The United North and South Oil Company was an oil development company incorporated by Edgar Byram Davis in 1921 that brought in the first significant oil production in the Edwards lime formation. A deeply religious man, Davis believed that he was directed by God to come to Texas to deliver the town of Luling and Caldwell County from the cotton industry that dominated the area economy. He believed he would do this by finding oil, though geologists believed there was none there. After his brother Oscar Davis died, Edgar Davis purchased Caldwell County oil leases from his estate. The first six wells were dry, and United North and South was heavily in debt, but the seventh, Rafael Rios No. 1, gushed in on August 9, 1922. By December 1924 the Luling Oilfield was producing 43,000 barrels of oil daily. On June 11, 1926, Davis sold his leases to the Magnolia Petroleum Company for $12 million, possibly the biggest oil deal in Texas up to that time.
Source: Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Davis, Edgar Byram,” http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/DD/fda36.html (accessed September 18, 2009).
Album includes 12 gelatin silver prints depicting employees, drilling
activities, and oil wells of the United North and South Development Company of
Unrestricted access.
United North and South Development Company Album, ca. 1935, the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
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