Known for building luxury steam-powered automobiles, the Locomobile Company of America delivered its first gasoline-powered auto to a buyer in New York City. The company had hired Andrew Riker, a self-taught engineer and racecar driver, to create the four-cylinder, 12-horsepower vehicle, which sold for $4,000. (more…)
Texas Governor Preston Smith dedicated a “Joe Roughneck” memorial in Boonsville to mark the 20th anniversary of a giant natural gas field discovery in East Texas. In 1950, the Lone Star Gas Company’s Vaught No. 1 well discovered the Boonsville oilfield, which produced 2.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 20 years. By 2001 the Boonsville field reached production of 3.1 trillion cubic feet of gas from more than 3,500 wells.
A Joe Roughneck monument in Boonsville, Texas, where an oilfield was discovered by Lone Star Gas Company in 1945.
Joe Roughneck began as a character in Lone Star Steel Company advertising in the 1950s. Temporarily discontinued between 2019 and 2024, the bronze bust by Texas artist Torg Thompson (1905-1998) has been presented during the Chief Roughneck Award ceremony of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA). Joe Busts of Joe Roughneck can also be found at three more Texas oilfield monuments: Joinerville and Conroe, both dedicated in 1957, and Kilgore, dedicated in 1986.
Learn more in Meet Joe Roughneck.
William Maclure, who would become a renowned American geologist and “stratigrapher,” was born in Ayr, Scotland. He created the earliest geological maps of North America in 1809 and later earned the title “Father of American Geology.”
“Map of the United States of America, Designed to Illustrate the Geological Memoir of Wm. Maclure, Esq.” — a more detailed 1818 version than his first map published in 1809. Image courtesy the Historic Maps Collection, Princeton Library.
After settling in Philadelphia in 1796, Maclure explored the eastern part of North America to prepare the first geological map of the United States. His travels from Maine to Georgia in 1808 resulted in the map’s sequence of rock layers. “Here, in broad strokes, he identifies six different geological classes,” a Princeton geologist reported. “Note that the chain of the Appalachian Mountains is correctly labeled as containing the most primitive, or oldest, rock.”
In the 1850s, a chemist at Yale analyzed samples of Pennsylvania “rock oil” for refining into kerosene. Prof. Benjamin Silliman’s report led to the drilling of the first U.S. oil well in 1859. By 1875, geologist John F. Carll published logs from several Pennsylvania wells, becoming a pioneer of petroleum engineering.
Learn more in Rocky Beginnings of Petroleum Geology.
Lion Oil Company was founded as a refining venture in El Dorado, Arkansas, by Texan Thomas Harry Barton. He earlier had organized the El Dorado Natural Gas Company and acquired a 2,000-barrel-a-day refinery in 1922, soon after oilfield giant discoveries at El Dorado and Smackover (see First Arkansas Oil Wells).
Arkansas oilfield discoveries led to the 1923 founding of Lion Oil Company in El Dorado. By the 1950s, Lion Oil operated about 2,000 service stations throughout the South. Photo courtesy Lion Oil Company.
Production from the nearby Smackover oilfield helped the Lion Oil Refining Company’s refining capacity to reach 10,000 barrels a day. By 1925, the company acquired oil wells producing 1.4 million barrels of oil. A merger with Monsanto Chemical in 1955 brought the gradual disappearance of the once familiar “Beauregard Lion” logo.
DuPont chemical company announced that Nylon would be the name of its newly invented synthetic fiber yarn made from petroleum. Discovered in 1935 by Wallace Carothers at a DuPont research facility, nylon is considered the first commercially successful synthetic polymer. Carothers would become known as the father of man-made polymers.
The Titusville Morning Herald praised the results of an explosive oilfield production technology — Civil War veteran Colonel E.A.L. Roberts’ patented nitroglycerin torpedo. “It would be superfluous, at this late day, to speak of the merits of the Roberts Torpedo,” explained the first daily newspaper of the Pennsylvania oil region.
Front page of the first issue of the Titusville Morning Herald, which ceased publication in 2022 after 157 years. Photo courtesy TheDerrick.com.
