Lamar University Alum donates oil maps to Special Collections
January 23, 2020 | by Penny Clark, McKenzie Scoggins
Kevin Grinnell, a Lamar graduate and former president of the Advisory Board of Center of Education Innovation and Digital Learning, donated 96 historic oil and gas maps documenting Texas and Louisiana to
Archivist Penny Clark receives maps from Kevin Grinnell.
Lamar University’s Special Collections.
The maps, which span the 1930s through the 1960s, illustrate land ownership and location of wells from a bird’s eye perspective. “This collection is a fine addition to our petroleum history holdings,” said Lamar University Archivist Penny Clark.
Edgar Tobin Aerial Surveys of San Antonio along with Zingery Map Company of Houston created a majority of the maps. Tobin, a World War I flying ace, was a pioneer of aerial cartography, which he parlayed into a million-dollar mapping corporation, one of the best mapping companies in the world.
The maps depict local landscapes and the evolution of their uses before the creation of modern highways.
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