Miles Franklin Yount

Miles Franklin "Frank" Yount (born January 31, 1880 in Monticello, Arkansas, died November 13, 1933 in Beaumont, Texas) eventually came to head up one of the most successful, private oil companies in the United States.

Although famous in later years as the "Godfather of Beaumont", Frank’s early life is shrouded in mystery. After his father’s death at age fifty, Frank was forced to leave school and take on the mantle of additional responsibilities. In 1897, however, he and a younger brother, Sullie, left Arkansas and traveled to the Texas Gulf Coast. In the beginning, they made their living digging irrigation canals for rice farmers, and later the two became water-well drillers, until finally, they succumbed to oil fever.

Beaumont was home to the famous Lucas Gusher that brought in the great Spindletop Oil Boom of 1901. At age twenty-four, Frank began his quest for oil riches that led him to such boom towns as Sour Lake, Saratoga, and Batson. He teamed up with another future Texas giant, John Henry Phelan, but he never made any serious inroads at discovering oil until he formed a partnership with Thomas Peter Lee, an oil investor based out of Houston. Lee provided the funds and allowed Yount the freedom to drill where and when he wanted.

With the formation of the Yount-Lee Oil Company on December 22, 1914, Yount made his mark in the area of deep drilling, much of that on the flanks of old oil fields thought to be depleted. In 1923, he moved his company from Sour Lake to Beaumont, where he and wife Pansy, bought and renovated “El Ocaso,” a magnificent mansion located on Calder Avenue, known once as “Millionaires’ Row.”

In Beaumont, Yount formed a working relationship with Marrs McLean, “The Second Prophet of Spindletop.” McLean held most of the leases at Spindletop Oil Field which by 1923, according to a majority of oil experts, had run its course. Yount took over McLean’s leases, and entered agreements with other property owners in and around the old field. To the surprise of most, on November 14, 1925, Yount-Lee brought in a well that regenerated Spindletop, and from that point, the company grew by leaps and bounds.

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