by Bruce Wells | May 1, 2025 | Petroleum in War
Rebel cavalry in 1863 raided Burning Springs — the first oilfield attack in war.
After burning oilfield facilities at a creek in northwestern Virginia (soon to be West Virginia), Confederate Cavalry Gen. William “Grumble” Jones reported to Gen. Robert E. Lee: “Men of experience estimated the oil destroyed at 150,000 barrels. It will be many months before a large supply can be had from this source…”
On May 9, 1863, the booming oilfield community at Burning Springs fell to the rebel cavalry raiders led by Gen. Jones. His four regiments of Virginia cavalry burned cable-tool drilling derricks, production equipment, storage tanks, and thousands of barrels of oil.
“The First Virginia (Rebel) cavalry at halt. Sketched from nature by Mr. A. R. Waud.” From Harper’s Weekly, September 27, 1862. Gen. Jones’ Brigade consisted of the 6th, 7th, 11th, 12th Virginia Cavalry Regiments and the 35th Virginia Cavalry Battalion. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
The surprise attack south of Parkersburg along the Kanawha River by Gen. Jones marked the first time an oilfield was targeted in war, “making it the first of many oilfields destroyed in war,” proclaimed oil historian and author David L. McKain (1934-2014) in Where it All Began: The story of the people and places where the oil & gas industry began: West Virginia and southeastern Ohio.
The Burning Springs oilfield (near Elizabeth) was destroyed by Confederate raiders in May 1863 when Gen. William “Grumble” Jones and 1,300 troopers attacked in what some call the first oilfield destroyed in a war. Map courtesy Oil & Gas Museum, Parkersburg, West Virginia.
According to McKain’s 1994 book, after the oilfield attack, Gen. Jones reported his cavalry troops left rows of burning oil tanks, a “scene of magnificence that might well carry joy to every patriotic heart.”
Making West Virginia
“After the Civil War, the industry was revived and over the next fifty years the booms spread over almost all the counties of the state,” explained McKain, who from 1970 to 1991 was president of Acme Fishing Tool Company, founded by his grandfather at the height of West Virginia’s oil and natural gas boom in 1900.
A drilling boom began at Burning Springs when an 1861 well produced 100 barrels of oil a day.
McKain, who established an oil museum in Parkersburg, spent decades collecting artifacts on display in the former company warehouse. He was often seen driving his black truck loaded with muddy, early 20th century oilfield engines and other equipment.
Once often seen driving his pickup loaded with historic oilfield equipment, David McKain founded a Parkersburg oil museum — and built exhibits at Burning Springs. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Almost a century before the Civil War, George Washington had acquired 250 acres in the region because it contained oil and natural gas seeps. “This was in 1771, making the father of our country the first petroleum industry speculator,” he noted. The Parkersburg historian authored several books, including a detailed history of the West Virginia petroleum industry.
Detail from 1864 “Map of the oil district of West Virginia,” including Burning Springs (at Elizabeth) in Wirt County courtesy Norman B. Leventhal Map Center Collection, Boston Public Library.
As early as 1831, natural gas was moved in wooden pipes from wells to be used as a manufacturing heat source by the Kanawha salt manufacturers.
Rathbone Well and Statehood
Modern West Virginia’s petroleum industry began when it was part of Virginia. John Castelli ”Cass” Rathbone produced oil from an 1861 well drilled near Burning Springs Run in what today is West Virginia. His well had reached 300 feet and began producing 100 barrels of oil a day.
Rathbone drilled more wells along the Kanawha River south of Parkersburg — beginning the first petroleum boom to take place outside the Pennsylvania oil regions
In 1861, at Burning Springs, Rathbone had used a spring pole — an ancient drilling technology — to drill to a depth of 303 feet, and the well began producing 100 barrels of oil a day. Soon, a commercial oil industry began in the towns of Petroleum and California near Parkersburg, which later became a center for oilfield service and supply companies.
The Rathbone well and commercial oil sales at Petroleum marked the true beginnings of the oil and gas industry in the United States, according to McKain.
David L. McKain established the Oil and Gas Museum at 119 Third Street in Parkersburg, West Virginia. As early as 1831, local salt manufacturers used natural gas as a heat source. Photo by Bruce Wells.
McKain, the founder of the Oil and Gas Museum in Parkersburg, maintained that the wealth created by petroleum was the key factor for bringing statehood to West Virginia during the Civil War.
