This Week in Petroleum History: April 14 – 20

April 14, 1865 – Failed Oilman turns Assassin – 

After failing to make his fortune in Pennsylvania oilfields, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. Booth had left his acting career a year earlier to drill an oil well in booming Venango County.

In January 1864, Booth visited Franklin, Pennsylvania, where he leased 3.5 acres on a farm, about one mile south of the village of Franklin and on the east side of the Allegheny River. With several partners, including his friends from the stage, Booth formed the Dramatic Oil Company and raised money to drill a well.

John Wilkes Booth portrait next to a Pennsylvania map showing Fuller Farm and and site of his oil well near Titusville, PA.

John Wilkes Booth made his first trip to the oil boom town of Franklin, Pennsylvania, in January 1864. He purchased a 3.5-acre lease on the Fuller farm (lower left). Circa 1865 photo of Booth by Alexander Gardner, courtesy Library of Congress.

Although the Dramatic Oil Company’s well found oil and began producing about 25 barrels a day, Booth and his partners wanted more and tried “shooting” the well to increase production. When the well was ruined, the failed oilman left the Pennsylvania oil region for good in July 1864.

Learn more in Dramatic Oil Company.

April 15, 1857 – First Natural Gas Company incorporated

Two years before the first U.S. oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the Fredonia Gas Light and Water Works Company incorporated in Fredonia, New York, where a well drilled by local machinist and gunsmith William A. Hart supplied natural gas to a mill as early as 1825. Hart found the gas after drilling three wells, according to historian Lois Barris.

“He left a broken drill in one shallow hole and abandoned a second site at a depth of forty feet because of the small volume of gas found,” Barris noted in her Fredonia Gaslight and Waterworks Company.”

Circa 1950 souvenir postcard of a bronze plaque on a boulder in Fredonia, New York, dedicated in 1925 by the Daughters of the American Revolution to commemorate the "First Gas Well in United States."

Circa 1950 souvenir postcard of a bronze plaque on a boulder in Fredonia, New York, dedicated in 1925 by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Hart’s third well produced natural gas from 70 feet beneath a “bubbling gas spring in the bed of a creek,” Barris reported, adding that after constructing a simple gasometer, he “proceeded to pipe and market the first natural gas sold in this country.”

As other communities adopted public lighting burning gas made from coal (manufactured gas street lamps began illuminating Baltimore in 1817), Fredonia Gas Light and Water Works built the first U.S. natural gas pipeline network. 

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 April 15, 1897 – Birth of Oklahoma Oil Industry

With a crowd gathered at the Nellie Johnstone No. 1 well near Bartlesville in Indian Territory, George Keeler’s stepdaughter dropped a “Go Devil” that set off a downhole canister of nitroglycerin. The resulting gusher heralded the start of Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry. 

A 2017 water gusher demo at Nellie Johnstone No. 1 replica in Discovery One Park, Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

A 2017 water gusher demonstration of the Nellie Johnstone No. 1 replica in Discovery One Park, Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Drilling had begun in January 1897, the same month that Bartlesville incorporated with a population of about 200 people. Four months later, at 1,320 feet, the Nellie Johnstone No.1 well showed its first signs of oil. There had been earlier marginal producers, including a Cherokee Nation 1890 oil well; the Johnstone well revealed the giant Bartlesville-Dewey field.

By the time of statehood in 1907, Oklahoma would lead the world in oil production. An 84-foot derrick in Discovery One Park helps educate visitors about Oklahoma’s petroleum industry. The surrounding land was donated by Nellie Johnstone Cannon, the descendant of a Delaware chief.

Learn more in First Oklahoma Oil Well.

April 16, 1855 – Scientist sees Value in “Rock Oil”

Yale chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr. reported Pennsylvania “Rock Oil” could be distilled into a high-quality illuminating oil. The professor’s “Report on Rock Oil or Petroleum” convinced a businessman George Bissell and a group of New Haven, Connecticut, investors to finance Edwin Drake to drill where Bissell had found oil seeps at a creek in northwestern Pennsylvania.

A portrait of Yale chemist Prof. Benjamin Silliman and the cover text from his 1855 report on "Rock Oil or Petroleum."

The Yale chemist’s 1855 report about oil’s potential for refining as an illuminant led to America’s first commercial well four years later.

“Gentlemen,” Silliman wrote, “it appears to me that there is much ground for encouragement in the belief that your company have in their possession a raw material from which, by simple and not expensive processes, they may manufacture very valuable products.”

