This biography is part of the series Pioneering women in Earth Sciences – the link will take you to the main page.
Many of the internet accounts of Reba Masterson’s exploits have been extracted from Robbie Gries, 2017. Anomalies: Pioneering Women In Petroleum Geology 1917-2017. Gries herself is a more recent pioneer, being the first woman president of the American Association of Petroleum Geology in 2000-2001, the only women elected to the Houston Geological Society Legend Series, one of the first women admitted to the Denver Petroleum Club, consultant, and founder of Priority Oil & Gas, LLC.
Reba Masterson’s reputation as the first female petroleum geologist is founded on her fierce independence and determination to succeed in a male-dominated profession. In many respects, the petroleum geology world at the turn of the 20th C was no different to other male-dominated disciplines, whether it was scientific, business, or politics. The early petroleum exploration and development scene was a rough and tumble affair, and women were considered unfit physically and mentally as full participants. The perception that women were unsuited for such tasks was pervasive across a broad spectrum of roles in society. Many learned scientific societies, particularly in Britain and Europe, commonly used the excuse that women were unsuited to the rigours of debate to actively exclude them from membership.
American universities and colleges were generally ahead of their British and European counterparts in allowing women to enrol in degree programs; a few of the Ivy League establishments were exceptions to this trend. The University of Texas (Austin) was founded in 1883, with 58 women in the initial cohort of 221 students. A formal geology program began in 1888 – now the Jackson School of Geosciences. In her book Anomalies, Robbie Gries records that Reba Masterson enrolled in geology in 1908, but left the program in 1912 without completing her degree; the reason for leaving UT is not recorded. That same year she enrolled at the University of Colorado, which was founded as coeducational in 1877, with a formal geology program developed in 1902. She was one of only two women students in the 1912 cohort (Cottrell, 1993,). Reba graduated in 1916 aged 34, although her final papers were apparently finished off-campus.
Masterson immersed herself in local activities at both universities, joining chapters of Kappa Kappa Gamma (a sorority founded in 1870) and the YWCA. She joined the Houston Geological Society in 1923 as a founding member (Ellisor, 1947), and that same year she joined the American Association of Petroleum Geologists as one of seven women among the 74 members (AAPG was founded in 1917); she continued her membership in AAPG for the rest of her life. By this time, she had already worked as an independent geologist and oil lease scout in Kansas, Illinois, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Kentucky (Gries, 2017).
Reba’s father worked the Texas oil patch, including the inevitable litigation (presumably centred on property leasing, a common cause of litigation), so she was likely aware of the rough and tumble in dealing with the legal wrangling over mineral rights, proprietary geological information, and the general negativity associated with a woman encroaching on male territory. She even received death threats (probably anonymously – they usually are) to dissuade her from testifying in one court case. Her father’s response was to give her a .32 calibre pistol that she carried on most of her travels.
Most oil companies at the time did not allow women to work on drilling rig sites. Masterson probably had to content herself with leasing prospective properties based on her understanding of the local geology and observing the actual drilling from the sidelines. She had lost her mother during the 1900 Galveston hurricane and must have decided to return home in the aftermath of the August 1915 Galveston storm. Fortuitously Reba was present as an observer when the first Damon Mound discovery was made (about 50 km southwest of Galveston). Her family had invested in the Damon Mound Masterson #10 well that proved to be a gusher.
Robbie Gries tells another tale of Reba driving 450 km in her 1929 Model T to Henderson, Texas (about 220 km east of Dallas), to a play developed by Dad Joiner on the Daisy Bradford lease. She had heard rumours of a third well and opted to observe the final stages from a distance, along with 100s of other rubberneckers. The Daisy Bradford #3 was a “gusher” (October 1930) that heralded production from one of the largest oil fields in east Texas. There is also a tale of Reba losing an oil lease to Dad Joiner in a poker game (his real name was Columbus Marion Joiner). Joiner has also been called a “conman and scammer” – perhaps he was as adept at cards as he was in fooling potential investors (Mose Buchele, 2025).
Reba Masterson had become adept at using her knowledge of stratigraphy and geological structures to identify promising leases. Despite push-back from competing oil companies and individuals, she had amassed the mineral rights to more than 20 properties in Texas at the time of death on September 22, 1969. In addition, she acquired a tungsten mine near Nederland, Colorado prior to World War Two, that was probably quite lucrative during the war. It appears that Reba was not above the occasional assay fudge to maintain the mineral claim, adding a bit of ‘dirt’ to increase tonnage – maybe this was an expression of the rough and tumble approach she might have learned from her father, or contacts like Dad Joiner.
References and other Links
Elva Ellisor, 1947. Rockhounds of Houston: An informal history of the Houston Geological Society (link to PDF).
D.M. Cottrell, 1996. The Evolution of Women’s Education in Texas, Texas Historical Association, Texas A&M University Press. Updated 2023.
Robbie Gries, 2017. Anomalies: Pioneering Women In Petroleum Geology 1917-2017, published by JeWeL, 2017. Many of the internet accounts of her exploits have been taken from Gries’ work. See also A Conversation with HGS Legend Robbie Gries, Houston Geological Society.
AAPG and AAPG Foundation, 2018: “Rock Stars: Pioneering Women in Petroleum Geology,” A documentary based on Robbie Gries’ book Anomalies.
AAPG and AAPG Foundation, 2018. Rock Stars, Part 2 – Flexing Their Muscles.
Robbie Gries, 2021. Women Geologists in the Petroleum Industry. In: Encyclopedia of Petroleum Geoscience (2017) – the article is based on the book she wrote. Springer Nature Link
Mose Buchele, 2025. How an oilfield con artist helped turn Texas into the energy capital of America. The Disconnect, KUT News.