1.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
2.
National Historic Landmark
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A National Historic Landmark is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Of over 85,000 places listed on the countrys National Register of Historic Places, a National Historic Landmark District may include contributing properties that are buildings, structures, sites or objects, and it may include non-contributing properties. Contributing properties may or may not also be separately listed, prior to 1935, efforts to preserve cultural heritage of national importance were made by piecemeal efforts of the United States Congress. The first National Historic Site designation was made for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site on March 17,1938. In 1960, the National Park Service took on the administration of the data gathered under this legislation. Because listings often triggered local preservation laws, legislation in 1980 amended the procedures to require owner agreement to the designations. On October 9,1960,92 properties were announced as designated NHLs by Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, more than 2,500 NHLs have been designated. Most, but not all, are in the United States, there are NHLs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Three states account for nearly 25 percent of the nations NHLs, three cities within these states all separately have more NHLs than 40 of the 50 states. In fact, New York City alone has more NHLs than all but five states, Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, there are 74 NHLs in the District of Columbia. Some NHLs are in U. S. commonwealths and territories, associated states, and foreign states. There are 15 in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other U. S. commonwealths and territories,5 in U. S. -associated states such as Micronesia, over 100 ships or shipwrecks have been designated as NHLs. About half of the National Historic Landmarks are privately owned, the National Historic Landmarks Program relies on suggestions for new designations from the National Park Service, which also assists in maintaining the landmarks. A friends group of owners and managers, the National Historic Landmark Stewards Association, works to preserve, protect, if not already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an NHL is automatically added to the Register upon designation. About three percent of Register listings are NHLs, american Water Landmark List of U. S
3.
Anthony Francis Lucas
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Anthony Francis Lucas was a Croatian-born oil explorer. With Pattillo Higgins he organized the drilling of an oil well near Beaumont and this led to the widespread exploitation of oil and the start of the petroleum age. Lucas was born into a Croatian family of shipbuilders and owners in the city of Split, at the age of 20, Lucas completed studies at the Polytechnical Institute in Graz, Austria and became a mechanical engineer. After entering the Austrian Naval Academy, Lučić served in Pula and Rijeka, in 1879, Lucas visited his uncle in Saginaw, Michigan. There he settled and changed his name to Anthony Francis Lucas, receiving his naturalization papers on May 9,1885 at Norfolk and they moved with their son, Anthony Fitzgerald Lucas, to Washington, D. C. in 1887. He found employment in the industry and later prospected for gold. In 1893, Lucas started to work in salt exploration in Louisiana for a New Orleans company at Petite Anse, most geologists disagreed with Lucas theory. However, as a result of explorations undertaken and his experience, in 1899, Lucas became a drilling contractor and leased land south of Beaumont, Texas from the oil explorer Pattillo Higgins. He believed that the site — Spindletop Hill — was covering a vast pool of crude oil, drilling began in late 1900 but was extremely difficult. At the depth of 60 metres, a layer of sand was found, the new rotating hydraulic drill collapsed upon reaching a depth of approximately 275 metres. Not able to deal with the technical difficulties short on money, Rockefeller passed but not before persuading John H. Galey and James M. Guffey, associates of the Mellon family from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to join the project. After reaching the depth of 370 metres, at 10,30 AM on January 10,1901, the eruption lasted nine days and was stopped by one of Lucass devices. The Lucas Gusher, also called the Lucas Spindletop Gusher, produced around 100,000 barrels of oil a day, the occasion was witnessed by about 50,000 spectators. The population of Beaumont mushroomed from 8,000 to 60,000 within a year, by 1902 as many as 285 wells were operating on Spindletop Hill and over 600 oil companies had been chartered. Lucas possessed just a share in a company he helped to establish. Because of this and other reasons, he left the company at the end of 1901, the Lucas Gusher helped revolutionize world fuel use and transformed the economy of southeast Texas. It helped further the development of the combustion engine automobile since significant amounts of energy were needed for fuel, the city of Houston become the national center of the oil industry, with the United States surpassing Russia as the worlds leading producer. Anthony Francis Lucas is considered to be the founder of modern petroleum reservoir engineering and he later served as a consulting engineer in Romania, Russia, Mexico, Algeria, as well as in the United States
4.
