Texas quickly became one of the leading oil-producing states in the U.S., along with Oklahoma and California; soon the nation overtook the Russian Empire as the top producer of petroleum.

Although limited reserves of oil had been struck during the 19th century, the strike at Spindletop near Beaumont in 1901 gained national attention, spurring exploration and development that continued through the 1920s and beyond.

[7] Many small towns, such as Wortham, which had become boomtowns during the 1920s saw their booms end in the late 1920s and early 1930s as their local economies collapsed, resulting from their dependence on relatively limited petroleum reservoirs.

[8] In the major refining and manufacturing centers such as Beaumont, Houston, and Dallas, the boom continued to varying degrees until the end of World War II.

[10] Following the American Civil War, Texas's economy began to develop rapidly centered heavily on cattle ranching and cotton farming, and later lumber.

[17] Petroleum exploration developed in many parts of the world with the Russian Empire, particularly the Branobel company in Azerbaijan, taking the lead in production by the end of the 19th century.

[5] Exploration of salt domes across the plains of the Texas Gulf Coast took off with major oil fields opening at Sour Lake in 1902, Batson in 1903, Humble in 1905, and Goose Creek (modern Baytown) in 1908.

The situation led exploration to spread into the neighboring states of Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas, which competed with Texas for dominance in oil production.

[42] Because East Texas had not been significantly explored for oil before then, numerous independent prospectors, known as "wildcatters", were able to purchase tracts of land to exploit the new field.

These efforts at controlling production, intended to protect both the independent operators and the major producers, were largely unsuccessful at first and led to widespread oil smuggling.

[48] The headquarters were moved to Houston, and the company eventually sold half of its shares to Standard Oil of New Jersey, establishing a long-term partnership that lasted for decades.

In the post-World War II period, Humble became the largest crude oil transporter in the United States, and built pipelines connecting Baytown to Dallas-Fort Worth and West Texas to the Gulf of Mexico.

The large quantities of oil and gas moving through Houston, Baytown, Texas City, and surrounding communities made the area around the ship channel attractive for industrial development.

Growth in some communities was often driven by exploitation of limited oil resources, so once wells ran dry or demand slowed, their populations rapidly declined.

[83] Cheap gasoline encouraged automobile ownership, which provided a substantial revenue source to the government, leading to the rapid expansion of highway development.

[92] Primary and secondary education improved as well, though the extreme growth in the new boomtowns initially caused severe strain on school systems unprepared for the rapid influx of students.

Union organizers were frequently seen as attempting to support a Northern agenda of promoting opportunities for African Americans at the expense of the white population.

[36][97] Despite the anti-union sentiments, groups like the International Oil Workers Union attracted membership and held some influence in the industry and state government.

An enduring theme during and after the oil boom has been a reluctance among Texans to relinquish their identity and a stubbornness in maintaining their cultural heritage in the face of drastic changes to the state brought by the sudden wealth.

Competition with large oil interests would lead to the establishment of the Independent Petroleum Association of Texas as a lobbying group for these small businessmen.Houston pioneered American car culture in the early 1900s thanks to the ready availability of inexpensive gasoline.

[107] The rapid social changes during this period, especially the 1920s, led to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the urban centers of Texas, with their strongest presence in Dallas.

[13][108] As in other states, the new Klan was not outwardly focused on suppression of black civil rights, but instead supported traditional morality including opposition to bootlegging, gambling, and other vices that had grown during the period.

The rush to extract oil frequently led to the construction of poor storage facilities where leaks were common and water pollution became a serious issue.

Parallel to this, the clearing of fields for oil exploration and the demand for lumber to be used in new construction, all of which followed major logging activities in the 19th century, destroyed most of the once dense forest lands in the state.

In recent decades, most of the pollution in the bay is the result of storm run-off from various smaller commercial, agricultural, and residential sources, as opposed to the major industrial complexes.

[120] Conservation efforts in the mid to late 20th century by area industries and municipalities have helped to dramatically improve water quality in the bay reversing at least some of the earlier damage to the ecosystem.

[66] As western Texas and the panhandle region began to be more fully explored, the Permian Basin gradually became the top producing area of the state.

[5] During the 1960s and 1970s, as a result of both production peaks in some nations and political instability in others, the world's supply of petroleum tightened leading to an energy crisis during the 1970s and early 1980s.

[92] Hunt's first successes were in the oilfields of Arkansas, but he lost most of his fortune by the outset of the Depression as overproduction depleted his fields and his speculation on land and oil drained his resources.

Other films such as Boom Town and War of the Wildcats, and books such as The Lusty Texans of Dallas and Houston: Land of the Big Rich, also contributed to public perceptions of oil's influence in Texas and surrounding states.