From the discovery of the huge Spindletop field, opened in 1901, to the East Texas oil finds of the 1930s, oil had been the driving force that transformed Texas from an agricultural and cattle-raising economy into a major industrial power in the United States. In 1928 Texas became the country’s leading oil-producing state with a total annual output of over 250 million barrels. Oil would eventually be discovered in West Texas, so that, in the words of a twentiethcentury historian of the region, “one could drive one hundred and fifty miles without ever losing sight of oil derricks” (Frantz, p. 182).
World War II kept Texas oil extraction and processing operating at peak production levels and also brought to the state large military installations where men were trained and weapons tested. Between 1941 and 1945, some 10 percent of all U.S. military personnel received their training in Texas; for the Army Air Force, Texas offered the biggest aviation training region “anywhere in the United States and probably on earth” (Frantz, p. 184). Building on this new economic foundation, the United States Congress— whose key committees were often dominated by Southern Democrats—began in the late 1940s to steer large-scale defense contracts toward the South and Southwest, enabling a gradual integration of what had been the most economically backward part of the nation into the mainstream of the American economy.
