LOCAL Houston | The City Guide September 2016 | Page 62

“WHO WAS...?” GEORGE W. STRAKE

GEORGE W. STRAKE

Photography courtesy of www.countygenweb.com

Photography courtesy of St. Joseph Medical Center

By Tim Moloney

The GEORGE W. STRAKE Building at St. Joseph Medical Center, Strake Jesuit
College Prep, the Boy Scouts’ Camp Strake….just who was this man whose
family name can be found throughout the Houston area?
Born in 1894 in St. Louis, Missouri, George William Strake was a pioneer oilman and philanthropist. He was educated in the public schools of St. Louis and
received a B.S. degree from St. Louis University in 1917. He served in the
United States Army Air Corps in World War I, then worked in the oil industry
in Mexico from 1919 to 1925. Afterwards, he went to Havana, Cuba, where
he lost almost all of the $250,000 he had made in Mexico.
In 1927, Strake moved to the Houston area and, as an independent oilman,
leased land near Conroe. His 8,500 acres of South Texas Development
Company land was the largest block of land leased up to that time for oil exploration. Geologists claimed that no oil was to be found there, however, and
Strake could not get outside financial backing; nevertheless, after drilling many
dry wells, he struck oil in December 1931.

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Other successful wells followed in th