“Many of the founders and early politicians were oil men — governor, senator and congressman — who had made their fortunes at Burning Springs in 1860-1861,” McKain explained.
President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation admitting the state on June 20, 1863.
Grumble burns an Oilfield
When Confederate Gen. William “Grumble” Jones and 1,300 troopers attacked Burning Springs in the spring of 1863, they destroyed equipment and thousands of barrels of oil.
Confederate cavalry Gen. William “Grumble” Jones.
“The wells are owned mainly by Southern men, now driven from their homes, and their property appropriated either by the Federal Government or Northern men,” said Gen. Jones of his raid on the early oil boom town.
Gen. Jones officially reported to Gen. Robert E. Lee: All the oil, the tanks, barrels, engines for pumping, engine-houses, and wagons — in a word, everything used for raising, holding, or sending it off was burned. Men of experience estimated the oil destroyed at 150,000 barrels. It will be many months before a large supply can be had from this source, as it can only be boated down the Little Kanawha when the waters are high.
The West Virginia Oil and Gas Museum was established thanks to David McKain, who added a small museum at the site of Burning Springs and an oil history park at California (27 miles east of Parkersburg on West Virginia 47). In addition to his Where It All Began, McKain in 2004 published The Civil War and Northwestern Virginia.
Learn more about petroleum’s strategic roles in articles linked at Oil in War.
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Recommended Reading: The Civil War and Northwestern Virginia — The Fascinating Story Of The Economic, Military and Political Events In Northwestern Virginia During the Tumultuous Times Of The Civil War (2004). Where it All Began: The story of the people and places where the oil & gas industry began: West Virginia and southeastern Ohio
(1994). 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. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Confederates attack Oilfield.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL:https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/confederates-attack-oilfield. Last Updated: May 1, 2025. Original Published Date: May 5, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Apr 30, 2025 | Petroleum Products
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil scientists patented the “thermal cracking” process.
Beginning in the 1890s, the Whiting refinery of Standard Oil Company of Indiana first produced kerosene for lamps and later gasoline for autos to meet growing consumer demand.
Seventeen miles east of Chicago, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey began construction on a massive refinery complex in early May 1889. Using advanced refining processes introduced by John D. Rockefeller, it would become the largest in the United States.
BP completed a multi-year, multi-billion dollar modernization project at the Whiting refinery in 2013. Photo courtesy Hydrocarbon Processing magazine.
Once operated by Amoco, the refinery in Whiting, Indiana, was acquired by the British Petroleum Company in 1998 as part of its $48.2 billion merger with Amoco. After the acquisition, British Petroleum became BP Amoco, a name shorted to BP in 2001 after mergers with ARCO and Castrol.
The BP brand also used a lower-case bp often with the tagline “beyond petroleum” and a stylized yellow and green sun. By 2023 — and after federally mandated environmental improvements — the 1,400-acre Whiting plant refined about 435,000 barrels of oil per day.
Refining “Sour Crude”
About one month after construction of the then 235-acre refinery began, Rockefeller established a locally based subsidiary by incorporating Standard Oil Company of Indiana on June 18, 1889. The new company began processing oil at its Whiting refinery within a year.
In its early years, the Indiana refinery processed a sulfurous “sour crude” from the Lima, Ohio, oilfields — transported on Rockefeller-controlled railroads. Most Americans, already putting out their tallow candles to buy lamps fueled with whale oil, lard, or the less costly but volatile camphene, embraced a new fuel — “rock oil” soon brought skyrocketing public demand.
Rockefeller had purchased considerable amounts of production from the Lima oilfield at bargain prices. Most experts in the new petroleum industry believed the thick oil worthless. It could not be refined for a profit. The Whiting refinery, using a newly patented method, efficiently processed Ohio sour oil into high-quality kerosene.
Although gasoline was a minor by-product, two brothers in Massachusetts were building a gasoline-powered horseless carriage at about the time the refinery produced its first 125 railroad tank cars filled with kerosene. The gas-powered automobile helped relaunch the petroleum industry — see Cantankerous Combustion – 1st U.S. Auto Show.
The Standard Oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana, became the company’s most productive. Owned by BP since 1998, it has remained the largest U.S. refinery. Whiting has been home to the Northwest Indiana Oilmen since 2012.
“By the mid-1890s, the Whiting plant had become the largest refinery in the United States, handling 36,000 barrels of oil per day and accounting for nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. refining capacity,” noted historian Mark R. Wilson in the Encyclopedia of Chicago. It initially consisted of just a single facility.
