August 1, 1872 – First Pennsylvania Natural Gas Pipeline

The first recorded large-scale delivery of natural gas by pipeline begins when gas is delivered to Titusville, Pennsylvania, through a two-inch wrought iron pipeline from a well five miles to the northeast. The well’s high production — four million cubic feet of natural gas a day –  is the largest in the oil region.

The mayor of Titusville and the Keystone Gas & Water Company constructed the pipeline to deliver “the most powerful and voluminous  gas well on record” to more than 250 residential and commercial customers in Titusville. A second 3.25-inch diameter pipe is soon added.  The well produces into the 1880s.

Once an underestimated byproduct of the new petroleum industry, practical uses of natural gas will be introduced by George  Westinghouse for the Pittsburgh steel and glass industries, notes David Waples, author of The Natural Gas Industry in Appalachia. Learn more  Pennsylvania petroleum history at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.

August 2, 1938 – Petroleum Product debuts in Toothbrushes

Americans will soon brush their teeth with a nylon-bristle toothbrush — instead of hog bristles, declares a New York Times article.

The  Weco Products Company of Chicago, Illinois, begins promoting its “Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft,” the earliest toothbrush to use synthetic DuPont nylon bristles. This is the first commercial use of the revolutionary petroleum product — nylon, which is a silky synthetic polymer (a plastic). Women’s stockings will soon follow.

“Until now, all good toothbrushes were made with animal bristles,” notes a 1938 advertisement in Life magazine. “Today, Dr.  West’s new Miracle-Tuft is a single exception. It is made with EXTON, a unique bristle-like filament developed by the great DuPont  laboratories, and produced exclusively for Dr. West’s.”

Pricing its toothbrush at 50 cents, the Weco Products Company guarantees “no bristle shedding.” Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, New Jersey, will introduce a competing nylon-bristle toothbrush in 1939.

August 2. 1956 – Missouri begins First U.S. Interstate Highway

Missouri becomes the first state to award a contract with interstate construction funding authorized two months earlier by the  Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The Missouri highway commission signs the contract for work on the already historic Route 66.

The Highway-Aid Act provides 90 percent federal funding for a “system of interstate and defense highways” — the need to flee cities in the event of a nuclear attack.

The Highway-Aid Act makes it possible for states to afford construction of the network of national limited-access highways, which will eventually reach more than 40,000 miles.

Missouri is the first state to award a contract with the new interstate construction funds, “inking a deal for work on U.S. Route 66 – now Interstate 44 – in  Laclede County,” notes the Missouri Department of Transportation. “There is no question that the creation of the interstate highway system has been the most significant development in the history of  transportation in the United States.”

Read more in “America on the Move.”

August 3, 1769 – The Petroleum Discovery at Rancho La Brea

The La Brea “Tar Pits” are discovered during a Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portola.

“The 3rd, 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 notes in a diary. “We debated whether this substance, which flows melted from underneath the earth, could occasion so many earthquakes.”

Crespi is the first person to use the term bitumen in describing these sticky pools in southern California — where crude oil has been seeping from the ground through fissures in the coastal plain sediments for more than 40,000 years.

Today, the Page Museum is located at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles. It is one of the world’s most famous sources of fossil, recognized for having the largest and most diverse assemblage of extinct Ice Age plants and animals in the world.

“The Spanish occupation of California about 300 years ago also played a role in the history of Rancho La Brea,” the museum says. The Spanish used the name of Rancho La Brea, or “the tar ranch.” Native Americans had used the substance for centuries to waterproof baskets and caulk canoes when, in 1828, Antonio de Rocha established Rancho La Brea via a land grant by the Mexican government.

Although commonly called the “tar pits,” the thick liquid that bubbles out of the ground at Rancho La Brea is actually asphalt — not tar. The Page museum explains that tar is a by-product made by the distillation of woody materials, such as coal or peat, while asphalt is a naturally formed substance comprised of hydrocarbon molecules.

After the American Civil War, Captain George Allan Hancock inherited 4,400 acres of land from the original Mexican land grant. The Hancock family owned and operated a refinery at Rancho La Brea between 1870 and 1890, commercially mining and exporting asphalt to local markets.

Research has been conducted at Rancho La Brea since the early 1900s and now continues at the Page Museum. A scientific publication first recorded the fossils in 1875. Professor William Denton ventured to the pits to evaluate oil prospects — and noted the  fossilized remains of animals. 

Although Denton wrote about his discovery, it took several decades and another geologist interested in oil prospects, William W. Orcutt, to excavate and collect a substantial fossil collection — including the only complete skull of a saber-tooth tiger in the world.

