Four months after entering service in June 1964, Methane Princess, the first purpose-built liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier, delivered its cargo to Canvey Island in the United Kingdom. With nine tanks capable of holding the equivalent of 600 MMcf of gas, the 618-foot vessel and her sister ship, Methane Progress, made regular deliveries to Canvey Island for almost 20 years. (more…)
Solomon R. Dresser (1842-1911) of Bradford, Pennsylvania, received a U.S. patent for his “new and useful improvements in pipe-couplings.” The design created a secure connection between pipes needed for oil and natural gas production in the giant Bradford oilfield.
“The main feature of my invention is to provide in the coupling a recess for a rubber or other elastic packing and then to furnish and adapt means to compress such packing by means of the force or power in the inside of the pipes and force the packing into all the apertures of the joint, thus securing a perfectly tight joint,” explained the founder of S.R. Dresser Manufacturing Company in his 1885 application for Patent No. 359,421. (more…)
President Harry Truman extended U.S. jurisdiction over the natural resources of the outer continental shelf, including oil and natural gas, under the control of the Secretary of the Interior. In August 1953, Truman’s edict would become the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which affirmed exclusive jurisdiction over the continental shelf and a federal leasing program “to encourage discovery and development of oil.” Also see Offshore Oil & Gas History.
A bronze “Tribute to the Roughnecks” statue was dedicated near the Alamitos No. 1 well, which in 1921 revealed California’s prolific Long Beach oilfield 20 miles south of Los Angeles.
Signal Hill once had so many derricks people called it Porcupine Hill. The city of Long Beach is visible in the distance from the “Tribute to the Roughnecks” statue by Cindy Jackson.
The statue by Cindy Jackson has since commemorated the Signal Hill Oil Boom, serving as “a tribute to the petroleum pioneers for their success here, a success which has, by aiding in the growth and expansion of the petroleum industry, contributed so much to the welfare of mankind.”
The first production Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line in Detroit. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford built about 15 million more, each fueled by inexpensive gasoline. The popularity of the Model T was timely for the U.S. petroleum industry, which faced falling demand for kerosene as consumers switched to electric lighting.
Ford Model T tires were white until 1910, when the petroleum product carbon black was added to improve durability.
New major oilfield discoveries, especially the 1901 “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, helped meet growing demand for what had been a refining byproduct, gasoline.
Manuel T. Gonzaullas joined the Texas Rangers — and rowdy Texas boom towns would never be the same. He soon became known as “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas.
Street scene in Kilgore, Texas, with steel derricks behind downtown stores. Circa 1935 photo by Russell Lee (1903-1986) courtesy Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Library and Hall of Fame.
In East Texas, when the streets of downtown Kilgore sprouted oil derricks, the population grew from 700 to 10,000 in two weeks. With Depression-era petroleum discoveries multiplying, oil boom towns often attracted criminals. Riding a black stallion named Tony and sporting two pearl-handled .45 pistols, Gonzaullas soon earned a reputation for strictly enforcing the law.
The East Texas Salt Water Disposal Company drilled the first saltwater injection well in the 12-year-old East Texas oilfield near the towns of Tyler, Longview, and Kilgore. As early as 1929, the Federal Bureau of Mines had determined injecting recovered saltwater into formations could increase reservoir pressures and oil production.
Saltwater injection wells improve oil production and keep marginal East Texas wells viable. Illustration courtesy East Texas Salt Water Disposal Company.
The Texas Railroad Commission established the saltwater disposal company as a public utility to operate in the oilfield. The company treated and reinjected about 1.5 billion barrels of saltwater in its first 13 years, prompting the commission to proclaim saltwater injection as the “greatest oil conservation project in history.”
Skelly Oil Company incorporated in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with founder William Grove Skelly as president. He had been born in 1878 in Erie, Pennsylvania, where his father hauled oilfield equipment in a horse-drawn wagon.
Born near Pennsylvania oilfields, William Skelly founded Skelly Oil Company in 1919 — and led an international petroleum exposition for 32 years, helping to make Tulsa the “Oil Capital of the World.”
Skelly’s success in the El Dorado oilfield east of Wichita, Kansas, helped him launch Skelly Oil and other ventures, including Midland Refining Company, which he founded in 1917. As Tulsa promoted itself as “Oil Capital of the World,” Skelly became known as “Mr. Tulsa.” Skelly served as president of Tulsa’s famous International Petroleum Exposition for 32 years until his death in 1957.
