This Week in Petroleum History: August 4 – 10

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

The Crystal Oil Company completed its Wirt Franklin No. 1 well 20 miles northwest of Ardmore, Oklahoma. The wildcat well revealed the giant Healdton field, which became known as “the poor man’s field” because of its shallow depth and low cost of drilling. The area attracted many independent producers with limited financial backing.

Healdton Oil Museum exhibit of Wirt Franklin's green Pierce-Arrow with whitewall tires.

Healdton Oil Museum exhibits include the 1920 Pierce-Arrow owned by Wirt Franklin, who in 1929 founded a national trade association of independent oil and natural gas producers.

Another oil discovery in 1919 revealed the Hewitt field, which extended production 22 miles across Carter County. The Greater Healdton-Hewitt oilfield produced “an astounding 320,753,000 barrels of crude by the close of the first half of the 20th century,” noted Kenny Franks in his 1989 book, Ragtown: A History of the Greater Healdton-Hewitt Oil Field.

A young Erle P. Halliburton perfected a new method of cementing oil wells in “the poor man’s field” (see Halliburton and the Healdton Oilfield). Wirt Franklin of Ardmore became the first president of the then Tulsa-based Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) in 1929.

August 4, 1977 – U.S. Department of Energy established

President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act, establishing the twelfth cabinet-level department by consolidating a dozen federal agencies and energy programs. The Act combined the Federal Energy Administration and the Energy Research and Development Administration, making the new Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for nuclear weapon programs and national labs. James Schlesinger was sworn in as the first Secretary of Energy.

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August 5, 1882 – Rockefeller founds Standard Oil of New Jersey

Twelve years after launching Standard Oil Company of Ohio (bp America), John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (ExxonMobil) as a refining and marketing arm of the Standard Oil Trust, which would reorganize as Standard Oil Interests in 1892, two years after the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. 

“Taking advantage of New Jersey laws that allowed corporations to own stock in other corporations, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey became a holding company that effectively replaced the Standard Oil Trust. In this capacity, it provided administrative coordination to Standard Oil Interests and held stock in forty-one other oil companies,” notes the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1911 ordered Standard Oil of New Jersey to separate from its subsidiaries.

August 7, 1933 – Permian Basin inspires “Alley Oop” Comic Strip

Although the comic strip “Alley Oop” began syndication with the Newspaper Enterprise Association, the caveman character began in Permian Basin oilfields of the 1920s. A small, West Texas oil town would proclaim itself the inspiration for cartoonist Victor Hamlin.

1995 stamp commemorating “Alley Oop” comics character.

A 1995 stamp commemorated “Alley Oop” by Victor Hamlin, who once worked in oilfields at Yates, Texas.

Iraan (pronounced eye-rah-ann) began as a company town following the October 1926 discovery of the giant Yates oilfield. The town’s name combined the names of Ira and Ann Yates. As petroleum drilling in the Permian Basin boomed, future Alley Oop cartoonist Hamlin worked as an oil company cartographer. He developed a lifelong interest in geology and paleontology that helped inspire his popular Depression Era comic strip.

Learn more in Alley Oop’s Oil Roots.

August 7, 1953 – Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act generates Revenue

The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act designated the Secretary of the Interior responsible for the administration of mineral exploration and development of America’s outer continental shelf. Forty-four Gulf of Mexico wells were already operating in 11 oilfields by 1949. As the offshore industry evolved in the 1950s, petroleum production became the second-largest revenue generator for the country, after income taxes.

Since 1982, the Interior Department has disbursed more than $387 billion in mineral leasing revenues. The Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR ) in 2024 reported a disbursement of $16.45 billion (down from $18.24 billion in 2023) generated from energy production on federal and Tribal lands and federal offshore areas. Monthly disbursements came from the royalties, rents, and bonuses collected from energy and mineral companies operating on federal lands and waters. 

August 7, 2004 – Death of a Famed “Hellfighter”

Famed oilfield well control expert and firefighter Paul “Red” Adair died at age 89 in Houston. The son of a blacksmith, Adair was born in 1915 in Houston. He served with a U.S. Army bomb disposal unit during World War II.

Firefighter Paul “Red” Adair in 1964.

Famed oilfield firefighter Paul “Red” Adair of Houston, Texas, in 1964.

Adair had begun his oilfield career working for Myron Macy Kinley, who patented a technology for using charges of high explosives to snuff out well fires. Kinley, whose father had been an oil well shooter in California in the early 1900s, mentored many other firefighters, including Asger “Boots” Hansen and Edward “Coots” Mathews (Boots & Coots International Well Control).

After founding the Red Adair Company in 1959, Adair developed new techniques as his company extinguished over 2,000 well fires worldwide, onshore and offshore. The oilfield firefighter’s skills, dramatized in the 1968 film “Hellfighters,” were put to the test in 1991, when his company extinguished 117 well fires set in Kuwait by the retreating Iraqi army. Innovative oilfield firefighting technologies began as early as the 1860s.

