But Harry Sinclair's plans were much more ambitious than anyone envisioned. With part of the cash from the $20 million financing acquired in New York, and as trades for corporate stock, Sinclair judiciously bought from among hundreds of bargains offered to him by hard-pressed independents. He added 8,000 barrels daily of crude oil in the proven Oklahoma fields of Healdton, Nowata, and the Osage Indian lands. Many of these buys continued to produce at the Sinclair Oil Corporation's Fiftieth birthday. In mid-summer he reached out northward to the new El Dorado field in Kansas, linking production there by pipeline to his refinery at Chanute. Also, he struck far southward, and again found a fabulous area: leases in the Damon Mound field in Brazoria County, on the Texas Gulf coast. These yielded 65 million barrels of crude oil during the next half century. On unproved land, the Company had forty rigs drilling wildcat wells.

Then came a coup--his friends said it was typical Sinclair luck--which guaranteed success. A hundred miles west of Tulsa, a Sinclair wildcat penetrated a rich new oil basin with production at several depths. Sinclair had more than half the productive acreage under lease in this new Garber field. The oil was so rich that it sold for a premium price of $1.50 per barrel.

Now the founder invited his New York bankers to see the new oil empire. By special train he escorted what the Tulsa newspapers described as "the biggest concentration of capital in the history of Oklahoma." The gratified directors agreed to an ambitious expansion into one of the best retail markets in the world: the upper Midwest.

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