“For the past three years, it has been a most successful operation and has increased the production of oil in hundreds upon hundreds of oil wells to an extent which could hardly be overestimated.”
The 26,400-acre Yates oilfield was discovered in a remote area of Pecos County, Texas, in the Permian Basin. Drilled in 1926 with a $15,000 cable-tool rig, the Ira Yates 1-A produced 450 barrels of oil a day from almost 1,000 feet deep. Before the giant oilfield discovery, Ira Yates had struggled to keep his ranch on the northern border of the Chihuahua Desert.
The Permian Basin’s 1926 Yates oilfield discovery followed a 1923 gusher at Big Lake (Santa Rita No. 1) and giant oilfield discoveries at Hendrick and Hobbs, N.M. “Midland Comes of Age” exhibit photo courtesy the Petroleum Museum.
“Drought and predators nearly did him in,” noted one historian, until Yates convinced a San Angelo company to explore for oil west of the Pecos River. With the Pecos County well 30 miles from the nearest oil pipeline and a storage tank under construction, four more Yates wells yielded another 12,000 barrels of oil a day. On his 67th birthday, Yates received an $18 million royalty check (also see Santa Rita taps Permian Basin).
Samuel M. Jones patented a sucker rod design for his Acme Sucker Rod Company, which he had founded in 1892 in Toledo, Ohio. With his “Coupling for Pipes or Rods,” Jones applied his oilfield experience in mechanics to solve the frequent and time-consuming problem of broken sucker rods. His innovation would soon make him a millionaire.
Samuel Jones, future mayor of Toledo, worked as a potboiler, pumper, tool dresser, blacksmith, and pipe layer before starting his oilfield service company.
Jones had worked in Pennsylvania’s oil region as a potboiler, pumper, tool dresser, blacksmith, and pipe layer. He became known as “Golden Rule” Jones by establishing a better workplace for employees at his factory, where he shortened the workday and started a revenue-sharing program.
Jones ran for Toledo mayor as a progressive Republican in 1887 and was elected. He was reelected three times and served until dying on the job in 1904.
Learn more in “Golden Rule” Jones of Ohio.
Petroleum refining would become more efficient thanks to an invention by Henry Rogers of Brooklyn, New York, who patented an “apparatus for separating volatile hydrocarbons by repeated vaporization and condensation.”
Henry Rogers patented his “improvement to distilling naphtha and other hydrocarbon liquids,” including kerosene.
Rogers introduced many elements of modern refineries, including “fractionating” towers that improved earlier processes of extracting kerosene by simple distillation in kettle stills.
“The apparatus which I use is, in many respects, similar to what is known as the column-still for distilling alcoholic spirits, but modified in all the details, so as to make it available for distilling oils,” Rogers noted in his 1871 patent application. More technological advancements would lead to giant refining operations like the Standard Oil of Indiana Whiting Refinery, which opened in 1889.
One mile north of Batson, Texas, a discovery well drilled by W.L. Douglas’ Paraffine Oil Company produced 600 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 790 feet. A second well drilled two months later in the Batson field produced 4,000 barrels of oil a day from 1,000 feet deep. Many new ventures joined the drilling boom (see Buffalo Oil Company).
When combined with other newly discovered prolific salt-dome fields, Spindletop (1901), Sour Lake (1903), and Humble (1904), “Batson helped to establish the basis of the Texas oil industry when these shallow fields gave up the first Texas Gulf Coast oil,” noted the Texas State Historical Association in 2010.
The first automobile road across America, the Lincoln Highway, was dedicated with celebrations from New York City to San Francisco. Supported by donations from automobile-related businesses, the Lincoln Highway Association promoted construction of the paved, transcontinental roadway. The 3,389-mile “Main Street Across America” was the first national memorial to President Abraham Lincoln, predating dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., by nine years. With a slight realignment through the northern tip of West Virginia in 1928, the Lincoln Highway crossed 14 states, 128 counties, and more than 700 cities and towns.
Former California oilfield worker Walter “Big Train” Johnson returned to his oil patch roots in Brea for an exhibition game with famed slugger Babe Ruth, who swatted two home runs off the future Hall of Fame pitcher. Three decades earlier, Johnson began his baseball career as a 16-year-old pitcher for the Olinda Oil Wells.