Crude oil was processed into products that people and businesses needed: axle grease for industrial machinery, paraffin wax for candles, and kerosene for home lighting.
“The company grew. By the early 1900s it was the leading provider of kerosene and gasoline in the Midwest” noted Wilson on the website. “Kerosene sales would eventually falter. But with car ownership booming across the United States, demand for gasoline would only go up and up.”
More Midwest Refineries
By 1910, the refinery was connected by pipeline to oilfields in Kansas and Oklahoma, as well as Ohio and Indiana. The Whiting facility employed 2,400 workers a year later when Rockefeller was forced to break up his petroleum empire. Standard Oil of Indiana, with offices in downtown Chicago, emerged as an independent company.
Rockefeller’s Whiting scientists earlier had patented the process they called “thermal cracking” that doubled the amount of gasoline made from a barrel of oil and also boosted the octane rating. Crude oil hydrocarbons were subjected to high heat, “breaking down long-chained, higher-boiling hydrocarbons into shorter-chained, lower-boiling hydrocarbons,” according to Science Direct.
Standard Oil’s revolutionary process, which became standard practice in the refining industry, helped avert a gasoline shortage during World War I. To find its own oil supplies, Standard Oil of Indiana began its own exploration and production business, Stanolind.
In 1922, Standard Oil absorbed the American Oil Company, founded in Baltimore in 1910, and began branding products as Amoco, which later would become its company name. By 1952, Amoco was ranked as the largest domestic oil company.
During the second half of the twentieth century, the U.S. refining industry became more concentrated in Texas, Louisiana, and California.
“The Chicago region became somewhat less important as an oil-processing center than it had been during the previous 60 years,” historian Mark Wilson concluded. “Still, the area remained home to some large refineries. The largest of these plants was the one at Whiting – the same facility that had brought refining to Chicago in 1890.”
Across the border from Indiana, three major Illinois refineries also process oil in the Chicago area. At the end of 2024, the Citgo refinery in Lemont processed 177,000 barrels of oil a day; the Joliet refinery owned by ExxonMobil processed 270,000 barrels of oil a day; and the Robinson refinery of Marathon Petroleum reported a daily capacity for 253,000 barrels of oil. A fourth refinery in southern Illinois was constructed in 1918 by Shell.
The BP Whiting Refinery on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan in 2024 processed 346,500 barrels of oil daily into millions of gallons of gasoline/fuel — and thousands of barrels of asphalt.
The smaller Wood River Refinery has its own museum.
Wood River Refining Museum
Fifteen miles north of St. Louis, Missouri, the Wood River Refinery at Roxana, Illinois, can boast of its own museum. The refinery is owned by Phillips 66 and the Canadian company Cenovus Energy.
“The Wood River Refinery History Museum is located in front of the refinery on Highway 111 in Wood River, Illinois,” the museum notes. “There are four buildings in our complex, so to see most of our collection, plan on spending some time.”
Meanwhile, the historic Whiting refinery has supported a baseball team — the Northwest Indiana Oilmen, one of eight teams in the Midwest Collegiate League, a pre-minor league (see more petroleum-related baseball teams in Oilfields of Dreams).
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Recommended Reading: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
(2004); Whiting and Robertsdale – Images of America
(2013). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
_______________________
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. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Standard Oil Whiting Refinery.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/standard-oil-whiting-refinery. Last Updated: May 2, 2025. Original Published Date: June 15, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Apr 29, 2025 | Petroleum Art
The first pitcher ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Walter “The Big Train” Johnson, worked in California oilfields as a teenager; his famed career began with a company town baseball team. Players sometimes made it to the Big Leagues — and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
As baseball became America’s favorite pastime in the early 20th century, booming oil towns fielded winning teams with names that reflected their communities’ enthusiasm and often their livelihood.
In Texas, the booming petroleum town of Corsicana fielded the Oil Citys — and made baseball history in 1902 with a 51 to 3 drubbing of the Texarkana Casketmakers. Oil Citys catcher Jay Justin Clarke hit eight home runs in eight at bats during the game, still an unbroken baseball record.
Former pitcher for the Olinda Oil Wells — Walter “The Big Train” Johnson — joined “Babe” Ruth in a 1924 exhibition game. Johnson was among the first players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
In 1922, the Wichita Falls minor league team lost its opportunity for a 25th consecutive victory when the league determined the team had “doctored the baseball.” The Wichita Falls ballpark caught fire in June — during a game — and burned to the ground. It was a memorable season.