Ninety-five years ago, with a crowd of more than 4,000 expectant landowners, leaseholders, creditors, and others watching, the Daisy Bradford No. 3 wildcat well was successfully shot with nitroglycerin near Kilgore, Texas.
Spectators gathered on the widow Daisy Bradford’s farm near Kilgore, Texas, to watch the October 3, 1930, “shooting” of the discovery well of what proved to be the largest oilfield in the lower 48 states. Photo courtesy Jack Elder, The Glory Days.
“All of East Texas waited expectantly while Columbus ‘Dad’ Joiner inched his way toward oil,” explained historian Jack Elder in 1986. “Thousands crowded their way to the site of Daisy Bradford No. 3, hoping to be there when and if oil gushed from the well to wash away the misery of the Great Depression.”
Geologists were stunned when it became apparent the remote wildcat well on the widow Daisy Bradford’s farm — along with two other wells far to the north — were part of the same oil-producing formation (the Woodbine) that encompassed more than 140,000 acres. The “Black Giant” would produce billions of barrels of oil in coming decades.
Learn more in East Texas Oilfield Discovery.
Fifty years after the discovery of the East Texas oilfield, the East Texas Oil Museum at Kilgore College opened as “a tribute to the independent oil producers and wildcatters, the men and women who dared to dream as they pursued the fruits of free enterprise.”
The East Texas Oil Museum since 1980 has hosted events and maintained exhibits preserving the “Black Giant” oilfield discovered during the Great Depression. Photos by Bruce Wells.
Established with funding from the Hunt Oil Company, the museum at Kilgore College recreated a 1930s boom town atmosphere. The museum, which is hosting special events on its 45th birthday, maintains a database that offers keyword search and advanced search options — along with a “random Images” button to browse photography from a wide assortment of online records.
Just 15 miles east of Titusville, Pennsylvania, site of the first U.S. oil well, an oilfield discovery at Triumph Hill sparked another wild rush of speculators and new drilling. America’s petroleum industry was barely seven years old when wooden cable-tool derricks and engine houses replaced hemlock trees along the Allegheny River.
More than 2,500 people, including his widow, Laura Dowd Drake, attended the unveiling of a monument to the “father of the petroleum industry,” Edwin L. Drake, who had died in relative obscurity in 1880. Standard Oil Company executive Henry Rogers commissioned the marble, semi-circle memorial in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Unveiling of the Drake Monument in Titusville, Pennsylvania, on October 4, 1901. Thousands attended the dedication in Woodlawn Cemetery. Photo by John Mather courtesy Drake Well Museum.
East Texas Oil Museum,
The monument, which includes a bronze statue by Charles Henry Niehaus, was dedicated in Woodlawn Cemetery. Learn more by visiting Titusville’s Drake Well Museum and Park.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); History Of Oil Well Drilling
_______________________
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this website, subscribe to the monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and help expand our historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Nine months after the headline-making January 1901 “Lucas Gusher” in Texas, another giant oilfield was revealed 90 miles east in Louisiana. W. Scott Heywood — already successful thanks to wells drilled at Spindletop Hill — completed a wildcat well that produced 7,000 barrels of oil a day on the farm of Jules Clement.
Drilled six miles northeast of Jennings, the Clement No. 1 found oil at a depth of 1,700 feet. “The well flowed sand and oil for seven hours and covered Clement’s rice field with a lake of oil and sand, ruining several acres of rice,” noted the Jennings Daily News.
Mrs. Scott Heywood unveiled a marker as part of the Louisiana Golden Oil Jubilee in 1951. Times-Picayune (New Orleans) image courtesy Calcasieu Parish Public Library.
The discovery led to the state’s first commercial oil production by opening the prolific Jennings field, which Haywood further developed by building pipelines and storage tanks. The oilfield reached peak production of more than nine million barrels of oil in 1906.
Learn more in First Louisiana Oil Wells.
Sponsored since 1942 by the largest independent oil company on the West Coast, the last episode of the radio drama “The Whistler” aired on CBS Radio. Samuel Mosher in 1921 had established the Signal Oil Company as the Signal Gasoline Company during California’s Signal Hill oil boom.
