas — it made the automobile affordable and reshaped the modern world. Julie DeWees Sparks spent forty years in the oil and gas business, starting at Getty Oil Company, and she's channeled all of that experience into her book Under Texas Skies.

Julie sits down with Jeff Crilley to talk about the wildcatters who drilled dozens of dry holes before striking it rich, the ranching families whose land sat atop massive oil fields, and the legendary names — Sid Richardson, the Hunts, Monty Moncrief, Glen McCarthy — who built fortunes and then gave back through universities, hospitals, and museums.

The episode covers:
— How the 1980s oil bust shaped Julie's early career and what it taught her about the industry's cycles
— The Haywood brothers: four vaudeville musicians, one of whom read about Spindletop in a San Francisco newspaper and immediately wired his brother to meet him in Beaumont
— The real-life Fort Worth oil man behind the John Hamm character on Landman
— Why so many of Texas's biggest oil discoveries happened on cattle ranches, and why those ranching stories rival the wildcat tales

📖 Learn more about the book: https://www.texas1836.org/about-the-book