Desdemona during the boom

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The tiny peanut-farming hamlet of Desdemona in Eastland County was transformed when oil was struck in 1918. Tents and shacks sprang up all around the town to house speculators and workers who flocked to the area, and the population grew from 340 to 16,000 almost overnight. The vast quantities of oil often overflowed their tanks, polluting streams and creeks and fouling the air. With Desdemona's new-found wealth came epidemics of typhoid and influenza, as well as gambling, prostitution, the Ku Klux Klan, and violent crime. In April 1920 the Texas Rangers had to be sent into Desdemona to keep order in the town. By 1922 the boom was over and the hordes of oil workers moved on.

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Prints and Photographs Collection, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. 1966/160-1.
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