Spindletop Salt Dome, Texas

Famous as the site of the 1901 gusher that started the rush to develop Texas's oil reserves, and once covered in a forest of oil derricks, the Spindletop oil field is largely depleted, and the salt dome of Spindletop is used as an underground storage site for oil and gas. The site of the well of the historic Lucas Gusher is marked with a flagless flagpole, distantly visible from an interpretive overlook on the edge of the site, as the rest of the property is private, and busy with companies building and maintaining the underground storage cavities. A large monument erected at the site in 1941, had to be moved as the ground was subsiding, and the monument was leaning dangerously. The monument is located a few miles away at the Spindletop Gladys City Museum.