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Photo by AP

The first real indication of the massive oil field that lay beneath East Texas came in 1930, when Dad Joiner struck oil with his Daisy Bradford No. 3 well. Over the next year, as more discoveries confirmed just how spectacular a play it was, speculators, investors, and drillers flocked to the area. In one infamous section near downtown Kilgore known as the World’s Richest Acre, no fewer than 44 wells were spudded. Eventually, the pressure driving the oil to the surface began to fall dangerously low; meanwhile, so much crude had been taken out that the barrel price plummeted to 13 cents. Governor Ross Sterling summoned a special session of the Legislature to cap production, but a federal court intervened, so the governor declared martial law. Production finally resumed at a more measured pace, under the watchful eye of Texas Ranger Manuel Gonzaullas (“El Lobo Solo”). When the federal courts again stepped in, saying that the governor’s closure was illegal, the oversight of mineral production in Texas was given to the state’s Railroad Commission, which effectively set global oil prices for the next forty years. —HWB

Photo by O. Rufus Lovett

It had been seventeen years since the Challenger disaster when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. Debris rained down over 28,000 square miles in a line that extended roughly east-southeast from northern Navarro County, across the southern edge of Toledo Bend, and into Louisiana. But the place that became the focus was Nacogdoches, where more than 1,200 fragments landed in playgrounds and pastures and lawns. One large piece fell to earth behind the Commercial Bank of Texas on the lot between Main and East Hospital streets, blowing open the doors of the building. A bronze medallion not far from the bank’s drive-through window now marks the spot where the great hopes of the shuttle program once again collided with the devastating realities of tragedy and loss. —BDS

Photo by AP

Prior to 1924, executions in Texas were carried out—hanging was the usual method—by individual counties. But in 1923 the Legislature authorized the use of the electric chair and ordered that all executions take place at the penitentiary in Huntsville, also known as the Walls Unit for its tall walls of red brick. A brand-new, prisoner-built electric chair (later known as Old Sparky) was installed in an area of the unit located off what is now the infirmary, and on February 8 a man named Charles Reynolds, from Red River County, was the first to be put to death. That same day, Ewell Morris, George Washington, Mack Mathews, and Melvin Johnson would be electrocuted as well. (These first five also represent the most executions carried out by the state in a single day.) Old Sparky was in commission for forty years, until 1964, when Joseph Johnson of Harris County became the last man executed in Texas with the electric chair. Starting with Reynolds, Texas has put a total of 825 individuals to death, hundreds more than any other state. And though the method has changed (lethal injections began in 1982), all of them have drawn their last breaths at the Walls Unit. —DC