The Double-A team Tulsa Drillers began in 1977 when the Lafayette Drillers moved to Tulsa.
In Oklahoma oilfields, the Okmulgee Drillers for the first time in baseball history had two players who combined to hit 100 home runs in a single season of 160 games. First baseman Wilbur “Country” Davis and center fielder Cecil “Stormy” Davis accomplished their home run record in 1924, although their team faded away by 1927.
With a growing population thanks to giant oilfields discoveries at nearby Red Fork (1901) and Glenn Pool (1905), the Tulsa Oilers dominated the Western League for a decade, winning the pennant in 1920, 1922, and 1927-1929. The name has continued in the hockey league’s Tulsa Oilers.
In 1977, the double-A affiliate team for the Major League Baseball, the Tulsa Drillers, arrived in the city from Lafayette, Louisiana.
First Night Game
For baseball’s first official night game on April 28, 1930, a company town baseball team — the Producers of Independence, Kansas, lost to the Muskogee Chiefs 13 to 3. The game played under portable lights supplied by the Negro National League’s Kansas City Monarchs.
The Olinda No. 1 well of 1898 created an oil boom town. Hundreds of wells once pumped oil around the Olinda Oil Museum and Trail near Brea, California.
The Independence Producers were one of the 96 teams in the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, later known as Minor League Baseball.
Iola Gasbags and Borger Gassers
Thanks to mid-continent oil and natural gas discoveries, in just nine years beginning in 1895, Iola, Kansas, grew from a town of 1,567 to a city of more than 11,000. Gas wells lighted the way.
However, the Iola Gasbags reportedly adopted their team name not for the resource, but after becoming known as braggers in the Missouri State League. “They traveled to these other cities, and they’d be bragging that they were the champions, so people started giving them the nickname Gasbags,” reported baseball historian Tim Hagerty in a July 2012 National Public Radio interview.
A natural gas boom in Kansas led to a baseball team being named the Iola Gasbags, pictured here in 1904. Photo courtesy National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.
In 1903, the players renamed themselves the Iola Gaslighters — but had a change of heart and reverted to the original name the following season.
“They said, ‘You know what? Yeah, we are, We’re the Gasbags.'” added Hagerty, author of Root for the Home Team: Minor League Baseball’s Most Off-the-Wall Names and the Stories Behind Them. “I think the state of Kansas may take the prize for the most terrific names — the Wichita Wingnuts, the Wichita Izzies, the Hutchinson Salt Packers…and the Iola Gasbags.”
In the Texas Panhandle, the petroleum-related town baseball team Borger Gassers disappeared after the 1955 season, despite Gordon Nell hitting a record-setting 49 homers in 1947. Team owners blamed television and air-conditioning for reducing minor league baseball attendance and profitability.
Detail from 1909 baseball card featuring Pacific Coast League pitcher Jimmy Wiggs. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
In Beaumont, Texas, site of the great Spindletop oil discovery of 1901, minor league baseball lasted for decades under several names. The first team, the Beaumont Oil Gushers of the South Texas League, was fielded in 1903. By the 1904 season the team was known as the Millionaires and then the Oilers before becoming the Beaumont Exporters in 1920.
East of Dallas, in Van, Texas, fielding practice at the oil town baseball high school includes a reminder of a prolific oilfield discovered in 1929. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Although many thought the name should be changed to the Refiners, reflecting the city’s industry, for the 1950 season the team was briefly known as the Roughnecks (a former company town baseball team name still popular).
Beaumont’s last AA Texas League team was the Golden Gators, which folded in 1986. Another team in the Texas League, the company town baseball team Shreveport Gassers, on May 8, 1918, played 20 innings against the Fort Worth Panthers before the game was finally declared a tie at one to one.
Pitching for the Olinda Oil Wells
Perhaps baseball’s greatest product from the oilfield was a young man who was a roustabout in the small oil town of Olinda, California. Walter Johnson (1887-1946) would earn national renown as the greatest pitcher of his time. His fastball was legendary.
In 1894, the Union Oil Company of Santa Paula purchased 1,200 acres in northern Orange County for oil development. Four years later the first oil well, Olinda No. 1, came in and created the oil boom town. Soon, the Olinda baseball players began making a name for themselves among the semi-pro teams of the Los Angeles area.
