by Bruce Wells | Sep 29, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
Desperate for their town to live up to its name, community leaders of El Dorado, Kansas, sought petroleum riches after natural gas discoveries at nearby Augusta and at Paola, south of Kansas City. But it would be oil, not natural gas, that brought prosperity east of Wichita. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Feb 22, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
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…)
