Although natural gas had been discovered as early as 1922, the vast potential of the Hugoton-Panhandle field was not known until a 1927 well about 2,600 feet below the surface southwest of Hugoton.

In southwestern Kansas, the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton is above a giant natural gas producing area (in red) that extends 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.

A small museum sits above a giant natural gas field.

In far southwestern Kansas, the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton opened on May 16, 1961. It educates visitors about one of the largest natural gas fields in North America.

Every year Hugoton – the state’s “natural gas capital” – hosts as an annual “Gas Capital Car Show & Rod Run” that takes place on the fourth Saturday in August. The community’s museum, founded by Gladys Renfro, curator, and a few dedicated volunteers, serves “as a memento of the Hugoton gas field and the progressive development of Stevens County.”

The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum includes the Santa Fe Train Depot in Hugoton, Kansas.

The 14-county Kansas gas field, part of a larger group extending 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, has produced more than 29 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, notes the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS).

About 11,000 wells produce both oil and gas in the Kansas portion of the Hugoton area – and thousands of miles of pipeline carry Hugoton gas throughout the United States.

“Hugoton production is a major source of natural gas and oil for the state and the nation,” KGS says, adding that the economic value produced in 14 counties of southwest Kansas exceeds 50 percent of all gas and oil produced in the state. “The major gas fields of this area have produced enough gas to supply every household in Kansas for 364 years.”

“Hugoton-Panhandle gas provides the world’s largest source of helium from which the U.S. Government has drawn a 40 year supply stockpile and spacecraft and other industries obtain current needs,” notes a monument in Guymon, Oklahoma.

Although natural gas had been discovered as early as 1922, near Liberal, Kansas, that well did not produce oil – so it was considered of little value and remained unused for several years, explains KGS.

“In 1927, gas was discovered at the Independent Oil and Gas Company’s Crawford No. 1, about 2,600 feet below the surface southwest of Hugoton,” says KGS. In 1929, Argus Pipe Line Company started construction of a pipeline to furnish gas to Dodge City.

Beginning in the 1930s, Phillips Petroleum Company produced Hugoton natural gas from 3,000 feet deep in Texas County, Oklahoma. “This field with subsequent deeper discoveries of oil and gas has provided landowners with royalty revenue and cheap fuel,” explains an historic marker in a Guymon, Oklahoma, park.

“There are nearly 8,000 producing oil or gas wells in Texas County today,” the historic marker notes. “For 75 years, the county has been one of the largest sources of revenue for the state of Oklahoma through taxes on oil and gas production.”

The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum, 905 S. Adams Street in Hugoton, today includes early oil patch equipment, restored buildings – including an historic Santa Fe Hugoton Train Depot – an 1887 school house and home, a grocery store, and a barber shop. A natural gas well drilled in 1945 is still producing at the museum.

A 2004 Hugoton Asset Management Project brought together KGS and eight industry partners in the Hugoton field – to build a “knowledge and technical base required for intelligent stewardship, identification of new opportunities, and continued improvement in recovery strategies.”

Editor’s Note – Natural gas shale discoveries (and advanced production technologies) have overtaken the Hugoton’s once dominant role. In 2009, the Hugoton gas area produced 328 billion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the ninth largest source of gas in America.

Significant natural gas shale discoveries in the Fayetteville, Arkansas, region (2004) and Haynesville, Louisiana, region (2008) have estimated production volumes of 517 billion cubic feet and 204 billion cubic feet respectively.

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On May 12, 2007 - as part of statehood centennial celebrations – state-of-the-art petroleum museums opened in Ponca City and Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

A circa 1880s Continental Oil Company horse-drawn tank wagon welcomes visitors to the Conoco Museum in Ponca City, Oklahoma, which opened in 2007. Phillips Petroleum Company, once headquartered 70 miles east in Bartlesville, merged with Conoco in 2002.

The Conoco Museum tells the story of a petroleum company that began as a small kerosene distributor serving 19th century pioneer America.

“These museums reaffirm our Oklahoma roots,” proclaimed Jim Mulva, chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips, which built the Conoco Museum in Ponca City and the Phillips Museum in Bartlesville as “gifts to the people of Oklahoma, visitors to the state, and our employee and retiree populations around the world.” Read the rest of this entry »

Outside the Page Museum of Los Angeles, life-size replicas of several extinct mammals are featured at the Rancho La Brea in Hancock Park. Although commonly called the “tar pits,” the pools are actually comprised of asphalt.

The La Brea “tar pits,” discovered on August 3, 1769, by Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola, exemplify the many natural petroleum seeps of southern California.