Learn more in George Bissell’s Oil Seeps.

April 16, 1920 – First Arkansas Oil Well

Col. Samuel S. Hunter of the Hunter Oil Company of Shreveport, Louisiana, completed the first oil well in Arkansas. His Hunter No. 1 well had been drilled to 2,100 feet. Natural gas was discovered a few days later by Constantine Oil and Refining Company north of what would become the El Dorado field in Union County.

A replica, full-sized wooden derrick and nearby pump jack at the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources.

The Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources is just north of El Dorado.

Although Col. Hunter’s oil well yielded only small quantities, his discovery was followed by a January 1921 gusher — the S.T. Busey well — in the same field. These wells made headlines and launched the Arkansas petroleum industry, according to the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources. Hunter later sold his original lease of 20,000 acres to the Standard Oil Company of Louisiana for more than $2.2 million.

Learn more in First Arkansas Oil Wells.

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April 17, 1861 – Deadly Oil Well Fire in Pennsylvania

The lack of technologies for controlling wells led to a fatal oil well fire at Rouseville, Pennsylvania. Among the 19 people killed was leading citizen Henry Rouse, who subleased the land along Oil Creek. When his well erupted oil from a depth of 320 feet, the good news had attracted most Rouseville residents. “Henry Rouse and the others stood by wondering how to control the phenomenon,” noted the local newspaper. Then the gusher erupted into flames, perhaps ignited by a steam-engine boiler.

Circa 1861 painting  “Burning Oil Well at Night” painting of Rouseville tragedy.

“Burning Oil Well at Night, near Rouseville, Pennsylvania,” a painting by James Hamilton, circa 1861, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

The oilfield tragedy near Titusville would be overshadowed by the Civil War, but it was immortalized in 1861 by Philadelphia artist James Hamilton’s “Burning Oil Well at Night, near Rouseville, Pennsylvania,” which was added to the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection in 2017.

Learn more in Fatal 1861 Rouseville Oil Well Fire.

April 17, 1919 – North Texas Burkburnett Boom grows

Yet another drilling boom began in Wichita County, Texas, when the Bob Waggoner Well No. 1 well began producing 4,800 barrels of oil a day — extending to the northwest a 1918 oilfield found on the Burkburnett farm of S.L. Fowler. Wichita County had been producing oil since the 1911 discovery of the Electra oilfield.

At Burkburnett, a 2006 historical marker of the Texas Historical Commission notes the 1919 discovery “became known as the Northwest Extension Oilfield, comprised of approximately 27 square miles on the former S. Burk Burnett Wild Horse Ranch.” The marker adds “the area was suddenly thick with oil derricks” thanks to the oilfield discoveries that created the boom town Burkburnett.

April 18, 1939 – Patent for perforating Well Casing

Ira McCullough of Los Angeles patented a multiple bullet-shot casing perforator and mechanical firing system. He explained the object of his oilfield invention was “to provide a device for perforating casing after it has been installed in a well in which projectiles or perforating elements are shot through the casing and into the formation.”

Illustration with numbers for showing Ira McCullough's 1937 patent drawing.

Ira McCullough’s 1937 patent drawing for perforating wells.

The innovation of simultaneous firing from several levels in the borehole greatly enhanced the flow of oil. McCullough’s device included a “disconnectable means” that rendered percussion inoperative until the charges were lowered into the borehole, acting as “a safeguard against accidental or inadvertent operation.”

Another inventor, Henry Mohaupt, in 1951 used anti-tank technology from World War II to improve the concept by using a conically hollowed-out explosive for perforating wells.

Learn more in Downhole Bazooka.

April 19, 1892 – First U.S. Gasoline Powered Automobile

Brothers Charles and Frank Duryea test drove a gasoline-powered automobile they had built in their Springfield, Massachusetts, workshop. Considered the first model to be regularly manufactured for sale in the United States, 13 were produced by the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. 

The Duryea brothers sit in their pioneering 1892 automobile.

The Duryea brothers (above) built their pioneering autos in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The brothers sold their first Duryea motor wagon in March 1918. Two months later,  a motorist driving a Duryea in New York City hit a bicyclist — reportedly America’s first auto traffic accident. By the time of the first U.S. automobile show in November 1900 at Madison Square Garden, of the 4,200 automobiles sold in the United States, gasoline powers less than 1,000.