Signal Oil Company sponsored the West Coast CBS Radio mystery program “The Whistler” from 1942 to 1955.
The company’s 1931 partnership with Standard Oil of California (Socal) led to sponsorship of many radio programs, according to Media Heritage. All 692 weekly episodes of Signal Oil’s popular radio mystery began with echoing footsteps and an eerie whistle, followed by “That whistle is your signal for the Signal Oil program.”
The Roxana Petroleum Company Wood River (Illinois) facility began refining crude oil — processing more than two million barrels of oil from Oklahoma oilfields in its first year of operation. Roxana Petroleum was the 1912 creation of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which also founded the American Gasoline Company in Seattle to distribute the fuel on the West Coast.
A small group of retirees in 1986 established the Wood River Refinery History Museum in three former Shell research laboratory buildings at Roxana, Illinois. Museum exhibits include a restored 1918 Shell tank truck and other large equipment in Building Two.
Roxana Petroleum produced high-quality oil from Oklahoma oilfields to be refined at the Wood River plant 15 miles northeast of St. Louis, today the largest refinery operated by Phillips 66. In 1928, Roxana Petroleum built an experimental oil storage reservoir in West Texas (see Million Barrel Museum).
Invited by Saudi Arabian King Abdel Aziz, geologists from Standard Oil Company of California arrived at the Port of Jubail in the Persian Gulf. Searching the desert for petroleum and “kindred bituminous matter,” they discovered a giant oilfield. The Saudi Arabia and Standard Oil partnership would become the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), later joined by other major U.S. companies.
Horace E. Horton’s Chicago Bridge & Iron Company (CB&I) received a patent for improvements to a spherical storage vessel he had invented in the 1920s. Designed to efficiently store natural gas, butane, propane, and other volatile petroleum products, the large spheres were among the most important storage innovations to come to the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.
Horace Ebenezer Horton (1843-1912) founded the company that would build the world’s first “field-erected spherical pressure vessel.”
CB&I named its “Hortonspheres” after the engineer who had started the company in 1889 to build bridges across the Mississippi River. In 1892, CB&I erected its first elevated water tank in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
“The elevated steel plate tank was the first built with a full hemispherical bottom, one of the company’s first technical innovations,” CB&I noted, adding that the company built “the world’s first field-erected spherical pressure vessel” in 1923 at Port Arthur, Texas.
Learn more in Horace Horton’s Spheres.
When World War II veteran Henry Mohaupt applied to patent his “Shaped Charge Assembly and Gun,” he brought anti-tank technology to the petroleum industry — a downhole bazooka. Mohaupt, a Swiss-born chemical engineer, during the war had conducted a secret U.S. Army program to develop an anti-tank weapon. His idea of using a conically hollowed-out explosive charge to focus detonation energy led to the rocket grenade used in bazookas.
The patented “Shaped Charge Assembly and Gun” of Henry Mohaupt brought to the petroleum industry his World War II anti-tank “bazooka” technology.
After the war, the potential of using anti-tank rocket grenades to facilitate flow from oil-bearing strata was recognized by the Well Explosives Company of Fort Worth, Texas. The company employed Mohaupt to develop new technologies for safely perforating cement casing and pipe.
Learn more in Downhole Bazooka.
Midwest Refining Company launched the New Mexico petroleum industry by completing the state’s first commercial oil well. Drilled near Shiprock on the Navajo Indian Reservation, the Hogback No. 1 well produced 375 barrels of oil per day.
Following the oilfield discovery, Midwest completed 11 more wells to establish the Hogback field as a major producer of the San Juan Basin. Two years later, a pipeline was built to Farmington, where oil was shipped by rail to refineries in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Midwest Refining Company discovered the Hogback oilfield in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin.
Production from the Hogback oilfield encouraged further exploration in New Mexico, leading to discoveries in 1928 at Hobbs in Lea County.
Learn more in First New Mexico Oil Wells.
After three failed attempts, Charles Mentry’s California Star Oil Works Company discovered the Pico Canyon oilfield north of Los Angeles — California’s first commercial oil well. Drilled in a region known for natural oil seeps, the Pico No. 4 well produced 25 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 370 feet.