“We proceeded for three hours on a good road; to the right were extensive swamps of bitumen which is called chapapote,” Franciscan friar Juan Crespi noted in a diary of the expedition. “We debated whether this substance, which flows melted from underneath the earth, could occasion so many earthquakes.” Read the rest of this entry »

His 1939 “Oil Fields of Graham” today remains on display in its original Texas oil patch community’s historic U.S. Postal Service building – now a museum.

Born in Memphis, Missouri, on February 22, 1898, Alexandre Hogue will become known for his paintings of southwestern scenes during the Great Depression – including murals of the 1930s petroleum industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Oil scouts like Justus McMullen often braved harsh winters (and sometimes armed guards) to visit well sites. Their intelligence debunked rumors and “demystified” reports about oil wells producing in early oil fields.

In the hard winter of 1888, famed 37-year-old “oil scout” Justus C. McMullen, succumbs to pneumonia – contracted while scouting production data from the Pittsburgh Manufacturers’ Gas Company’s well at Cannonsburg.

McMullen, publisher of the Bradford, Pennsylvania, “Petroleum Age” newspaper, already had contributed much to America’s early petroleum industry as a reliable the oil field detective. Read the rest of this entry »

Petroleum exhibits in Luling’s restored 1885 mercantile store describe n ahistoric 1922 discovery.

In 1924, the Luling oilfield had almost 400 wells producing about 11 million barrels of oil.

Once known as the toughest town in Texas, visitors to Luling on the first Saturday in April now find the streets crowded with families enjoying the “Roughneck BBQ and Chili Cook-Off.”

“Best ribs in the country,” says Reader’s Digest.

Crowds rally again in Luling beginning on the last Thursday in June for the Watermelon Thump Festival – and Seed-Spitting Contest.

The Guinness Book of World Records documents the contest’s still unbeaten distance of 68 feet, 9 and 1/8 inches set in 1989. Read the rest of this entry »

Surrounded by 20 acres of woodlands, the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources, seven miles north of El Dorado – in equally historic Smackover – exhibits the state’s petroleum history.

When the Busey-Armstrong No. 1 well struck oil on January 10, 1921, it catapulted the population of nearby El Dorado, Arkansas, from 4,000 to 25,000.

“Twenty-two trains a day were soon running in and out of El Dorado,” noted the Arkansas Gazette as the state legislature announced plans for a special legislative railway excursion to visit the oil well in Union County.

H.L. Hunt arrived with a borrowed $50 and joined the lease traders and speculators at the Garrett Hotel – where fortunes were being made and lost. Hunt will get his start as an oilman in El Dorado and make his fortune a decade later in East Texas.

Located on a hill a little over a mile southwest of El Dorado, the derrick was plainly visible from the town, according to A. R. and R. B. Buckalew in their The Discovery of Oil in South Arkansas, 1920-1924.

The Buckalews explain that three “gassers” had been completed in the general vicinity but had produced no oil in commercial quantity. Read the rest of this entry »

“Michigan Oil & Gas History,” a 2005 Clarke Historical Library exhibit at Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant.

In 1860, Michigan State Geologist Alexander Winchell reported that oil and natural gas deposits lay under Michigan’s surface. First commercial production was at Port Huron, where twenty-two wells were drilled, beginning in 1886.

Total output was small. Michigan’s first oil boom was at Saginaw, where production began about 1925. About three hundred wells were drilled here by 1927, when Muskegon’s “Discovery Well” drew oil men from all over the country to that field.

The Mt. Pleasant field, opened in 1928, helped make Michigan one of the leading oil producers of the eastern United States. Mount Pleasant became known as the “Oil Capital of Michigan.” Efforts of the industry itself resulted in excellent state laws regulating petroleum output. Well depths ranged from one thousand to six thousand feet. Read the rest of this entry »

Several oil and natural gas museums educate visitors about an early fire-fighting technology. Especially in the Great Plains, frequent lightening strikes causes oil tank fires. At a safe distance, cannons were used to shoot holes in the base of burning tanks, allowing oil to drain into a holding pit until the fire was out.

A cloud of black smoke marks the site of an early oil tank fire being fought with oil field artillery as spectators look on. This rare photograph is from the collection of the Butler County History Center & Kansas Oil Museum in El Dorado. The museum features a cannon exhibit, a large collection of antique drilling rigs — and a recreated boom town.

“Oil Fires, like Battles, are fought by Artillery” is the catchy phrase in an 1880s magazine article:

Lightning had struck the derrick, followed pipe connections into a nearby tank and ignited natural gas, which rises from freshly produced oil. Immediately following this blinding flash, the black smoke began to roll out.

