Charles Sparkman Nicks was a photographer, inventor, and civic participant whose photographs of the 1929-1930 oil discovery in Van, Texas, documented the birth of the new oil town and preserved its history. Born in Tennessee, he moved with his family to Galveston in 1900, where his brothers Allen and Eliga worked as photographers. At age 27 he married Jenny Christian, and during World War I he opened his own photography studio in Nashville, Tennessee. He later took a better-paying job with Socony Vacuum Company photographing new service stations, where he developed a device to measure gasoline accurately, and, with a fellow engineer, also developed a portable darkroom and a digital read-out meter for gasoline pumps. After losing his savings in the financial crash of 1929, he sought work by joining his brother Allen in Tyler. With oil newly discovered in nearby Van, he opened a studio there and became the only professional photographer to record Van's oil discovery and its development as a town. He also took part in civic activities and served as an organizing officer of the Lions Club. His camera preserved the visual history of oil drilling, oil field fires, the confusion and people of boom-town Van, and other East Texas towns, leaving evidence of the efforts, joys, and hardships of the people who shaped Van's formation.