American Well & Prospecting Company

After the strike, the drillers became toolmakers. The Handbook of Texas says Rittersbacher and Johnston turned to repairing rigs, then about 1900 bought rights to the Baker brothers' hydraulic rotary equipment and sold it as Gumbo Buster. A rig built by the company and run by the Hamill brothers drilled the Lucas well at Spindletop in 1901. In World War II the plant made 1,000-pound semi-armor-piercing bombs and 240-millimeter shells and employed 1,000 people at its peak. Bethlehem Steel bought the company in 1944 and closed the plant in 1959.

What the plaque says

American Well & Prospecting Company Organized in Kansas in 1890 by Horace Greeley Johnston (1851-1930) of Ohio and Pennsylvania native Charles Rittersbacher (1857-1919). This company began as a water well drilling business. In 1891 the partners moved to Texas and began drilling in Corsicana. In 1894, while drilling on S. 12th street, they struck crude oil, which led to the discovery of the Corsicana oil field. The firm began making and distributing rotary drilling equipment in 1900. Converted to a munitions plant in World War II, the business was sold to Bethlehem Steel and operated at this site until 1959. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 0.6 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 21 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• First Independent Baptist Church of Corsicana — steps away
• Corsicana Newspapers — steps away
• Alexander Beaton — 0.2 mi
• The Molloy Hotel — 0.3 mi