“A Thunder-Storm in the Oil Country,” an October 22, 1884, article in Tech magazine, describes what happened next:

“Without stopping to watch the burning tank-house and derrick, we followed the oil to see where it would go. By some mischance the mouth of the ravine had been blocked up and the stream turned abruptly and spread out over the alluvial plain.

“Here, on a large smooth farm, were six iron storage tanks, about 80 feet in diameter and 25 feet high, each holding 30,000 barrels of oil. The burning oil spread with fearful rapidity over the level surface, and finally touched the sides of the nearest tank. Read the rest of this entry »

Since 1896, when the first commercial oil well was drilled in Bartlesville, many historic Oklahoma oilfields have been discovered: Glennpool, Cushing, Three Sands, Healdton, Oklahoma City and others – including 20 “giants.” Few have had the tremendous economic impact as the late 1920s oilfields of the greater Seminole area. 

Prosperity brought traffic jams to Seminole, Oklahoma, in the mid-1920s when newly discovered oilfields “swung the United States’ oil inventory from scarcity to surplus.” Photo courtesy the Oklahoma Oil Museum.

A July 16, 1926, discovery well near Seminole, Oklahoma, revealed the massive potential of an oil producing formation, the Wilcox sand –  and launched a drilling boom that will make Oklahoma one of today’s leading producing states. The Fixico No. 1 well penetrated the Wilcox sand at 4,073 feet.

By 1935, the oilfields around Seminole became the largest supplier of oil in the world. More than 60 petroleum reservoirs were found in 1,300 square miles of east-central Oklahoma – and six were “giants,” producing more than million barrels of oil each. Read the rest of this entry »

Students visit the Norman No. 1 Well Museum in Neodesha, Kansas, to learn about the November 28, 1892, gusher — and about their state’s modern petroleum industry. Oil or natural gas is produced in 89 of 105 counties.

After 22 days of drilling near Neodesha, Kansas, the Norman No. 1 well comes in.

This November 28, 1892, oil discovery is considered by many to be America’s first significant oil well west of the Mississippi River.

Beginning as just a four-barrel-a day producer from 832 feet deep, this Kansas discovery is the first to uncover production from the Mid-Continent region, which includes oil and natural fields extending into Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.

“Norman No. 1 was the first oil well west of the Mississippi River to produce a commercial quantity of oil,” explains one historian.

“This major oil discovery ushered in a new era for Neodesha and the state. By 1904, Kansas was producing four million barrels of crude oil per year and, in 1925, ranked fifth among the states in oil production,” notes the Kansas Historical Society. Read the rest of this entry »

By 1920, Tulsa is home to 400 petroleum companies, two daily newspapers, seven banks, four telegraph companies – and more than 10,000 telephones.

On a chilly fall morning in 1905 – two years before Oklahoma becomes a state – oil is discovered on the Glenn farm south of Tulsa.

Soon, there are hundreds of wells producing so much oil that the land is called the “‘Glenn Pool,” now the Tulsa suburb Glenpool.

This November 22 discovery well will help make Tulsa the “Oil Capital of the World.”

With daily production soon exceeding 120,000 barrels, Glenn Pool exceeds Tulsa County’s earlier “Red Fork Gusher” – and the giant Spindletop discovery near Beaumont, Texas, four years earlier. Read the rest of this entry »

The Iowa 80 Trucking Museum was a dream of Bill Moon, who founded the Iowa 80 truck stop.

The Iowa 80 Trucking Museum collection was started by Iowa 80 Truckstop founder Bill Moon – who had a passion for trucks. He always looked for a unique truck or trucking artifacts to add to his collection.

There are now more than 100 antique trucks on display at Moon’s museum, which hosts an annual jamboree.

Every summer, this museum outside Walcott, Iowa, hosts a variety of events for truckers and other travelers, teachers, students – and transportation history buffs.

The museum, which expanded in March 2012, offers a free app for iPhones and Androids offering audio narratives of its exhibits.

The innovation – increasingly popular among museums – allows both virtual and actual visitors to scan and download detailed exhibit information.

The audio, narrated by museum curator Dave Meier, provides additional details about each truck that is not necessarily found on exhibit signs. Visitors at the museum can simply scan a “QR” code at the welcome desk to download the app. Virtual visitors can download it from the website. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a foggy Tuesday morning, August 16, 1927, as eight airplanes prepared for takeoff before a crowd of more than 50,000 at the Oakland Airport in California. Aviation history was about to be made with a race to Honolulu – thanks to a revolutionary petroleum product: Phillips Nu-Aviation Gasoline.

