The paint was off it; nothing much more exciting than a crop failure ever happened there.

The main topic of conversation was the weather and, as Mark Twain said, everybody talked about it, but nothing was done.
Within sixty days this soporific village became a roaring bedlam; every town lot was leased, derricks rose out of chicken runs, boilers panted in front yards, mobs of strangers surged through the streets and the air grew shrill with their bickerings.

From a distance, the sky line of the town looked like a thick nest of lattice battle masts, and at night it blazed like Coney Island.
The black-lime territory farther south had proven too expensive for individual operators and small companies to handle, but here the oil was closer to the surface and the ground was easily drilled, hence it quickly became known as a poor man's pool.

Then, too, experienced oil men and the large companies who had seen town-site booms in other states, kept away, surrendering the place to tenderfeet and to promoters.

Of these, thousands came, and never was there a harvest so ripe for their gleaning.
Naturally a little country town like this could not hold the newcomers, therefore Wichita Falls became their headquarters.