Blowout (well drilling)
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A blowout is the uncontrolled release of crude oil and/or natural gas from an oil well or gas well after pressure control systems have failed. Modern wells have blowout preventers intended to prevent such an occurrence, prior to the advent of pressure control equipment in the 1920s, the uncontrolled release of oil and gas from a well while drilling was common and was known as an oil gusher, gusher or wild well. An accidental spark during a blowout can lead to an oil or gas fire. Gushers were an icon of oil exploration during the late 19th, during that era, the simple drilling techniques such as cable-tool drilling and the lack of blowout preventers meant that drillers could not control high-pressure reservoirs. When these high pressure zones were breached, the oil or natural gas would travel up the well at a high rate, a well which began as a gusher was said to have blown in, for instance, the Lakeview Gusher blew in in 1910. These uncapped wells could produce large amounts of oil, often shooting 200 feet or higher into the air, a blowout primarily composed of natural gas was known as a gas gusher. Despite being symbols of wealth, gushers were dangerous and wasteful. To complicate matters further, the free flowing oil was—and is—in danger of igniting, one dramatic account of a blowout and fire reads, With a roar like a hundred express trains racing across the countryside, the well blew out, spewing oil in all directions. Casings wilted like lettuce out of water, as heavy machinery writhed and twisted into grotesque shapes in the blazing inferno. The development of drilling techniques where the density of the drilling fluid is sufficient to overcome the downhole pressure of a newly penetrated zone meant that gushers became avoidable. If however the density was not adequate or fluids were lost to the formation. In 1924 the first successful blowout preventer was brought to market, the BOP valve affixed to the wellhead could be closed in the event of drilling into a high pressure zone, and the well fluids contained. Well control techniques could be used to control of the well. As the technology developed, blowout preventers became standard equipment, in the modern petroleum industry, uncontrollable wells became known as blowouts and are comparatively rare. There has been significant improvement in technology, well control techniques, from 1976 to 1981,21 blowout reports are available. The earliest known oil gusher, in 1815, actually resulted from an attempt to drill for salt, joseph Eichar and his team were digging west of the town of Wooster, Ohio, along Killbuck Creek, when they struck oil. In a written retelling by Eichars daughter, Eleanor, the strike produced a spontaneous outburst, Oil drillers struck a number of gushers near Oil City, Pennsylvania in 1861. The most famous was the Little & Merrick well, which began gushing oil on 17 April 1861, other early gushers in northwest Pennsylvania were the Phillips #2 in September 1861, and the Woodford well in December 1861
5.
Texas oil boom
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The find was unprecedented in its size and ushered in an age of rapid regional development and industrialization that has few parallels in U. S. history. Texas quickly became one of the oil producing states in the U. S. along with Oklahoma and California. By 1940 Texas had come to dominate U. S. production, some historians even define the beginning of the worlds Oil Age as the beginning of this era in Texas. Spindletop and the Joiner strike in East Texas, at the outset of the Great Depression, were the key strikes that launched this era of change in the state and this period had a transformative effect on Texas. At the turn of the century, the state was predominantly rural with no large cities, by the end of World War II, the state was heavily industrialized, and the populations of Texas cities had broken into the top 20 nationally. The city of Houston was among the greatest beneficiaries of the boom, the city grew from a small commercial center in 1900 to one of the largest cities in the United States during the decades following the era. This period, however, changed all of Texas commercial centers and developed the Beaumont/Port Arthur area, H. Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Sid W. Richardson, and Clint Murchison were the four most influential businessmen during this era. These men became among the wealthiest and most politically powerful in the state, several events in the 19th century have been regarded as a beginning of oil-related growth in Texas, one of the earliest being the opening of the Corsicana oil field in 1894. The Spindletop strike of 1901, at the time the worlds most productive petroleum well ever found, is considered by most historians as the beginning point and this single discovery began a rapid pattern of change in Texas and brought worldwide attention to the state. As production peaked in some of smaller fields and the Great Depression lowered demand. In the major refining and manufacturing such as Beaumont, Houston, and Dallas. By the end of the war, the economies of the urban areas of the state had matured. Localized booms in West Texas and other areas, however, continued to some small communities during the post-war period. Following the American Civil War, Texass economy began to develop rapidly centered heavily on cattle ranching and cotton farming, Galveston became the worlds top cotton shipping port and Texas largest commercial center. By 1890, however, Dallas had exceeded Galvestons population, in 1900 a massive hurricane struck Galveston, destroying much of the city. That and another storm in 1915 shifted much of the focus from investors away from Galveston and toward nearby Houston, because of these events, the coming oil boom became heavily centered on the city of Houston both as a port and a commercial center. In the 1850s, the process to distill kerosene from petroleum was invented by Abraham Gesner, the demand for the petroleum as a fuel for lighting around the world quickly grew. Petroleum exploration developed in parts of the world with the Russian Empire, particularly the Branobel company in Azerbaijan
6.