Preserved by the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society, California’s first refinery includes riveted stills on brick foundations. Photo courtesy Konrad Summers.
Pico Canyon oilfield production would lead to construction of California’s first oil pipeline and the state’s first commercially successful oil refinery for making kerosene lamp fuel and lubricants. Riveted stills set on brick foundations had a refining capacity of 150 barrels of oil a day.
California Star Oil Works was acquired by Pacific Coast Oil Company in 1879, and the Pico Canyon oilfield discoverer became part of the Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) in 1906. Socal acquired Gulf Oil, the nation’s fifth-largest petroleum company at the time, in 1984 and adopted the brand name Chevron.
Learn more in First California Oil Wells.
Despite the reservations of Humble Oil and Refining Company’s president, geologist Wallace Pratt convinced the company to lease the almost million-acre King Ranch in Texas for almost $128,000 per year with a one-eighth royalty on any discovered oil.
Although Humble Oil and Refining, a Houston company founded in 1917, had not found oil on the ranch, the lease deal was the largest oil lease contract ever negotiated in the United States.
A 1933 King Ranch oil lease set a record.
Subsequent leases on nearby ranches gave Humble Oil & Refining nearly two million acres of mineral rights between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande River. By 1947, Humble operated 390 producing oil wells on the King Ranch lease alone. The company became ExxonMobil, which has regularly extended its 1933 King Ranch lease agreement.
Learn more in Oil Reigns at King Ranch.
Near a watering stop on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in southwestern Florida, the Humble Oil and Refining Company completed the state’s first commercial oil well, the Sunniland No. 1. The company had spent $1 million drilling to a depth of about 11,600 feet to complete the discovery well, located 12 miles south of Immokalee, near Big Cypress Preserve and the resort city of Naples.
Humble Oil and Refining Company donated $60,000 to the University of Florida and the Florida State College for Women.
Florida oilfields had eluded discovery for decades. With almost 80 “dry holes” drilled by 1939, Florida legislators offered a $50,000 bounty for the first oil discovery. The Sunniland oilfield brought more drilling, and by 1954 the field was producing 500,000 barrels of oil per year from 11 wells.
Texas-based Humble Oil accepted the $50,000 prize offered by the state legislature, added $10,000 — and donated the $60,000 equally between the University of Florida and the Florida State College for Women. Humble later became ExxonMobil.
Learn more in First Florida Oil Well.
A railroad car carrying casinghead gasoline exploded in Ardmore, Oklahoma, killing 43 people and injuring others. The car, which had arrived the day before, was waiting to be taken to a refinery. Casinghead gasoline (also called natural gasoline) at the time was integral to the state’s petroleum development, with 40 processing plants in operation.
A casing gas explosion destroyed most of downtown Ardmore, Oklahoma, in 1915. Photo courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.
According to the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS), the disaster began when rising afternoon temperatures activated a valve to release the car’s gas pressure. “The Ardmore Refining Company then sent a representative, who removed the dome from the top of the car, filling the air with gas and vapors.”
Triggered by an unidentified source, the explosion destroyed much of downtown Ardmore. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway was found responsible for the explosion and paid 1,700 claims totaling $1.25 million, OHS reported, adding, “Oil companies changed and improved the extraction and transportation methods for natural gasoline.”
______________________
Recommended Reading: Louisiana’s Oil Heritage, Images of America (2012); Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil: A Photographic History, 1901-1946 (1982); Signal Hill, California, Images of America
_______________________
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this website, subscribe to the free, monthly email newsletter This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and help expand our historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
President Ulysses S. Grant and his family arrived at Titusville, Pennsylvania, on a special train. The 18th president thanked residents for the reception and noted it was his first visit to the oil regions, adding, “I am aware that this section of the country furnished its full share of men and means for suppression of the rebellion, and your efforts in the discovery and production of petroleum aided materially in supplying the sinews of war, as a medium of foreign exchange, taking the place of cotton.” (more…)
After drilling 20 “dry holes,” the Tyndall-Wyoming Oil Company completed the No. 1 Hogg well 50 miles south of Houston. Within four months, a second well was producing about 600 barrels a day. The discoveries ended a succession of attempts dating back to 1901, when former Texas Governor James “Big Jim” Hogg paid $30,000 for the lease. (more…)
