1923 Santa Rita

 UT owns 2,108,966 acres of Texas land. In the mid-1800s, the legislator thought it was worthless and God-forsaken West TX brush country, and at the time, it was. The New York investors who staked corral Cromwell to drill on it were so skeptical they named the project Santa Rita after the Saint of the impossible. Cromwell drilled alone for almost two years, and on May 28th, 1923, she blew in sprang in a mist of oil from 250 yards a reconstruction of the original rig, including oil-soaked Timbers from it Gartley decorates a traffic island in the campus area a commemorative crass but eloquent. The universities 2,000,000 acres happened to include three of the hundred giant oil fields in the united states. Oil now gushes 4th for the university from thousands of oil pumps working in 19 counties. The UT system permanent fund in 1973 was approximated 2/3 of a billion dollars, comparable to Yales and approaching Harvards. The total does not include the value of its oil and gas still in the ground.