Delta Drilling Company

The Briscoe Center for American History, which holds the company's records, dates Delta Drilling's founding to November 17, 1931 and counts four immigrants and one native Texan among its founders. It began in East Texas and grew into the Rocky Mountains, Louisiana and Illinois, becoming one of the largest private land-based drilling companies in the world. The center also keeps the research for James Presley's company history, Never in Doubt, with oral history interviews of officers and employees and a prospectus for a 1981 public stock offering.

What the plaque says

Delta Drilling Company In response to the East Texas oil boom, Delta Drilling Company was founded in 1931 by Bob Stacy, Sam Dorfman, and Joseph Zeppa. Originally housed in an apartment at this site, the firm moved to Tyler in 1937. Delta drilled many of the oil wells that brought wealth to this part of the state and soon expanded over much of the western hemisphere and into parts of Africa and Europe. The enterprise now includes gas processing plants, exploration and production divisions, and has become a technological leader in land-based drilling operations. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 21 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 22 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• First Methodist Church of Longview — steps away
• General John Gregg — steps away
• O. H. Methvin, Sr., Founder of Longview — steps away
• The Courthouses of Gregg County — steps away