December 20, 1913 – “Prince of Petroleum” opens Tulsa Refinery

A refinery built by Joshua Seney Cosden – who will become known as the “Prince of Petroleum” –  goes on stream in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With a capacity of 30,000 barrels a day, his refinery is among the largest in the country. It continues operating today.

The Cosden Oil Refinery is the oilman’s second. He builds on his success by forming companies that acquire and transport oil to the refineries. Cosden is said to have amassed a fortune of $50 million. He soon owns luxurious homes in New York, Florida and Rhode Island — as well as a stable of thoroughbred race horses, his own railroad car and a yacht.

However, in 1925 Cosden loses control of his petroleum assets to the Mid-Continent Oil Company. Although he will make another $15 million in the oilfields of West Texas, he loses everything during the Great Depression. Cosden dies at 59 in 1940. His Tulsa refinery continues today as a part of the Dallas-based Holly Corporation, which in 2011 merged with Frontier and changed its name to HollyFrontier.

December 20, 1951 – First Oil Discovery in Washington State

Oil is discovered in Washington when an exploratory well in Grays Harbor County flows at 35 barrels a day. It proves uneconomical. By 2010, more than 600 wells have been drilled – with only one commercial success…in 1959.

The Hawksworth Gas and Oil Development Company discovers the oil with its Tom Hawksworth-State No. 4 well near Ocean City, Washington. The well flows at 35 barrels a day with 300,000 cubic feet of natural gas from a depth of 3,711 feet. It is soon abandoned as non-commercial.

Eight years later, in 1967, Sunshine Mining Company reopens the well and deepens it to 4,532 feet in an effort to develop commercial production — but with only intermittent shows of oil and natural gas the well is shut in again.

Although 600 wells are drilled in 24 counties by 2010, only one produces commercial quantities of oil – the Medina No. 1, completed by Sunshine Mining in 1959 about 600-yards north of the failed Hawksworth-State site. That well, Washington’s only commercial producer, is closed in 1961 after yielding 12,500 barrels of oil.

For the early discoveries and other facts about the other petroleum-producing states, see “State Energy Education Contacts.”

December 21, 1842 – Birth of a Boom Town “Aero View” Artist

“Bird’s Eye View” — or “Aero View” — panoramic maps artist Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler is born. Following the fortunes of America’s early petroleum industry, he will produce hundreds of unique maps of the earliest oilfield towns of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas.

Fowler is perhaps the most prolific of the dozens of bird’s-eye view artists who crisscrossed the country during the latter three decades of the nineteenth century, notes the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.

“He produced at least 17 views of different Texas cities in 1890 and 1891, but that output is dwarfed by his production of almost 250 views of Pennsylvania between 1872 and 1922,” explains the museum’s “Texas Bird’s-Eye Views” exhibit.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Civil War Fowler served in the 21st New York Volunteers. He was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862 and discharged at Boston in 1863. His panoramic maps became a hugely popular cartographic form used to depict towns and cities in great detail. Created without the use of observation balloons, they were marketed as “aero views.”

Fowler featured many of Pennsylvania’s oil earliest oilfield towns, including Titusville and Oil City — along with the booming oil community of Sistersville in the new state of West Virginia.

He gained his commissions by interesting citizens and civic groups in the idea of a panoramic map of their community. After one town had agreed to having a map made, he often sought to involve neighboring towns — exploiting their sense of community pride.

Fowler traveled through Oklahoma and North Texas in 1890 and 1891 similarly documenting such cities such as Wichita Falls, Texas, Bartlesville and Tulsa, Oklahoma. In total, he produced 426 views — the most of any panoramic artist. He dies in 1922 at the age of 80. Read more in “Oil Town Aero Views.”

December 21, 1922 – API creates Standards Committee

The board of directors of the American Petroleum Institute (API Standards) creates a committee to investigate, develop, and approve standards for the manufacture of oilfield and refinery equipment. The first technical standards are issued two years later.

December 22, 1875 – President seeks Asphalt for Pennsylvania Avenue

President Ulysses S. Grant urges Congress to repave Pennsylvania Avenue’s badly deteriorated plank boards with asphalt.

Grant delivers a “Report of the Commissioners Created by the Act Authorizing the Repavement of Pennsylvania Avenue” to Congress.

The project will cover 54,000 square yards. “Brooms, lutes, squeegees and tampers were used in what was a highly labor-intensive process.”

With work completed in the spring of 1877, the asphalt – obtained from a naturally occurring bitumen lake found on the island of Trinidad — will last more than 10 years. In 1907, the road to the Capitol will be repaved again with new and far superior asphalt made from petroleum.

By 2005, the Federal Highway Administration reports that more than 2.6 million miles of America’s roads are paved. See “Asphalt Paves the Way.”

December 22, 1975 – Birth of Strategic Petroleum Reserve

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is established when President Gerald Ford signs the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Today, the 727-million-barrel U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency oil in the world.

In addition to creating SPR, the 1975 legislation mandated increasing automobile fuel efficiency through a Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard mileage goal of 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985.

SPR was a revolutionary idea in 1974, notes the Suburban Emergency Management Project.

When the newly created Department of Energy assumed management in 1977, “it was generally believed that the mere existence of a large, operational reserve of crude oil would deter future oil cutoffs and would discourage the use of oil as a weapon.”

SPR today includes five large underground caverns — naturally occurring salt domes near the U.S. Gulf Coast in both Louisiana and Texas.

December 23, 1927 – Bad Santa of Cisco, Texas

Adding to the lore of Cisco, Texas — near the 1917 “Roaring Ranger” oilfield and the boom town where Conrad Hilton bought his first hotel — a man disguised as Santa Claus makes an ill-fated attempt to rob a local bank two days before Christmas.

In the former oil boomtown of Cisco in Eastland County, Marshall Ratliff dons a Santa Claus disguise and tries to rob the town’s First National Bank with three armed accomplices. A running gun battle with police and citizens ensues, leaving more than a dozen wounded and eight dead before Ratliff is captured. He later kills a guard and escapes. Recaptured, a mob strings him up from a utility pole. When the first rope breaks, they hang him again. Read more about the Ranger oilfield and Cisco’s colorful history in “Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel.”

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