Night Time in the Oil Fields, Dallas, TX, 1946

About this postcard

Night view of an oil field: a row of tall steel derricks outlined in strings of electric lights against a dark sky, with low sheds and small buildings at their base along a road in the foreground. Illuminated rigs were a common sight in the Texas oil fields of the 1930s and 1940s, when drilling spread across the state and crews worked around the clock, and night views of the fields became a stock postcard subject. The card was mailed from Dallas in February 1946 by a woman named Lucille, who had just made a sixteen-hour trip from Kansas City and was waiting for a flight to Birmingham, Alabama, where she had taken a job as a radio operator with Delta Air Lines.