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August 9, 1921 – Reflection Seismography reveals Geological Structure

A team led by University of Oklahoma geophysicist John C. Karcher conducted the world’s first reflection seismograph measurement of a geologic formation, pioneering the use of reflection seismic technology. The geological section measurement followed limited tests in June and July at Oklahoma City. His work led to the discovery of many of the world’s largest oil and natural gas fields. 

Roadside marker with geologic map of Arbuckle Anticline in Oklahoma.

A roadside sign on I-35 south of Oklahoma City includes a geologic illustration of the Arbuckle Anticline. A nearby marker describes how using reflection seismography for oil exploration began here. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The new geophysical method recorded reflected seismic waves as they traveled through the earth, helping to define oil-bearing formations. The Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma were selected for testing the technique and new equipment, according to a roadside marker at the site south of Oklahoma City on I-35.

Learn More in Exploring Seismic Waves.

August 9, 1922 – Giant Oilfield revealed in Luling, Texas 

After drilling six dry holes near Luling, Texas, the United North & South Oil Company completed its Rafael Rios No. 1 well. Company President Edgar B. Davis remained determined to find oil in the Austin chalk geologic formation. His perseverance paid off with an oilfield 12 miles long and two miles wide. The Luling field annually produced 11 million barrels of oil by 1924. 

Exterior of Luling Oil Museum in its historic Texas building that was once a mercantile store.

The Luling Oil Museum in central Texas is in a restored 1885 mercantile store near the 1922 oilfield a psychic claimed to help discover. Photo courtesy Luling Oil Museum.

On June 11, 1926, Davis sold his Luling leases to the Magnolia Petroleum Company for $12 million – the largest petroleum deal in Texas at the time. Success also produced local tales of Davis finding the Luling oilfield after consulting a psychic. Self-proclaimed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce reported he had helped Davis, but the psychic formed an exploration company that failed after drilling dry holes.

Learn more in Luling Oil Museum and Crudoleum.

On August 9, 1949 – Oil discovered in Western Nebraska

An oilfield discovery in western Nebraska ended decades of unsuccessful searching and helped start the state’s modern petroleum industry. The Marathon Oil Company Mary Egging No. 1 well, five miles southeast of the town of Gurley, produced 225 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 4,429 feet.

According to a nearby historical marker, the first exploratory well drilled in the area near Harrisburg failed in 1917. The success in western Nebraska came nine years after the first Nebraska oil well was completed in 1940 in the southeastern corner of the state. 

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Marathon Oil in May 2024 announced it was being acquired by ConocoPhillips in an all-stock transaction valued at $22.5 billion.

August 10, 1909 – Hughes patents Two-Cone Drill Bit 

“Fishtail” drill bits became obsolete after Howard Hughes Sr. of Houston, Texas, patented the dual-cone roller bit with two rotating cones. By pulverizing hard rock, his bit led to faster and deeper rotary drilling. A few months before receiving the 1909 drill patent, Hughes and Walter Sharp established the manufacturing company Sharp-Hughes Tool (see Carl Baker and Howard Hughes).

Patent drawing of Hughes 1909 drill bit.

Howard Hughes Sr. of Houston, Texas, received a 1909 patent for “roller drills such as are used for drilling holes in earth and rock.”

“Instead of scraping the rock, as does the fishtail bit, the Hughes bit, with its two conical cutters, took a different engineering approach,” reported the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). “By chipping, crushing, and powdering hard rock formations, the Hughes Two-Cone Drill Bit could reach vast amounts of oil in reservoirs thousands of feet below the surface. This new drilling technology would revolutionize the industry.”

In 1933, Hughes engineers invented the modern tri-cone bit; Frank and George Christensen developed the earliest diamond bit in 1941; and tungsten-carbide bits arrived in the early 1950s. By the 1970s, synthetic diamonds evolved into the polycrystalline diamond compact bit. ASME in 2009 designated the Hughes two-cone drill bit a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark (no. 246).

Learn more in Making Hole – Drilling Technology. 

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Recommended Reading: Ragtown: A History of the Greater Healdton-Hewitt Oil Field (1989); The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (1999); Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (2004); Yates: A family, A Company, and Some Cornfield Geology (2000); An American Hero: The Red Adair Story (1990); Oil And Gas In Oklahoma: Petroleum Geology In Oklahoma (2013); Texas Art and a Wildcatter’s Dream: Edgar B. Davis and the San Antonio Art League (1998); Drilling Technology in Nontechnical Language (2012). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an annual AOGHS supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

 

 

First Texas Oil Boom

Drilling for water in 1894, Corsicana discovered an oilfield and became the richest town in Texas.

 

In the summer of 1894, town leaders of Corsicana, Texas, hired a contractor to drill a water well on 12th Street. The driller found oil instead. The small community’s oilfield discovery launched the first Texas oil boom seven years before a more famous gusher at Spindletop Hill far to the southeast.

Corsicana’s first oil well produced less than three barrels of oil a day, but it quickly transformed the sleepy agricultural town into a petroleum and industrial center. The discovery launched industries, including service companies and manufacturers of the newly invented rotary drilling rig.

Derricks at Corsicana, Texas, oilfield shown in this circa 1910 postcard.

