July 16, 2012

Sidney (Sid) Albert Umsted, known as the “Father of the Smackover Oil Field,” drilled the first well in the Smackover (Union County) area, introducing Arkansas’s largest oil discovery. On July 29, 1925, Umsted opened a well that became known as Richardson No. 1, a discovery that created a frenzy of drilling activity in the area. That year, the Smackover field produced more than 77 million barrels of oil and was the largest oil field in the nation at that time.