Four days after Charles Lindbergh’s famous transatlantic flight in May of 1927, James Dole of the Dole Pineapple Company offered a $25,000 first prize for an air race of its own – across the Pacific from Oakland to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Phillips Petroleum Co. vice presidents L.E. Phillips and Clyde Alexander, pilot Arthur Goebel Jr., and legendary oilman Frank Phillips with the 1927 racing airplane – Woolaroc.

Arthur Goebel Jr., a veteran barnstormer and Hollywood stunt pilot joined seven other aircraft in the race, which took place just three months after Lindbergh’s historic flight. Goebel found a sponsor and friend in Frank Phillips, president of Phillips Petroleum Company, Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Phillips Petroleum – now ConocoPhillips – was involved early in aviation fuel research and had already provided high gravity gasoline for some of the first mail-carrying airplanes after World War I. But in 1927, aviation fuel technology was still in its infancy.

Phillips loaned Goebel $4,500 needed to take delivery of a Travel Air 5000 monoplane. Goebel promised to use a new aviation fuel developed by Phillips Petroleum for the planned 2,439-mile flight over the Pacific. They named the airplane “Woolaroc,” the name of Frank Phillips’ ranch near Bartlesville. Read the rest of this entry »

A wildcat well comes in on S. L. Fowler’s farm near a small North Texas community on July 29, 1918. The subsequent drilling boom along the Red River will make Burkburnett famous – two decades before “Boom Town,” the 1940 motion picture it inspires.

“Burkburnett was a sleepy farm town that transformed into a ‘Boom Town’ as a result of the North Texas oil boom in 1918,” explains the Burkburnett Historical Society. A popular 1940 MGM movie results from an article in Cosmopolitan magazine.

At the time of the Fowler No. 1 well’s discovery, future moviestar Clark Gable is a teenage roustabout in an Oklahoma oilfield. The well is completed at the northeastern edge of Burkburnett, founded in 1907 — and named by President Theodore Roosevelt, who two years earlier hunted wolf along the Red River with rancher Burk Burnett. Read the rest of this entry »

With exhibits collected over five decades by Francis “F.T.” Sr., the Felty Outdoor Oil Museum of Burkburnett, Texas, displays machinery from the height of a 1918 North Texas oil boom. Portable cable-tool spudders are watched over by museum founder’s son, F.T. Felty, Jr., an independent oil and gas producer.

Francis “F.T.” Felty Jr., stands by a photograph of himself — playing on one of his father’s drilling rigs.

Three generations of the Felty family have kicked historic Burkburnett oil field mud from their boots.

The first, Francis “F.T.” Felty Sr., worked in Wichita County through the revival of a North Texas drilling boom during World War Two. Responding to the war’s steel shortages, he crisscrossed the oil patch in a truck – pulling used casings. It turned into a long career in the oil patch.

When the senior Felty moved from salvaging and began drilling in the 1970s, it was within sight of the historic 1918 Burkburnett discovery well. He had begun collecting old oil field equipment in the 1950s – and a lot of rocks, says his son, Francis “F.T.” Felty Jr., the owner of the F.T. Felty Operating Company Read the rest of this entry »

Building a community oil museum is not for the faint of heart.

“Money and volunteers, volunteers and money,” are the biggest challenges, according to John Larrabee, board president for the Illinois Oil Field Museum and Resource Center on the outskirts of his hometown of Oblong, Illinois.

The Illinois Oil Field Museum is located in Oblong, Illinois, on Highway 33, southeast of Effingham. First opened in 1961, the community museum moved into a new building in 2001 and today continues to add new exhibits.

“The first thing you have to have is a goal and the determination to keep at it, no matter what. Don’t give up, whatever happens,” Larrabee explained in a 2004 interview with historical society Contributing Editor Kris Wells.

It helps to know something about the oil business, said the third generation Illinois Basin oilman. “The museum began way back in 1961 with a fellow named Enos Bloom, Larrabee noted. “In those days, the city of Oblong provided and maintained a building that housed donated artifacts.” Read the rest of this entry »

The historic Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City — site of the society’s popular 2007 Energy Education Conference & Field Trip.

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society hosts unique gatherings of energy education professionals — including state and national teacher workshop practitioners, petroleum museums directors, associations and oil and natural gas company representatives.

The May 31 to June 2, 2007,  Energy Education Conference & Field Trip in Oklahoma City brought together leading education experts. The Golden Driller statue in Tulsa was among the stops of a concluding field trip that followed panel discussions, classroom demonstrations, receptions and an awards banquet.

Read the rest of this entry »