Freer, 1932; I guarantee this was a rough joint to hang out in. I even heard stories of this place when I was a kid. Freer is close enough to Mexico you might as well just go ahead and be in Mexico.
The Duval Club was a place for oilfield hands to get an ice cold Lone Star, straight from a tin box filled with block ice, where the slap of a domino on a table and the giggle of senoritas were a welcome relief after a long day working on a rig, or in a ditch, under a scorching, 100 degree sun. It's hard to find a mesquite tree in this country tall enough to offer much shade. If there is one it's usually got a damn snake under it as thick as a 2 3/8ths pup joint.
West and slightly north of Freer, Government Wells Field was discovered in 1927-28 in shallow, Jackson/Yegua sands with tremendous porosity and permeability; this field has cumulative oil production of over 100MM barrels of oil and is still quite commercial, most of what's left of it now water flooded. Upper Eocene Queen City sands were also targeted and other oil fields nearby to Freer, like Loma Novia, Lumbre, Lundell, Hoffman and Seven Sisters Field. Lots of easy money was made in northern Duval County over the years as wells were quite shallow and required little to no stimulation whatsoever...just perforate them and put them on pump.
Deeper, gassier Wilcox sands were discovered in Seven Sisters Field in more recent time and on the right is a photograph I was able snag as we were picking up the old BOP stack off an Amoco blowout in Seven Sisters Field in 1996. The ring gasket let fly like it was shot out of a cannon.
San Diego, Texas, the home of George Parr, the "Duke of Duval, is also in Duval County.
Mr. Parr, you will please recall, helped get Lyndon Baines Johnson elected to the US Senate in 1948 by the narrowest of margins when he "dug up" 300 some odd, dead citizens of Duval County, still on the tax rolls, and got them to all vote for LBJ. Mr. Johnson became a Senator, as a result, eventually Vice President and ultimately President of the United States.