November 7, 1965 – Jet Fuel powers New Record

Using high-octane jet fuel, Ohio drag racer Art Arfons sets the land-speed record at 576.553 miles per hour at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. His home-made Green Monster is powered by JP-4 fuel in an afterburner-equipped F-104 Starfighter jet engine.
 
Between 1964 and 1965, referred to as “The Bonneville Jet Wars,” Arfons sets the record three times. On October 23, 1970, the Blue Flame — powered by a rocket motor that burns liquefied natural gas — sets a new record of 622.407 mph that stands for 13 years.

See “The Blue Flame – Natural Gas Rocket Car.”
 
November 8, 1880 – Death of Edwin L. Drake, Founder of U.S. Petroleum Industry

Edwin Laurentine Drake, today recognized as the founder of the American petroleum industry, dies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at the age of 61.
 
Drake drilled just three oil wells — but his first, which found oil on Saturday, August 27, 1859, and produced about 20 barrels a day — launched the modern energy industry and transformed America’s future.
 
Although the petroleum industry will bring economic prosperity to many, in 1863 Drake loses all his money to oil speculation. By 1873 he is so ill and destitute that the Pennsylvania legislature votes him a $1,500 pension in recognition of his historic contributions.
 
Originally buried in Bethlehem, Drake is moved to the Woodlawn Cemetery in Titusville, where a monument in his honor is dedicated in 1901. His first well, drilled to 69.5 feet, is nearby at the Drake Well Museum.

November 10, 1854 – Oil Seep will lead to Historic Discovery

The stage is set for the start of America’s petroleum industry when the lumber firm Brewer, Watson & Company sells to George H. Bissell and Jonathan G. Eveleth 105 acres at the junction of the east (Pine Creek) and west branches of Oil Creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
 
The lumber company had previously hired Joel D. Angier (a future mayor of Titusville) to collect and sell medicinal “Seneca Oil” from a known oil seep on this acreage where they operated a sawmill.

Thanks to research by his friend Benjamin Silliman Jr., a Yale chemist, Bissell recognized that the oil could be used to produce kerosene for lamps.

Deciding to attempt to produce this oil commercially, Bissell and Eveleth form the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company — and hire Edwin L. Drake to drill their first well in 1859. Drake’s well will launch the American petroleum industry.
 
“The successful commercial development of the oil seeps…was the fulfillment of a vision Bissell had five years earlier when he was first shown samples of petroleum taken from the site,” notes an article at Oil 150, a website created for the 2009 sesquicentennial of the U.S. petroleum industry.

“Among the great oil pioneers of the first decades, Bissell was a giant,” concludes historian Neil McElwee. “The oil men and writers of the nineteenth century as one recognized George Bissell as the patriarch of their industry.”

November 11, 1884 – Birth of Consolidated Edison Company of New York

The nation’s largest gas utility is created in New York City when six gas-light companies — the New York, Manhattan, Metropolitan, Municipal, Knickerbocker and Harlem companies — merge to form the Consolidated Gas Company — today’s Consolidated Edison Company.

“With six major gas companies serving New York City, the streets were constantly being torn up by one company or another installing or repairing their own mains — or removing those of a rival,” notes the Con Edison website. “From time to time, work crews from competing companies would inadvertently meet on the same street and literally battle for customers, giving rise to the term ‘gas house gangs.’

“Through the years, Consolidated Gas continued to acquire gas, electric, and steam companies serving New York City and Westchester County. On March 23, 1936, the business was renamed the Consolidated Edison Company of New York.”

Con Edison today distributes natural gas to more than one million customers in Manhattan, the Bronx, part of Queens, and most of Westchester County. More than 4,200 miles of gas mains and nearly 400,000 service pipes transport more than 200 million dekatherms of natural gas a year.

November 12, 1899 – Newspaper features Mrs. Alford’s Dynamite Factory

The New York World profiles Mrs. Byron Alford — the “Only Woman in the World who Owns and Operates a Dynamite Factory.”
 
Alford’s dangerous business operates on five acres outside of Bradford, Pennsylvania, with a daily production of 3,000 pounds of “nitro-glycerine” and 6,000 pounds of dynamite. Local drillers need the explosives for “shooting” wells to boost production. Mrs. Alford manufactures it for them in 12 unpainted wood buildings.
 
Brick buildings would have been prettier, Alford notes in the newspaper article, but it would cost more to replace them and, “the owner of a nitroglycerine factory never knows beforehand when it is going to blow up or afterward why it did blow up…there is never anyone to explain how it happened.”

Alford first entered the business in 1884 with her husband. When Mr. Alford’s health began failing 10 years later, she took over. “It is an odd business for a woman to be in,” she says, “but I know no reason why a woman who understands it cannot manage it as well as a man.”

Despite the hazards, Alford  prospers for many years. She dies of natural causes in 1924 at age 77. Today, new technologies for producing natural gas from the Marcellus Shale have brought renewed prosperity to Bradford — and much of western Pennsylvania. Visit the Penn-Brad Oil Museum and learn about America’s “first billion dollar oilfield.”

November 12, 1916 – Forest Oil Company formed

Forest Oil Company incorporates and begins operations in the Bradford oilfield of northwestern Pennsylvania. The company adopts a new technology: water-flooding (injecting water into oil-bearing formations) to stimulate production from wells considered depleted. Forest’s production increases from 38 barrels per day in 1916 to more than 10,000 barrels by the late 1920s.
 
In 1924 Forest Oil consolidates with the January Oil Company, the Brown Seal Oil Corporation, the Andrews Petroleum Corporation and the Boyd Oil Corporation to form the Forest Oil Corporation. Today, Forest Oil Corporation and its subsidiaries continue to produce and market oil and natural gas. The company’s distinctive “yellow dog” lamp with two wicks logo originated in 1916.
 
See the American Oil & Gas Historical Society article by Kristin L. Wells, ”Yellow Dog: Icon of the American Oil Field,” in Hart’s E&P magazine.

November 13, 1925 – Spindletop booms Again

More than two decades after its first oil boom, Spindletop, Texas, experiences a second boom when the Yount-Lee Oil Company strikes a 5,000-barrel-a-day well south of the 1901 “Lucas Gusher,” according to the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum in Beaumont.

“Yount believed that there was much more oil at Spindletop, if flank wells could be drilled deep enough. He was right, and the McFaddin No. 2 began to produce oil at 2,518 feet on November 13, 1925. That evening, Magnolia’s radio station announced the discovery, and the second Spindletop boom began. Soon the Hill was ringed with wells, but the wild atmosphere that had characterized the first boom was not repeated.”

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Editor’s Note — Happy birthday to Dorothy Jean Womack of Eufaula, Oklahoma, born on November 7, 1928 – and a founding member of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society.