Explorer Historical Highlights
By Ellen Walker Rienstra
I must have tugged on his coattails. Actually, I don’t really remember how it all came about. But at the 1951 Spindletop 50th anniversary celebration in Beaumont, Texas, I, a 10-year-old schoolgirl, somehow found myself talking to Allen William “Al” Hamill, one of the drillers of the famed Lucas Gusher – the well brought in 50 years before, January 10, 1901, on the low mound just south of town that came to be known as Spindletop Hill.