“Asphalt is a superb preservative; small and delicate fossils, such as hollow bird bones or paper-thin exoskeletons of beetles are very  well-preserved here,” observes the museum. “As a result, our collection of fossil birds is one of the world’s largest.”

In 1916, the Hancock family — wealthy with the onset of the oil boom in southern California — donated the 23 acres of Hancock Park to Los Angeles County to preserve and exhibit the fossils exhumed from Rancho La Brea.

At the Page Museum (and at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County) young people can learn about Los Angeles as it was during the last Ice Age, when mammoths roamed the Los Angeles Basin.

For a brief history of the asphalt on America’s roads, see “Asphalt Paves the Way.”

August 3, 1942 – War brings Historic Pipeline effort

War Emergency Pipelines, Inc., begins construction on the “Big Inch” line — the longest petroleum pipeline project ever undertaken in the  United States.
 
Conceived to supply wartime fuel demands — and in response to U-boat attacks on oil tankers along the eastern seaboard and Gulf of  Mexico, the “Big Inch” and “Little Big Inch” lines are extolled as “The most amazing government-industry cooperation ever achieved.”
 
With a goal of transporting 300,000 barrels of oil per day, the $95 million project calls for construction of a 24-inch pipeline (Big Inch) from  East Texas to Illinois, and a 20-inch line (Little Big Inch) as far as New York and Philadelphia — more than 1,200 miles. Ceremonies mark  the final weld on the Big Inch in July 1943, just 350 days after construction began. More than 185 million barrels of oil are pumped through  the two pipelines in the first year alone.
 
After the war, the “Inch Lines” will become war surplus property. Sold to the Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. in 1947, both pipelines are  later adapted for natural gas transmission. Visit the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore. 

August 4, 1913 – Discovery of Oklahoma’s “Poor Man’s Field”

The Crystal Oil Company brings in the Wirt Franklin No. 1 well about 20 miles northwest of Ardmore, Oklahoma. With an initial flow of up to  100 barrels oil per day, it is the discovery well for the Healdton oilfield.

The opening of the Healdton oilfield sets in motion one of Oklahoma’s greatest oil booms. Wirt Franklin will become the first president of  the Independent Petroleum Association of America in 1929.

Throughout its development, Healdton is known as a “poor man’s field” — because of its relatively shallow depth and consequent low cost  of drilling operations. The field attracts independent oilmen with limited financial backing to compete with the larger oil companies.

By June of 1914, 90 percent of Healdton oilfield leases are held by independents (of 120 companies operating in the field, only three are  major companies). By the end of the year, 255 wells are producing 65,000 barrels per day. The low cost of drilling in the Healdton field will attract a large number of Oklahoma oil and natural gas producers.

Among oilmen establishing a financial base at Healdton are Lloyd Noble, Robert A. Hefner and former Oklahoma governor Charles N. Haskell. Also in the Healdton field: Erle Halliburton, who will perfect his method of oil well cementing. Visit the Healdton Oil Museum.

August 7, 1933 – Alley Oop’s Oil Patch Roots

“Alley Oop” appears for the first time when former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reporter and cartoonist Victor (V.T.) Hamlin publishes the caveman as a syndicated daily cartoon in Iowa’s Des Moines Register. The comic strip is a hit and ultimately appears in more than 800 newspapers. The one-time West Texas oil boomtown of Iraan lays claim to Hamlin’s paleontological inspiration.

Iraan (pronounced eye-rah-ann) first appeared in 1926 as a company town following the discovery of the prolific Yates oilfield. Many of its early buildings were constructed by the Big Lake Oil Company. The Yates field will produce more than 40 million barrels in just three years, but Iraan’s best years will be over by 1960 — when the band Hollywood Argyles sings that Alley Oop is “the toughest man there is alive.” The song reaches number one.

Although Alley Oop is one of 20 comic strips commemorated in a 1995 series of U.S. postage stamps, Yates oilfield production and Iraan’s fortunes have both declined. The town opened its Alley Oop Fantasy Land theme park in 1965 with favorite son Hamlin in attendance. But by 1967 the former boomtown’s population had fallen to less than a thousand. 

Today, tourists visit the Alley Oop Museum and R.V. Park on the northwest edge of Iraan at 9261 Alley Oop Lane, off of U.S. 190. Thanks to improved technologies, production from Yates oil wells continues — and the field is estimated to have one billion barrels of recoverable oil remaining.

Last Week in Petroleum History