ARKANSAS HISTORICALQUARTERLY, Volume 33 (Autumn 1974) p. 195

 The Discovery of Oil in South

Arkansas, 1920-1924

By A. R. and R. B. BUCKALEW*

El Dorado, Arkansas

A s 1920 GAVE WAY TO 1921 IN UNION COUNTY, ARKANSAS, NONE OF ITS RESIDENTS could have suspected what the new year held in store for them. Nowhere was this truer than in El Dorado, the seat of county government, a quiet little country town of around 4,000 people. There the towns people went about their daily business as a trade center for the farmers and lumbermen of the county.

Indeed, for the few businessmen of the town who concerned themselves with keeping a finger on the pulse of the economy, the future looked anything but healthy. Much of the best timber in the county had been cut over and the lumber business was declining. A fair crop of 60,000 acres of cotton had been harvested the previous fall and shipped out, but the price which rose to a high of nearly forty-two cents at New Orleans in April 1920 slumped to thirteen and a half cents in December. Passenger and freight traffic on the town's two railroads, the Missouri Pacific and the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific (the Rock Island), which connected her with Camden and Little Rock had decreased. The local shortline railroad, the El Dorado & Wesson Railway Company, was hurting too.(1)

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* A. R. Buckalew is a sales representative for Hurley Printing and stationery Company. His son, Robert, is

a recent graduate of Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas.

1. Biennial Report of the Secretary of State, 1925-26 [Arkansas] (Russellville, Ark., n.d.). 550;

Earl E. Smith, Arkansas Semi- Centennial Oil Celebration, El Dorado, Arkansas, 1921-1971 (El Dorado, 1971), 1 (hereafter cited as Smith, Oil Semi-Centennial). This booklet was written especially for the Union county semi-centennial oil celebration the week of June 12-19, 1971.

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