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April 20, 1875 – Improved Well Pumping Technology

Pumping multiple wells with a single steam engine boosted efficiency in early oilfields when Albert Nickerson and Levi Streeter of Venango County, Pennsylvania, patented their “Improvement In Means For Pumping Wells.” The new technology used a system of linked and balanced walking beams to pump oil wells.

Patent drawing for 1875 “Improvement In Means For Pumping Wells."

U.S. oilfield technologies advanced in 1875 with an “Improvement In Means For Pumping Wells.”

“By an examination of the drawing it will be seen that the walking-beam to well No. l is lifting or raising fluid from the well. Well No. 3 is also lifting, while at the same time wells 2 and 4 are moving in an opposite direction, or plunging, and vice versa,” the inventors explained. Their system was the forerunner of rod-line (or jerk-line) eccentric wheel systems that operated into the 20th century using iron rods instead of rope and pulleys.

Learn more in All Pumped Up – Oilfield Technology.

April 20, 1892 – Prospector discovers Los Angeles City Oilfield

The giant Los Angeles oilfield was discovered when a struggling prospector, Edward Doheny, and his mining partner Charles Canfield drilled into the tar seeps between Beverly Boulevard and Colton Avenue. Their well produced about 45 barrels of oil a day.

Artfully camouflaged petroleum production continues today in downtown Los Angeles.

Artfully camouflaged petroleum production continues today in downtown Los Angeles. Edward Doheny discovered the oilfield in 1892. Photo courtesy the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Culver City, California.

Although the first California oil well had been drilled after the Civil War, Doheny’s 1892 discovery near present-day Dodger Stadium launched California’s petroleum industry. In 1897, about 500 Los Angeles City wells pumped more than half of the state’s annual production of 1.2 million barrels of oil. By 1925, California supplied half of all the world’s oil.

Learn more in Discovering Los Angeles Oilfields.

April 20, 2010 – Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Disaster

At 10 a.m., while completing a well in the Macondo Prospect, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, killing 11 and injuring another 17 workers. An estimated 3.2 million barrels of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico after the platform’s 400-ton blowout preventer failed, resulting in the largest accidental marine oil spill in U.S. history.

April 2010 image of burning offshore platform Deepwater Horizon with fire boats fighting the blaze.

The April 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and fire killed 11 and injured 17 workers. USGS Photo.

Six months earlier at another site, the advanced, semi-submersible drilling rig had set a world record for the deepest offshore well (35,050 feet vertical depth in 4,130 feet of water). When the Macondo Prospect well was capped in mid-July, a National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling launched an eight-month investigation. The commission released its final report on January 11, 2011.

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Recommended Reading: Recommended Reading: Sketches in Crude-Oil (1902);  Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); Oil in Oklahoma (1976); Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil: A Photographic History, 1901-1946 (1982); Cherry Run Valley: Plumer, Pithole, and Oil City, Pennsylvania (2000); Early Texas Oil: A Photographic History, 1866-1936 (2000); Wireline: A History of the Well Logging and Perforating Business in the Oil Fields (1990); Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny (2001); Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling: Report to the President (2011). 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 © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

This Week in Petroleum History: March 31 – April 6

March 31, 1919 – Oklahoma’s Other First Oil Well –

The Cherokee-Warren Oil and Gas Company incorporated — taking over the remaining assets of the exploration venture that drilled Oklahoma’s “other first oil well” in Indian Territory. That well, drilled in 1889 but abandoned by the United States Oil and Gas Company, was on a 100,000-acre lease in the Cherokee Nation.

Edward Byrd, a Cherokee by marriage, had found oil seeps southwest of Chelsea in 1882. Two years later the Cherokee Nation authorized his United States Oil and Gas Company, “for the purpose of finding petroleum, or rock oil, and thus increasing the revenue of the Cherokee Nation.”

Learn more in Another First Oklahoma Oil Well.

April 1, 1911 – First Gusher of “Pump Jack Capital of Texas”

South of the Red River border with Oklahoma, near Electra, Texas, the Clayco Oil & Pipe Line Company’s Clayco No. 1 well launched an oil boom that would last decades. “As news of the gusher spread through town, people thought it was an April Fools joke and didn’t take it seriously until they saw for themselves the plume of black oil spewing high into the sky,” noted a local historian. (more…)

Oklahoma Petroleum History

Mid-Continent discoveries and many technology advancements.

 

Oil discoveries, which began before statehood in 1907, by the mid-20th century had helped established leading major and independent petroleum companies. 

Derricks at capitol in Oklahoma City oilfield, circa 1930.

