First Alabama Oil Well
Reports of a “mineral tar” from the 1840s helped H.L. Hunt discover an oilfield a century later.
Swallowing “tar pills” supposedly had been curing ills since the mid-1800s, but Alabama’s petroleum industry officially began in 1944 with a Choctaw County well drilled by a Texas wildcatter. On February 17, independent producer Haroldson Lafayette “H.L.” Hunt completed his Jackson No. 1 well after discovering Alabama’s first oilfield. (more…)
