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…)
