Oil gusher in Tiempo de Dios.
Tiempo de Dios (in English, Time of God) is an area of southeastern Jefferson between Henrytown and New Orleans. It is notable as the site of the first major petroleum discovery in Jefferson in 1863. At the time, it was thought that the discovery was minor compared to the oil fields discovered in the previous decade in the Northern Confederation and Indiana. In 1865, the Tiempo de Dios fields produced only 10,000 barrels of oil. However, as the Tiemop de Dios fields and others in Jefferson were explored, it was realized that the entire state was rich in oil. Businessmen from Jefferson and France rushed to stake claims, and the Jefferson petroleum industry soon came to be dominated by Monte Benedict, who founded the Petroleum of Mexico Corporation in 1874 as part of a deal with Bernard Kramer of Kramer Associates. By 1876, Jefferson's oil fields had surpassed those in Indiana in oil production, and would continue to do so.
Sobel's source for the Tiempo de Dios oil strike is Frederick Montgomery's A Short History of the Mexican Petroleum Industry (London, 1951).