On July 1, 1922, sawmill owner Sidney Albert Umsted struck oil near Smackover. Within six months more than 1,000 wells had been drilled, Smackover had grown from about ninety people to 25,000, and a 1925 output of sixty-nine million barrels ranked the forty-square-mile field first in the nation. This museum, on the field's south edge, was built to keep that story. The legislature taxed oil production to fund it in 1977 and brine in 1979, Jack Turner and his wife gave nineteen acres in 1980, and it opened in May 1986 as the Arkansas Oil and Brine Museum before taking its present name in 1997.
Inside, an elevator ride runs from a Jurassic sea floor to the Industrial Revolution, and a veranda modeled on the Rogerson Hotel overlooks a rebuilt Smackover street with a jail, a newspaper office and vintage cars. The exhibits also cover family life in the oil fields and the brine from which bromine is extracted. The boom was not tidy. Without conservation laws the gas pressure escaped, the boom was over by the early 1930s, and saltwater that rose with the oil polluted the landscape. In November 1922 a hooded committee rode through the field to drive out gamblers and saloon keepers, and at least one man was killed.
Outside, the oil field park runs working equipment from the 1920s to today, including a 112-foot derrick like the one at the Busey No. 1 well in El Dorado. Staff offer maps for driving tours of the field.
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