The Conroe Oil Field became one of the great petroleum areas of the Texas coastal region after opening on December 13, 1931, with George Strake's discovery well, No. 1 South Texas Development Company, about 1.4 miles west of here, which initially flowed 15,000,000 cubic feet of gas along with white gasoline. Strake's second well, a 900-barrel-a-day producer, and the Heep Oil Corp. No. 1 Freeman, both coming in during June 1932, proved the existence of a large field and led to fast-paced drilling. In January 1933, Madeley No. 1 of Kansas Standard came in as a wild well and on fire; TNT charges and tons of earth did not smother it, and it burned about three months. Cratering spread to the nearby Harrison and Abercrombie well, and that also gushed out of control. In January 1934, a driller for Humble killed the blowout by using directional drilling for the first time in coastal Texas, saving the field. The crater is 600 feet deep. The Conroe field was the first in Texas to adopt 20-acre spacing before this became mandatory under conservation rules. It has yielded over 400,000,000 barrels of oil, now produces at the yearly rate of 5,300,000 barrels, and after the dramatic discovery there Montgomery County developed eleven other oil fields and retained reserves for continuing production.