Orange County; 1913

Blowouts in the early 1900's were always hard on the equipment. Two things were going to happen just about every time; a.) your wooden derrick would get burned up like a camp fire on a cold night or b.) your wooden derrick was going to get blown into splinters, like the one above. On the far left is the TOP of this derrick blown straight up, falling straight down, upside down.

The hands shown above are all getting their picture taken right now but I promise, nobody is in a hurry to start sorting this mess out. Ultimately a lot of this rig will get burned up like a camp fire too.

There is some shallow, overpressured Miocene in this county in far east Texas that use to kick people's ass and there were some awesome blowouts over there. Standby on that.