The history of Con Edison includes stories of work crews from New York City’s many competing gas companies digging up lines of rivals — and literally battling for customers, giving rise to the term “gas house gangs.” (more…)
The U.S. offshore drilling for oil began in the late-19th century on lakes and at the ends of Pacific Ocean piers. Until an innovative Kerr-McGee drilling platform in 1947, no offshore drilling company had ever risked drilling beyond the sight of land.
Many of the earliest offshore oil wells were drilled from piers at Summerland in Santa Barbara County, California. Circa 1901 photo by G.H. Eldridge courtesy National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.
In 1896, as enterprising businessmen pursued California’s prolific Summerland oilfield all the way to the beach, the lure of offshore production enticed Henry L. Williams and his associates to build a pier 300 feet out into the Pacific — and mount a standard cable-tool rig on it. (more…)
Oil patch lore says “Yellow Dog” lanterns got their name because of two burning wicks that resembled a dog’s glowing eyes at night. Others say the lamps cast an eerie dog’s head shadow on the derrick floor.
Rare is the community oil museum that doesn’t have a Yellow Dog in its collection. Officially patented a decade after the Civil War, the two-wicked “Derrick Safety Lamp” would become an oilfield icon. But long before Yellow Dogs found their way to the oil patch, a similar design burned animal fat atop America’s lighthouses.
First patented in 1870, Jonathan Dillen’s lantern was “adapted for use in the oil regions…where the explosion of a lamp is attended with great danger by causing destructive conflagration and consequent loss of life and property.”
By the late 1700s, the cylindrical “Bucket Lamp” included two or four spouts protruding from its sides, according to Thomas Tag in Lighthouse Lamps Through Time. “Each spout carried a large diameter rope wick that extended down inside the body of the lamp into the oil.”
As late as 1874, four years after Yellow Dog lamp patent, the U.S. Lighthouse Board of the Department of Treasury continued to mandate the use of lard for fueling the beacons, later rejecting electricity and natural gas because of “the complexity and cost of the apparatus.”
By 1877, the Lighthouse Board changed its illumination mandate to kerosene, which would be supplanted by electric arc lamps and followed by incandescent bulbs.
Despite its many oilfield service manufacturers, the Yellow Dog’s origins remain in the dark. Some historical sources claim the derrick lamp’s design originated with the whaling industry, but neither the Nantucket nor New Bedford whaling museums have found any such evidence.
Railroad museums often include collections of cast iron smudge pots, but nothing approaching the heavy, crude-oil burning lanterns once prevalent in oilfields from Pennsylvania to California.
A 19th century illustration of a cable-tool driller with his nearby Yellow Dog lantern.
Inventor Jonathan Dillen of Petroleum Centre, Pennsylvania, was first to patent what became the iconic lantern of the early years of the petroleum industry. His U.S. patent was awarded on May 3, 1870. The two-wicked lamp joined other safety innovations as drilling technologies evolved.
The lamp was designed “for illuminating places out of doors, especially in and about derricks, and machinery in the oil regions, whereby explosions are more dangerous and destructive to life and property than in most other places.”
“My improved lamp is intended to burn crude petroleum as it comes from the wells fresh and gassy,” Dillen proclaimed. “It is to be used, mainly, around oil wells, and its construction is such as to make it very strong, so that it cannot be easily broken or exploded.”
Dillen’s Yellow Dog patent was improved upon and reissued in 1872 and again in 1877, when it was assigned to a growing oilfield equipment supplier.
In 1861, John Eaton made a business trip to the booming oil region of western Pennsylvania. Within a few years, he had set up his own business with Edward Cole. With the addition of Edward Burnham, the company grew to become a preeminent supplier of oilfield equipment.
In early Pennsylvania oilfields, a John Eaton biography by his great-grandson noted Eaton was considered “father of the well supply trade.”
By 1877, Eaton, Cole & Burnham oilfield supply had outlets in the Pennsylvania oil regions, including Pittsburgh and Bradford. The company changed its name Oil Well Supply Company the next year, according to a biography by his great-grandson, Louis B. Fleming.
