Houston, Texas was built on oil. Well, technically it was built on a swamp, but it’s oil that brought life to this town.
Houston was born on August 30, 1836 when founding fathers Augustus and John Kirby Allen put an ad out with land for sale. They boasted that it was well-developed and steamboats were coming up Buffalo Bayou. None of this was true. The place was a muddy mess with no infrastructure, but plenty of mosquitos. We still have the mosquitos.
Houston had a rough start, many found it to be a miserable place. I can believe it, especially without A/C. It was the eruption of Spindletop on January 10, 1901 in nearby Beaumont that turned this town into a boomtown.
I used the book “Houston Through the Years, 115 Years of Telling the Story of the Bayou City” by the staff of the Houston Chronicle, for the information about this box.
This image is what inspired me to create this cigar box. I printed it on water decal paper and affixed it to the inside of the box.
I used hobby wood to build the oil derrick
I used black acrylic paint and mixed it with some Mod Podge and gold powder to create the oil. Black gold!