Discovered in 1928, the giant Oklahoma City oilfield added stability to the state’s economy during the Great Depression. This field alone produced more than 7.3 million barrels of oil over the next 40 years. Photo courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.

Oklahoma’s petroleum exploration and production history began when exploration companies rushed to Indian Territory in 1897 after a column of oil erupted from a well near Bartlesville, a small town on the Caney River just south of the Kansas border.

The “wildcatters” often used steam boilers to power heavy cable tools for Making Hole – Drilling Technology. It was a technique that had evolved from using a spring pole to drill brine wells for making salt.

 

Pink granite marker of April 15, 1897, first commercial Oklahoma oil well.

The Nellie Johnstone No. 1 well in April 1897 made Oklahoma oil history as its first discovery – and attracting hundreds of exploration companies to Bartlesville in what was then Indian Territory. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The 1897 Bartlesville oil gusher, which came a decade before statehood, was the First Oklahoma Oil Well, although some historians maintain a well drilled a decade earlier should be considered as Oklahoma’s Other First Oil Well.

Autos in mud at Seminole, Oklahoma, circa mid-1920s.

In addition to attracting exploration companies, Oklahoma’s drilling booms brought traffic jams, including this one in Seminole, Oklahoma, circa mid-1920s. Photo courtesy Oklahoma Oil Museum.

More oilfield discoveries quickly followed, each making national headlines and attracting investors seeking riches in Mid-Continent black gold.

Adding to the region’s oil fever, the 1901 Red Fork Gusher launched another historic drilling boom, soon Making Tulsa “Oil Capital of the World.”

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When Missouri investors saw opportunities in the oilfields at the Kansas-Oklahoma border, they formed Cahege Oil & Gas Company. Following statehood in 1907, more major discovers made the Sooner State famous worldwide.

Pump stations and oil tanks at Cushing, Oklahoma, circa 1918.

More than 50 refineries once operated in the Cushing area about 50 miles west of Tulsa. Pipelines and storage facilities have since made it “the pipeline crossroads of the world.” Photo from Cushing oilfield, 1910-1918, courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.

Thomas B. Slick

In March 1912 near Cushing, the Wheeler No. 1 wildcat well produced 400 barrels a day from less than 2,350 feet deep. It marked the first of many oil gushers by an independent oilman once known as Thomas “Dry Hole” Slick.

"Capitol of Oklahoma with surrounding derricks. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma," August 1939, by Russell Lee (1903-1986) for Farm Security Administration. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

“Capitol of Oklahoma with surrounding derricks. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” August 1939, by Russell Lee (1903-1986) for Farm Security Administration. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Derricks in the Oklahoma City oilfield in 1930 stood silent for one hour in tribute to wildcatter Thomas B. Slick, who discovered Oklahoma’s giant Cushing oilfield in 1912. His drilling career include an 18-year streak discovering some of America’s most prolific oilfields, earning Slick the title of Oklahoma’s King of the Wildcatters.

Historic marker on I-23 commemorates 1921 use of seismic technology in Oklahoma.

An historic marker commemorates the August 9, 1921, field testing of seismic technology. The site is located on I-35 about halfway between Oklahoma City and Dallas. Photo by Bruce Wells.

In 1915, the Bartlesville-based Cities Service Company subsidiary discovered the 34-square-mile El Dorado oilfield in Kansas.

In 1928, another subsidiary, Empire Oil & Refining, discovered the massive Oklahoma City oilfield, soon home of the headline (and news reel) making gusher, “Wild Mary Sudik.” 

Thanks to a University of Oklahoma physicist, new earth-science technologies like reflection seismography began revolutionizing petroleum exploration in the 1920s. J.C. Karcher’s methods evolved from efforts to locate enemy artillery during World War I. He measured the first reflection seismograph geologic section during an experiment near Ardmore in 1921.

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By the 1920s, auctions for Osage Nation mineral leases took place in the shade of a Million Dollar Elm near Pawhuska. Oil production Osage oilfields launched the careers of industry leaders like Frank Phillips, J. Paul Getty, Bill Skelly, E.W. Marland and Harry Sinclair.

South of Oklahoma City, the 1926 oilfield discovery at Seminole launched the Greater Seminole Oil Boom. More than 60 petroleum reservoirs were found in 1,300 square miles of east-central Oklahoma – and seven were giants, producing more than a million barrels of oil each.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2024 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Oklahoma Oil History.” Author: Aoghs.org Editors. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/oklahoma-oil-history. Last Updated: February 15 2024. Original Published Date: March 4, 2016.

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