It started as a rumbling, then turned into a deafening roar as thick black liquid exploded out of the well and shot 50 metres into the air, blowing the top off the derrick and tossing heavy sections of drill pipe around like a handful of matchsticks.

The discovery 100 years ago at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont marked the birth of the modern oil industry in Texas, ushering in a new era of prosperity and making oil as much a part of the Lone Star State's identity as Longhorn cattle and Stetson hats.

Beaumont, in the southeast corner of Texas, will host a day of centennial celebrations tomorrow to commemorate the event as a historic and economic milestone - not only for the region but also for the state and the nation.

Former President George Bush, who struck it rich in the West Texas oilfields before entering politics, will be on hand for the party, which will be topped off with a recreation of the Spindletop gusher that will spew water instead of oil.

The Spindletop discovery challenged the belief, held by most U.S. geologists since Edwin Drake discovered oil in Pennsylvania in 1859, that reserves were mainly concentrated in the East. "It pointed out to Eastern investors and oilmen that there might well be something in Texas," professor Roger Olien of the University of Texas said of the Permian Basin.

Drilling for water had previously led to the accidental discovery of modest amounts of oil in Corsicana, Texas, south of Dallas, but Spindletop was on a completely different scale. "It was the most prolific well this country had ever seen," Olien said. "It was sufficient to get Texas on the map and it launched some companies of international consequence."

Oil had previously been burned in lamps or used to lubricate machinery, but Spindletop triggered further exploration in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana and the large quantities found led to its use as a fuel for ships, railroad locomotives and cars.

None of this could have been foreseen by Pattillo Higgins but the Beaumont lumber merchant had become obsessed with the idea that oil lay beneath Spindletop Hill, a grassy knoll that rose from the flat coastal plain just outside town.

As a young man, Higgins worked in the brutal logging camps of East Texas and lost an arm in a fight, but he turned his life around after attending a Baptist revival meeting. On trips to Spindletop with a Sunday school class he taught, he could smell gas in the air and felt sure oil could be found there too.

In 1892 he persuaded two local businessmen to invest in the Gladys City Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Co, named after a young woman in his Sunday school class. The company drilled at Spindletop in 1893 and 1895 but did not find any oil. Higgins was ridiculed by Beaumont residents for his persistence, but he refused to give up, placing advertisements in magazines and journals for engineers and geologists interested in resuming the search for oil at Spindletop.

One of the ads was spotted by Anthony Lucas, an Austrian mining engineer who became enthusiastic after visiting the site because it was a dome structure, similar to those where he had found traces of oil while mining for salt in Louisiana. Lucas struck a deal with Higgins and drilled at the site in 1899, but success eluded him.

Convinced that Spindletop was worth pursuing, but having exhausted his own resources, Lucas entered into a partnership with James Guffey and John Galey of Pittsburgh, the leading wildcatters of their day, who in turn secured financing from Pittsburgh bankers Andrew and Richard Mellon.

With the project now on a firmer financial footing, Lucas secured the services of the Hamill brothers, who had pioneered the new technique of rotary drilling in Corsicana. Higgins was left with no further stake in the venture.

Drilling began in the autumn of 1900 and the crew took a break at Christmas, resuming their work in the new year, and on January 10 Higgins and Lucas were vindicated when oil spewed out of the well at a rate of 75,000 barrels a day.

Until Spindletop blew in, the best U.S. wells produced no more than 150 barrels a day. It would take Lucas and his team nine days to cap the well and stem the flow of oil. "I have had experience in almost every oil field in the United States and I never saw a well to equal this," Lucas told the Galveston Daily News. "It is a larger geyser than I ever saw in West Virginia or Pennsylvania."

The same newspaper reported in its edition of January 11, 1901, that the discovery triggered a "feverish state of excitement" in Beaumont and had become the sole topic of conversation. The news spread quickly and people began pouring into the sleepy sawmill town, lured by hopes of instant wealth, swelling the population from 9,000 to 50,000 in just a few months.

A scramble for drilling leases sent land prices soaring and widespread fraud led to jokes about "Swindletop." Tents housed thousands of oilfield workers and dozens of saloons, brothels and gambling halls sprang up around them.

More than 200 wells were drilled at Spindletop and some 600 oil and land companies were formed, including early forerunners of Texaco, Gulf and Mobil, three of the "Seven Sisters" that would dominate the oil industry for much of the 20th century.

In 1902 Spindletop produced 17.5 million barrels of oil, about one fifth of the U.S. total, but excessive drilling led to a decline in underground pressure and output and, just 10 years after Lucas struck oil, Spindletop had become a ghost town. But the big discovery kick-started exploration all across Texas, which would go on to establish itself as the largest U.S. oil producer, pulling ahead of California and Oklahoma by 1928.

Pipeline, storage and refining facilities were built in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area and its four major oil refineries and half dozen or so petrochemical plants remain the mainstay of the regional economy. "I don't think dominant would be too strong a word," said professor Gary Moore, Dean of the College of Business at Lamar University in Beaumont, commenting on Spindletop's enduring economic impact on the region.