Beaumont, Texas
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Beaumont is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Texas in the United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. Beaumont was founded as a town in 1835 by Northerners, the early European-American settlement had an economy based on the development of lumber, farming, and port industries. Rice became an important commodity crop in Texas, and is now cultivated in 23 counties, a big change occurred in 1901 with the Spindletop gusher, which demonstrated the potential of the huge oil field. With Spindletop, several companies developed in Beaumont, and some continue. The area rapidly developed as one of the major petro-chemical refining areas in the country, along with Port Arthur and Orange, Beaumont forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the Texas Gulf Coast. Beaumont is home of Lamar University, a national Carnegie Doctoral Research university with 14,966 students, including undergraduates and post graduates. Over the years, several corporations have been based in this city, gSUs Edison Plaza headquarters is still the tallest building in Beaumont. In 1824 Noah and Nancy Tevis settled on the west bank of the Neches River, soon after that, a small community grew up around the farm, which was named Tevis Bluff or Neches River Settlement. They began planning a town to be out on this land. Their partnership, J. P. Pulsifer and Company, controlled the first 50 acres upon which the town was founded and this town was named Beaumont, after Jefferson Beaumont, the brother-in-law of Henry Millard. They added more property for a total of 200 acres, Beaumont became a town on 16 December 1838. Beaumonts first mayor was Alexander Calder, from the towns founding in 1835, business activities included real estate, transportation, and retail sales. Later, other businesses were formed, especially in construction and operation, new building construction, lumber sales. The Port of Beaumont became a regional shipping center. Beaumont was a center for cattle raisers and farmers in its early years. With an active riverport by the 1880s, it became an important lumber and it exported rice as a commodity crop. The Beaumont Rice Mill, founded in 1892 by Joseph Eloi Broussard, was the first commercially successful rice mill in Texas, in addition, Broussard founded a company to operate an irrigation system to support rice culture. This helped stimulate the expansion of cultivation from 1500 acres in 1892 to 400,000 acres in 23 counties by his death in 1956
7.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
8.
Salt dome
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A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when a thick bed of evaporite minerals found at depth intrudes vertically into surrounding rock strata, forming a diapir. It is important in geology because salt structures are impermeable. The formation of a salt dome begins with the deposition of salt in a marine basin. This indicates that a period of episodic flooding and evaporation of the basin must occur. Over time, the layer of salt is covered with deposited sediment, the overlying sediment will undergo compaction, causing an increase in density and therefore a decrease in buoyancy. Unlike clastics, pressure has a smaller effect on the density of salt due to its crystal structure. The ductility of salt initially allows it to deform and flow laterally. The vertical growth of these salt pillows creates pressure on the surface, causing extension. Possible forces that drive the flow of salt are differential loading on the source layer, forces that resist this flow are the mass of the roof block and the blocks inherent resistance to faulting, aka strength. If the diapir is narrow its height must be greater, eventually, over millions of years, the salt will pierce and break through the overlying sediment, first as a dome-shaped and then a mushroom-shaped - fully formed salt diapir. If the rising salt diapir breaches the surface, it can become a salt glacier. In cross section, these large domes may be anywhere from 1 to 10 kilometres across, typical structures of active diapirism are a central crestal graben flanked by flaps that rotate upward and outward. Reverse faults can separate the flaps from the overburden, normal faults create the crestal graben and propagate downward. New faults form farther outward as the dome arch becomes more intense and these structures occur beneath the surface and are not necessarily associated with the dome at the surface. Emergence of the dome will not occur unless the dome is very wide or tall relative to the overburdens thickness, if a salt dome has not pierced the surface they can found located beneath the surface in various ways. The unique surficial structures can be observed as indicating the salt dome beneath the surface, Salt domes can also be interpreted from seismic reflection where the stark density contrast between the salt and surrounding sediments outlines the salt structures. Salt domes can also be associated with springs and natural gas vents. The first salt dome was discovered in 1890 when an oil well was drilled into Spindletop Hill near Beaumont TX
9.
Oil field
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An oil field or oilfield is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over an area, possibly several hundred kilometres across. In addition, there may be exploratory wells probing the edges, pipelines to transport the oil elsewhere, because an oil field may be remote from civilization, establishing a field is often an extremely complicated exercise in logistics. This goes beyond requirements for drilling, to include associated infrastructure, for instance, workers require housing to allow them to work onsite for months or years. In turn, housing and equipment require electricity and water, in cold regions, pipelines may need to be heated. Also, excess gas may be burned off if there is no way to make use of it—which requires a furnace, chimney. More than 40,000 oil fields are scattered around the globe, on land, the largest are the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia and the Burgan Field in Kuwait, with more than 60 billion barrels estimated in each. Most oil fields are much smaller, according to the US Department of Energy, as of 2003 the US alone had over 30,000 oil fields. In the modern age, the location of oil fields with oil reserves is a key underlying factor in many geopolitical conflicts. The term oilfield is also used as a shorthand to refer to the petroleum industry. However, it is accurate to divide the oil industry into three sectors, upstream, midstream and downstream. Oil Fields from Space - nighttime satellite images showing fields around the world
