Spindletop & Gladys City Boomtown Museum

Originally platted out by Patillo Higgins in the 1890s, Gladys City was to be a perfect industrial city, featuring factories, schools, churches, homes, parks and businesses. When the Lucas Gusher blew in on January 10, 1901, there was no more time to be perfect. Businessmen (and some women) arrived and started building as quickly as possible to begin servicing oilfield workers and their families. By the early 1970s, nothing much remained of the original Gladys City - situated near Highland Avenue and West Port Arthur Road. In 1976, the re-created Gladys City was built as a Bicentennial project. Once completed, Gladys City was gifted to the state and is now governed by Lamar University. Through a self-guided tour, visitors to Gladys City experience 15 replica buildings filled with objects from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries that depict life during the first Spindletop oil boom. From a saloon and post office to a general store and livery stable, visitors get a glimpse of what it might have been like to work and live in the historic oilfield.