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"Dry Hole" Traveled to Beat of a Different Drum
By Van Craddock
Davis Harold "Dry Hole" Byrd is the ultimate rags-to-riches story.
The independent petroleum got his nickname because he set the dubious record of drilling 56 consecutive dry holes. But Byrd's fortunes soon changed.
The down-on-his-luck, Longview-based wildcatter made his fortune in the 1930s East Texas Oil Boom. He became a millionaire philanthropist who:
-co-founded the Civil Air Patrol.
-helped create what became LTV Corporation.
-owned the Texas School Book Depository at the time Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly killed President John Kennedy from its sixth-floor window.
-had an Antarctica mountain range named for him by his famed explorer cousin, Admiral Richard Byrd.
-shared his wealth with the University of Texas Longhorn Band, buying the biggest bass drum in the world and giving "Big Bertha" to the organization.
Byrd had studied geology at UT and gotten into the oil business. In the fall of 1930 he loaned wildcatter "Dad" Joiner machinery for a Rusk County well called the Daisy Bradford No. 3. It turned out to be the discovery well for the world's largest oil field.
The 30-year-old Byrd set up shop in Longview's Gregg Hotel (later bought by a fellow named Conrad Hilton). He then secretly bought out the Gregg Abstract Co. and opened an office on the Gregg County Courthouse lawn.
Byrd hired 72 typists from Dallas, one for each volume of county abstracts Byrd was interested in. The wonderful book The Last Boom by James A. Clark and Michel T. Halbouty, explains that:
"As soon as the courthouse opened in the morning, the girls would rush into the county clerk's office and each would get the volume to which she had been assigned. This gave Byrd first claim on the books. When Byrd found acreage he wanted, he could have it checked out by evening and he was able to pay the lease seller immediately."
Almost every lease transaction in Gregg County had to pass through Byrd. Eventually he owned thousands of oil-rich acres and drilled hundreds of wells in partnership with major oil companies. Suddenly, the "Dry Hole" moniker was all but forgotten. The new millionaire became D. Harold Byrd.
He eventually moved to Dallas and used his oil profits to build a financial empire, founding several oil and gas companies (one later bought by Mobil) and delving into real estate and manufacturing.
Always interested in aviation, Byrd helped organize Ling-Temco-Vought (later known as LTV) and invested in his relative's exploration of the North and South poles. In gratitude, Admiral Byrd named an Antarctic range the Harold Byrd Mountains.
Just before World War II began, Byrd and several others founded the Civil Air Patrol. The organization evolved into the official Air Force Auxiliary which does inland search and rescue missions.
In 1939 Byrd bought a Dallas building on Elm Street that came to be called the Texas School Book Depository. The story goes that several weeks after JFK's 1963 death, Byrd had the sixth-floor sniper's window removed and placed on display in his house. The window since has been returned to what today is the Sixth Floor Museum in the infamous downtown building.
The larger-than-life Byrd, who called himself a "free enterpriser", died in 1986 at age 86. Each year the D. Harold Byrd Memorial Scholarship is presented to a Longhorn Band member.