However, the high cost of fuel needed to heat the water made the process uneconomic until the 1901 discovery of the Spindletop oil field in Texas provided cheap fuel oil to the region.
The successes that followed of the Nellie Johnstone No. 1 (Bartlesville, Oklahoma) in 1897, Spindletop (Texas) in 1901, and the Ida Glenn No. 1 (Glenn Pool, Oklahoma) in 1905, demonstrated the existence of a large oil field in the central and southwestern United States.
Among those drilling at Spindletop was W. Scott Heywood, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, who in 1901 made the first oil discovery in nearby Jeff Davis Parish in southwestern Louisiana.
On November 14, 1925, Frank Yount struck oil at the Spindletop field in Beaumont, Texas.
Its boundaries are I-75 to the west and Berea Road to the south and east.
When oil was discovered in Spindletop, Texas in 1901, the Mellon family invested in the well.
The following year, and after the discovery of oil at Spindletop, Kirby partnered with Patrick Calhoun of the Houston Oil Company of Texas.