The first Texas oil boom arrived in 1894 with discovery of the Corsicana oilfield by a drilling contractor hired by the city to find water. An annual Derrick Day Chili & BBQ Cook-Off celebrates the discovery. Colorized postcard of Navarro County oil wells, circa 1910.

Corsicana local historians consider the 1894 discovery well, drilled on South 12th Street, the first significant commercial oil discovery west of the Mississippi (Kansans claim the same distinction for an 1892 Neodesha oil well).

Early Texas Oilfields

The American Well and Prospecting Company (from Kansas) made the oil strike on June 9, 1894, at a depth of 1,035 feet. The city council — angry and still wanting water for its growing community 55 miles south of Dallas — paid only half of the drilling contractor’s $1,000 fee. (more…)

World-Famous “Wild Mary Sudik”

Featured in newsreels, an Oklahoma City 1930 gusher needed “clever equipment” to be brought under control.

 

As the worst of the Great Depression approached, an 11-day geyser of Oklahoma “black gold” was irresistible to newspaper editors and newsreel producers in 1930. Crews from NBC Radio rushed to cover the dramatic struggle to control “Wild Mary Sudik,” a blowout in the Oklahoma City oilfield. Repeated attempts to contain the well made headlines.

The Mary Sudik No. 1 well erupted after striking a high-pressure formation about 6,500 feet beneath the farm of Vincent and Mary Sudik near the intersection of Bryant Street and present-day I-240 in southwest Oklahoma City. The Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company’s well flowed a “volcano of crude oil and natural gas” for 11 days before being brought under control. (more…)

Sweeney’s 1866 Rotary Rig

Early patent for a hollow “drill-rod” and roller bit for “making holes in hard rock.”

 

An “Improvement in Rock Drills” patent issued to a New Yorker after the Civil War included the basic elements of the modern petroleum industry’s rotary rig.

On January 2, 1866, Peter Sweeney of New York City was granted U.S. patent No. 51,902 for a drilling system with many innovative technologies. His rotary rig design, which improved upon an 1844 British patent by Robert Beart, applied the rotary drilling method’s “peculiar construction particularly adapted for boring deep wells.”

Peter Sweeny 1866 rotary rig patent drawing.

Peter Sweeney’s innovative 1866 “Stone Drill” patent included a roller bit using a “rapid rotary motion” that would evolve into modern rotary drilling technologies.

More efficient than traditional cable-tool percussion bits, Sweeney’s patent provided for a roller bit with replaceable cutting wheels such “that by giving the head a rapid rotary motion the wheels cut into the ground or rock and a clean hole is produced.”

Deeper Drilling

The Sweeney design utilized a roller bit with replaceable cutting wheels such “that by giving the head a rapid rotary motion the wheels cut into the ground or rock and a clean hole is produced.

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In another innovation, the “drill-rod” was hollow and connected with a hose through which “a current of steam or water can be introduced in such a manner that the discharge of the dirt and dust from the bottom of the hole is facilitated.”

Better than commonly used steam-powered cable-tools, which used heavy rope to lift and drop iron chisel-like bits, Sweeney claimed his drilling apparatus could be used with great advantage for “making holes in hard rock in a horizontal, oblique, or vertical direction.”

Drilling operations could be continued without interruption, Sweeny explained in his patent application, “with the exception of the time required for adding new sections to the drill rod as the depth of the hole increases. The dirt is discharged during the operation of boring and a clean hole is obtained into which the tubing can be introduced without difficulty.”

A 1917 rotary rig in the Coalinga, California, oilfield.

A 1917 rotary rig in the Coalinga, California, oilfield. Courtesy of the Joaquin Valley Geology Organization.

Foreseeing the offshore exploration industry, Sweeney’s patent concluded with a note that “the apparatus can also be used with advantage for submarine operations.”

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With the U.S. oil industry’s growth after the first commercial well in 1859, drilling contractors quickly improved upon Sweeney’s idea. A device was fitted to the rotary table that clamped around the drill pipe and turned. As this “kelly bushing” rotated, the pipe rotated and with it the bit downhole. The torque of the rotary table was transmitted to the drill stem.

Thirty-five years after Sweeney’s patent, rotary drilling revolutionized the petroleum industry after a 1901 oil discovery by Capt. Anthony Lucas launched a drilling boom at Spindletop Hill in Texas.

Learn more at Making Hole – Drilling Technology.

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Recommended Reading:  History Of Oil Well Drilling (2007); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society  (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Sweeney’s 1866 Rotary Rig.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/technology/1866-patent-rotary-rig. Last Updated: December 27, 2024. Original Published Date: January 2, 2013.

First Kansas Oil Well

Natural gas discoveries and an 1892 oil well at Neodesha revealed giant Mid-Continent fields.

 

Small amounts of oil found in 1892 at Neodesha in eastern Kansas would be called the first commercial oil discovery west of the Mississippi River — although the driller had been searching for natural gas. The search for the Sunflower State’s petroleum resources began decades earlier.

In 1860, George Brown, a newspaperman in Kansas Territory, recalled stories about an oil spring in Lykins County. Brown, who had arrived a few years earlier from the Pennsylvania oil regions, gathered a few partners and drilled three shallow wells one mile east of Paola. (more…)

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