Texas Is Hiding Something Nobody Talks About

On January 10, 1901, a hill outside Beaumont, Texas, erupted with a column of oil more than a hundred feet high — and that was only a clue. Texas is sitting on oceans that vanished long before the first dinosaurs: the highest mountain in the state is a fossil reef, salt from a dried-up sea swallows oil fields, ancient seawater bursts out of old wells, and America's emergency oil is stored inside salt domes. Along the way: a city that jacked itself up out of the sea, fifteen million bats that show up on weather radar, dinosaur footprints that appear when a river runs dry, and the ground in West Texas that has started to sink, swell and shake. 0:00 Spindletop, 1901 0:40 What Texas is hiding 1:21 Part 1 · The Size 1:52 The country that kept its land 2:26 A border that won't sit still 2:58 Part 2 · The Vanished Sea 3:34 Salt and the Wink Sink 4:09 How a sea became oil 4:39 The water nobody talks about 5:16 Geysers in the desert 5:44 Part 3 · The Other Sea 6:22 America's emergency oil, inside salt 6:47 Dinosaur footprints 7:17 The asteroid next door 7:47 Galveston, 1900 8:16 The city that lifted itself 8:53 Part 4 · Underground 9:19 The Edwards Aquifer 9:51 Flash Flood Alley 10:22 Almost no natural lakes 10:56 Part 5 · Running Dry 11:32 The sea moves in 11:58 Palo Duro and the Ogallala 12:36 The river that stops short 13:01 The ground is moving 13:24 What Texas is really hiding So what do you think Texas runs out of first — the oil, or the water? Tell me in the comments.