The former star of the “Olinda Oil Wells” pitched against Babe Ruth in a 1924 exhibition game in Brea.
Playing for the Washington Senators years later, the former oilfield roustabout became Major League Baseball’s all-time career leader in shutouts with 110. Many oilfield towns like Brea fielded teams with names reflecting their communities’ livelihood.
Learn more in Oilfields of Dreams – Gassers, Oilers, and Drillers Baseball Teams.
After it was learned that 70-year-old wildcatter Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner had oversold his East Texas oilfield leases in Rusk County, District Judge R.T. Brown placed the properties into receivership.
The Baker Hotel in Dallas was where Columbus “Dad” Joiner met with H.L. Hunt and sold Hunt 5,580 acres for $1.34 million. Built in 1925, the hotel was torn down in 1980.
With the field’s Daisy Bradford No. 3 and other wells tied up in conflicting claims, Joiner took refuge from creditors in the Baker Hotel in Dallas, where Haroldson Lafayette (H.L.) Hunt negotiated a $1.34 million deal with him for the discovery well and 5,580 acres of leases. In the 300 lawsuits and 10 years of litigation that followed, Hunt sustained every title.
The only gas service station designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright opened in Cloquet, Minnesota. The station was built for Ray Lindholm, owner of Best Oil Company. Its gas pumps were originally designed to hang overhead but were ultimately changed to meet safety regulations, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
The Cloquet, Minnesota, gas station design was part of a utopian city concept of Frank Lloyd Wright. Photo courtesy Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
Listed on the Historic Registry in 1984 and still in business today, the station has similarities to Wright’s only skyscraper, the 1956 Price Tower, a Bartlesville, Oklahoma, pipeline company headquarters built for Harold Price and today the Price Tower Arts Center.
The first of James and Amos Densmore’s innovative oil tank cars arrived at the Miller Farm, four miles south of Titusville, Pennsylvania. The inventors would be awarded a U.S. patent on April 10, 1866, for their dual tank design.
Brothers Amos and James Densmore designed and built the first successful railroad tank cars used in the Pennsylvania oilfields in 1865. Photo courtesy Drake Well Museum and Park.
The crude oil for the iron-banded wooden tanks on a flatcar was delivered by Samuel Van Syckle’s two-inch iron pipeline (another oil industry first) from the oilfield boom town at Pithole Creek. Oil from large storage tanks on the farm filled the Densmore tanks for the Oil Creek Railroad, which connected to lines reaching Pittsburgh, New York City, and other markets.
Learn more in Densmore Brothers Oil Tank Car.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975), Maclure of New Harmony: Scientist, Progressive Educator, Radical Philanthropist
_______________________
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this energy education website, subscribe to the free monthly newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
.
As world oil prices spiked after the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops, the first presidentially mandated emergency use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was authorized by George H.W. Bush, who ordered the sale of five million barrels of SPR oil as a test to “demonstrate the readiness of the system under real-life conditions,” according to the Department of Energy.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve oil storage facilities grouped into pipeline distribution systems in Texas and Louisiana. Map courtesy U.S. Department of Energy 2018 Report to Congress.
President Ford established the SPR in 1975 as a protection against severe supply interruptions. By 2020, four underground salt dome sites along the Gulf Coast stored 735 million barrels of oil — the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency oil in the world. In October 2026, the SPR held 283 million barrels oil, down 132.5 million barrels from 415.4 million in March. and its lowest level since October 1982.
Shortages of equipment and drilling delays during World War I revealed the petroleum industry’s struggle with a lack of uniformity of pipe sizes, threads, and couplings. Founded in 1919, the American Petroleum Institute (API) gathered industry experts to come up with industry-wide standards to promote equipment compatibility. “After bringing these experts together to agree upon design and requirements, the first standard, Specifications for Steel and Iron Pipe for Oil Country Tubular Goods, was published on October 20, 1924,” notes API, which has since published more than 800 standards and guidelines. (more…)
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.
