The rise and fall of the great Texas oil fortunes

Executive overview

Four self-made Texas oilmen — Roy Cullen, Clint Murchison, Sid Richardson, and H.L. Hunt — built the largest private oil fortunes in American history within a single five-year window during the Great Depression. Each started in obscurity and reached billionaire status through a combination of contrarian conviction, relentless perseverance, and a willingness to outmanoeuvre both competitors and regulators.

The wealth they created was staggering. Hunt's East Texas field alone produced 100 million barrels between 1941 and 1945 — more than a third of Texas's output and comparable to the entire Axis powers' production during the same period.

The fortunes were built in five years, but whether they survived the next generation depended entirely on what the founders passed down besides money.

The prehistory: Spindletop and the first boom

• The Lucas Number One well produced more oil than all other American wells combined; within days, the surrounding area outproduced the entire world.
• The oil was too low-quality for kerosene refining, so railroads and navies converted to fuel oil — launching the modern petroleum age.
• Most first-generation independents went broke; the one exception was Howard Hughes Sr., who sold pickaxes in the gold rush: his patented rock drill bit became the industry standard, funding his son's aviation and film empire.
• The key structural distinction: independents (wildcatters who drilled on speculation) vs. majors (Texaco, Mobil) who absorbed risk by acquiring proven leases.

Roy Cullen: perseverance and depth

• Dropped out of school at 12 to work in a candy factory; spent his teens and twenties as a cotton broker, losing his savings in the 1907 panic.
• Stumbled into oil at 35 when a developer offered him a salaried lease-acquisition job; Cullen first went to the Houston Public Library and read every geology book he could find.
• Spent five years roaming West Texas leasing rights — every well dry — before drilling independently.
• Drilled 36 consecutive months at Damon's Mound with no success; sleeping beside rigs, returning home caked in mud, telling his wife: "Let me get a shave and a bath, tomorrow is another day."
• His differentiating insight: drill deeper where others quit. He found success in fields competitors had abandoned.
• When a lumber magnate offered him $3 million and a 25% stake, Cullen refused — counter-offering 50/50 with $5,000 of his own money and full operational control: "I won't be working for you."
• Gave away an estimated 93% of his fortune before he died; the only member of the Big Four to diversify out of oil.

Clint Murchison: financing by finagling

• Grew up with a banker father, giving him an intuitive grasp of leverage that his peers lacked entirely.
• As a teenager, abandoned the family bank to trade livestock with his lifelong friend Sid Richardson.
• Early strategy: trade a share of one lease for a drilling rig, trade a share of that rig's production for another rig — compounding assets without upfront capital.
• One of the first Texas oilmen to hire a professional geologist.
• Diagnosed that natural gas — which other oilmen vented to atmosphere — was a utility business waiting to be built; laid pipeline street-by-street and charged $5/month per home.
• Used his banking contacts to operate at debt levels that would have paralysed competitors: "If you're going to owe money, owe more than you can pay — then they can't afford to foreclose."
• Became the largest distributor of hot oil (producing beyond regulated limits) during federal proration fights, calling government intervention "un-American" and renaming his partnership American Liberty.
• Diversified into banks, life insurance, railroads, publishing, and construction — the right move as Middle Eastern oil eventually undercut Texas prices.
• Died 1969; the New York Times called him "a one-man conglomerate."

Sid Richardson: the reluctant billionaire

• Fired from an after-school job at 16 for laziness; stumbled into oil via livestock trading, pipe hauling, and oil scouting (the industry's intelligence-gathering role).
• Went nearly bankrupt multiple times while Clint thrived; Clint reportedly loaned him money to avoid collapse.
• Lifelong bachelor with no children; took on his nephew Perry Bass as a partner, leaving the fortune to the Bass family.
• Operated in near-total secrecy; Billy Graham, one of his protégés, recalled Richardson's rule: "Don't put anything in writing."
• Paid back a $6,000 debt by driving his new Cadillac around the town square twice so everyone could see, then walking into the bank: "I swung around twice so all the bench warmers could see me good."
• His descendant Sid Bass was the only second-generation heir to grow the fortune — taking a $50 million inheritance to an estimated $5 billion.

H.L. Hunt: the greatest wildcatter and the strangest man

• A self-described superman: convinced his genes were so exceptional that he fathered three families — two secret — totalling roughly 15 children.
• Built his first capital as a professional gambler; allegedly turned his last $100 into $100,000 at the poker table to save his early oil operation.
• His defining move: buying Dad Joyner's East Texas leases when every major oil company dismissed the field as inconsistent. Hunt's conviction: "Great fortunes are built on great convictions."
• Joyner was committing lease fraud (selling the same lease multiple times); Hunt structured a buyout that cleared the legal exposure while securing the asset.
• Once in, drilled like a madman — seven days a week, dawn to late evening — reinvesting all proceeds into more wells.
• The East Texas field produced 4 billion barrels over 50 years. During WWII alone, Hunt's field produced 100 million barrels — more than a third of Texas output and by itself exceeding what the entire Axis powers produced.
• J. Paul Getty: "In terms of extraordinary independent wealth, there is only one man — H.L. Hunt."
• In later years developed a messianic self-image; aides said he believed he was "the second Jesus Christ."
• Drove himself to work in a normal car with a brown bag lunch until his mid-eighties; died of liver cancer in 1974.

The second generation: one winner, three disasters

• Clint Murchison Jr. (founder of the Dallas Cowboys): squandered a $1.5 billion fortune through cocaine, reckless spending, and poor decisions — ending with a negative net worth before his death.
• The Hunt heirs: tried to corner the world silver market on margin; the scheme collapsed, taking one of the greatest family fortunes in American history with it.
• Sid Bass: the sole exception. With partner Richard Rainwater, turned $50 million into $5 billion across 16 years.
  • Bought 5% of Marathon Oil in early 1981 for $148 million; Marathon panicked and sold to US Steel — Bass and Rainwater walked away with $160 million profit.
  • Bought a stake in Texaco; sold back to the company for $400 million profit.
  • Invested $500 million in Walt Disney when the stock was stagnant at $55; pushed the board to hire Michael Eisner; the stake was worth $2.8 billion by the early 1990s.
  • The insight driving each trade: undervalued assets on the public market were cheaper than drilling for equivalent reserves.

The end of the Golden Age

• Middle Eastern and African oil eventually produced at lower cost, eroding the Texas advantage.
• Clint had seen it coming and diversified; the others had not.
• Roy Cullen spent his last years on his ranch playing cards and dominoes at dusk; his wife Lily died two years after him, never adapting to his absence.
• Clint and Sid kept a ritual until the end: both woke at 5 a.m., one would call the other — "What's the dope?" — and they would talk for an hour about investments, peach crops, and everything else.
• Sid Richardson died of a heart attack in his sleep at 68, on one of his ranches near San Antonio.
• The era these four men built — loud, boisterous, money-hungry, and proud — faded with them.