“The first goods manufactured by the Oil Well Supply Company were made on a foot lathe,” John Eaton would recall. The oilfield equipment supply company was operating 75 manufacturing plants by the turn of the 20 century.
The biography, John Eaton, by journalist Fleming, cited the classic 1898 book Sketches in Crude Oil, which noted that Oil Well Supply company’s founder and president “may fairly claim to be the father of the well supply trade.”
A Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission roadside marker erected in Oil City in 1992 notes: “Oil Well Supply Company — Founded nearby in 1878, it was a leading manufacturer of oil well machinery and supplies, serving the oil industry across the globe. By the early 1900s, employment peaked at 2,000. In 1930 it became a subsidiary of United States Steel.”
Incorporated in Pennsylvania – the Keystone State – Forest Oil’s logo features the iconic two-wicked lamp invented in 1870.
In Oil City at its 45-acre Imperial Works on the Allegheny River, Oil Well Supply manufactured oilfield engines and “cast and malleable iron goods” that included the two-wicked derrick safety lamp. The 1884 Oil Well Supply catalog listed Yellow Dog lamps at a price of $1.50 each.
Today, along with their shadowy origins, the Yellow Dog lanterns are relegated to museums, antique shops and collectors. They sometimes can be found on display next to another unusual two-wicked lamp (see Camphene to Kerosene Lamps).
After experimenting with injecting water into some wells to increase production from others, Forest Dorn partnered with his father Clayton in 1916 to establish Forest Oil, an oilfield service company in Pennsylvania’s giant Bradford oilfield.
The company in February 1824 adopted the two-wicked oilfield derrick lamp as part of its logo, which included a keystone shape inside the lantern to symbolize the state of Pennsylvania — where the first commercial U.S. oil well was drilled in Titusville in 1859.
Forest Oil Company developed an extremely efficient technique for “secondary recovery” of trapped petroleum reservoirs. The waterflooding proved revolutionary for improving oilfield production nationwide. The technological leap began at America’s first giant oilfield, discovered in 1871 in Bradford, about 70 miles east of Titusville .
An oil museum near Bradford, Pennsylvania, educates visitors using a replica of an 1880s standard cable-tool derrick. Photo by Bruce Wells.
By 1916, oil production in the Bradford field had declined to just under 40 barrels a day. The reserve was considered by many to be dry — until Forest Dorn had applied his water-flooding technique to initiate secondary recovery of oil. Forest Oil became a recognized as a leader in secondary oil recovery systems.
Water-flooding boosted oilfield production as demand for gasoline for automobiles was growing (learn more in Cantankerous Combustion – First U.S. Auto Show).
As the science of petroleum geology (and petroleum engineering) advanced, secondary recovery technologies evolved nationwide. Enhanced recovery technologies have been applied throughout the petroleum industry — aiding in the extension of oil wells’ lives by as much as 10 years.
In Texas, the already considerable production from the largest oilfield in the lower-48 states, the East Texas oilfield, has continued since its first well, the Daisy Bradford No. 3, drilled in 1930.
The history of America’s “first billion dollar oilfield” is on exhibit at the Penn-Brad Historical Oil Park and Museum near Bradford, Pennsylvania — where a modern natural gas shale boom has renewed an historic oil patch economy.
Located in Custer City, three miles south of Bradford (home of Zippo lighters), the museum (maintained by many dedicated volunteers) “preserves the philosophy, the spirit, and the accomplishments of an oil country community.”
One attraction of the Penn-Brad museum is its 72-foot standard cable-tool derrick and engine house, replicas of 1880s technology that helped Bradford once produce 74 percent of all U.S. oil. It’s another noteworthy stop among other excellent Pennsylvania oil museums a few hours west of Bradford at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.
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Recommended Reading: Early Days of Oil: A Pictorial History of the Beginnings of the Industry in Pennsylvania
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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. © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Yellow Dog – Oilfield Lantern.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/technology/yellow-dog-oil-field-lantern. Last Updated: November 5, 2024. Original Published Date: September 1, 2008.
As the United Kingdom fought for its survival during World War II, a team of American oil drillers, derrickhands, roustabouts, and motormen secretly boarded the converted troopship HMS Queen Elizabeth in March 1943. Once their story was revealed years later, they would become known as the Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest.
The 42 volunteers from Noble Drilling and Fain-Porter Drilling companies taken before they secretly embarked for the United Kingdom on March 12, 1943, aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, which had been converted into a troop transport ship. Photo courtesy of the Guy Woodward Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
By the summer of 1942, the situation was desperate. The future of Great Britain — and the outcome of World War II — depended on the supply of petroleum. At the end of that year, demand for 100-octane fuel had grown to more than 150,000 barrels every day — and German U-boats ruled the Atlantic.
British Secretary of Petroleum, Geoffrey Lloyd in August 1942 called for an emergency meeting of his country’s Oil Control Board to assess the “impending crisis in oil.” (more…)
The Houston Ship Channel, the “port that built a city,” opened for ocean-going vessels on November 10, 1914, making Texas home to a world-class commercial port. President Woodrow Wilson saluted the occasion from his desk in the White House by pushing an ivory button wired to a cannon in Houston.
The National Anthem played from a barge in the center of the Turning Basin as Sue Campbell, daughter of Houston Mayor Ben Campbell, sprinkled white roses into the water, according to a Port of Houston historian.
An image from a 1915 postcard of the Houston Ship Channel. One year earlier, President Woodrow Wilson officially opened the newly dredged waterway. Photo courtesy Fort Bend Museum, Richmond, Texas.
“I christen thee Port of Houston; hither the boats of all nations may come and receive a hearty welcome,” Campbell proclaimed.
The bayou had been used to ship goods to the Gulf of Mexico as early as the 1830s. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) described the original waterway — known as Buffalo Bayou — as “swampy, marshy and overgrown with dense vegetation.”
“Steamboats and shallow-draft vessels were the only boats able to navigate the complicated channel, noted ASCE, adding that in 1909, Harris County citizens formed a navigation district (an autonomous governmental body for supervising the port) and issued bonds to fund half the cost of dredging the channel.
The Houston Ship Channel on Buffalo Bayou leads upstream to Houston – where downtown can be seen at top right. Photo courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library.
According to the Port of Houston Authority of Harris County, in 1937 the steamship Laura traveled from Galveston Bay up Buffalo Bayou to what is now Houston.
The steamship’s trip, in water no deeper than six feet, proved the bayou was navigable by sizable vessels and established a commercial link between Houston and ports around the world
A “Bird’s Eye” view of Houston in 1891. Today’s Port of Houston is ranked first in foreign cargo and among the largest ports in the world. Map image courtesy Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
“With the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901 and crops such as rice beginning to rival the dominant export crop of cotton, Houston’s ship channel needed the capacity to handle newer and larger vessels,” reported the Port Authority, administrator of the channel.
Harris County voters in January 1910 overwhelmingly approved dredging their ship channel to a depth of 25 feet for $1.25 million. The U.S. Congress provided matching funds. As work began in 1912, similar giant maritime projects included construction of the Panama Canal and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.
An oil museum in Beaumont, Texas, includes petroleum science and refinery exhibits for educating young people about the Port of Houston. Photo courtesy The Texas Energy Museum.
By 1930, eight refineries were operating along the deep water channel, ASCE notes. The area eventually supported massive petrochemical complexes along the shoreline of processing facilities and oil refineries, including ExxonMobil’s Baytown Refinery.
Under continuous development since its original construction, the Houston Ship Channel has been extended to reach 52 miles with a depth of 45 feet and a width of up to 530 feet. It travels from the Gulf through Galveston Bay and up the San Jacinto River, ending four miles east of downtown Houston.
Although the dredging vessel Texas first signaled by whistle the channel’s completion on September 7, 1914, the official opening date has remained when Sue Campbell sprinkled her white roses and President Wilson remotely fired his cannon.
With refineries and expanded liquified terminals for exporting natural gas (LNG), the Texas waterway has grown into one of the largest petrochemical facilities in the world.
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Recommended Reading: Sheer Will: The Story of the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel 
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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 – “Houston Ship Channel of 1914.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/houston-ship-channel. Last Updated: November 1, 2024. Original Published Date: November 25, 2014.