A 1961 baseball card notes headline of the former California oilfield roustabout’s amazing 1913 pitching record, which lasted until Don Drysdale pitched 58 scoreless innings in 1968.
By 1903, the Orange County team was sharing newly built Athletic Park in Anaheim, “two hours south of Olinda by horse and buggy,” noted one historian. Youngster Walter Johnson rooted for the local team, the Oil Wells.
Johnson, originally from Humboldt, Kansas, moved to the thriving oil town east of Brea with his family when he was 14. He attended Fullerton Union High School and played baseball there while working in the nearby oilfields. His high school pitching began making headlines, including a 15-inning game against rival Santa Ana High School in 1905 where he struck out 27.
Today, tourists visit the Olinda Oil Museum and Trail. This historic Orange County site includes Olinda Oil Well No. 1 of 1898, the oil company field office and a jack-line pump building.
By 17, Johnson was playing for his oil town baseball team, the Olinda Oil Wells, as its ace pitcher. He shared in each game’s income of $25, according to Henry Thomas in Walter Johnson: Baseball’s Big Train.
“Not a bad split for nine players considering that a roustabout in the oilfields started at $1.50 a day,” Thomas noted in his book. Johnson finished with a winning season and soon moved on to the minor leagues.
Johnson’s major league career began in 1907 in Washington, D.C., where he played his entire 21-year baseball career for the Washington Senators. The former oil patch roustabout in 2022 remained major league baseball’s all-time career leader in shutouts with 110, second in wins (417) and fourth in complete games (531).
In 1936, “The Big Train” Johnson was inducted into baseball’s newly created Hall of Fame with four others: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Christy Mathewson. In 1924, Johnson returned to his California oil patch roots. On October 31, he and his former baseball teammates played an exhibition game in Brea against Babe Ruth and the Ruth All-Stars.
The Brea Museum & Historical Society today includes exhibits, rare photographs, and research facilities. There’s also an on-going project recreating Brea in miniature.
Texon Oilers of the Permian Basin
On May 28, 1923, a loud roar was heard when the Santa Rita No. 1 well erupted in West Texas. People as far away as Fort Worth traveled to see the well.
Near Big Lake, Texas, on arid land leased from the University of Texas, Texon Oil and Land Company made the discovery (the school would earn millions of dollars in royalties). The giant oilfield, about 4.5 square miles, revealed the extent of oil reserves in West Texas. Exploration spread in the Permian Basin, still one of the largest U.S. oil-producing regions.
The first oil “company town” in the Permian Basin, Texon, was founded in 1924 by Big Lake Oil Company. The Texon Oilers won Permian Basin League championships in 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1939. Texon remains a tourist attraction – as a ghost town.
Early Permian Basin discoveries created many boom towns, including Midland, which some would soon refer to as “Little Dallas.”
By 1924, Michael L. Benedum, a successful independent oilman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and other successful independent producers — wildcatters — formed the Big Lake Oil Company. The new company established Texon, the first oil company town in the Permian Basin. Texon residents fielded a company town baseball team.
Today a ghost town, Texon was considered a model oil community. It had a school, church, hospital, theater, golf course, swimming pool – and a semi-pro company baseball team.
According to the Texas State Historical Association, the Texon Oilers baseball team was the centerpiece of the employee recreation plan of Levi Smith, vice president and general manager of the Big Lake Oil Company. Smith organized the club after he founded the Reagan County town west of Big Lake.
The Permian Basin oilfield was featured in a 2002 movie featuring a high school teacher and baseball coach. Image from Walt Disney Pictures poster.
By the summer of 1925 a baseball field was ready for use. In 1926 a 500-seat grandstand completed the facility. “In 1929 the Big Lake Oil Company began a tradition of hosting a Labor Day barbecue for employees and friends, highlighted by a baseball game,” noted historian Jane Spraggins Wilson.
“Management consistently attempted to schedule well-known clubs, such as the Fort Worth Cats and the Halliburton Oilers of Oklahoma,” added Wilson, who explained that during the Great Depression, “before good highways, television, and other diversions, the team was a source of community cohesiveness, entertainment, and pride.”
After the World War II, with its famous the oilfield diminishing and the town losing population, aging Oilers left the game for good, Wilson reports. By the mid-1950s the Texon Oilers company town baseball team were but a memory.
Hollywood visits Oilfields
The 2002 movie “The Rookie” — filmed almost entirely in the Permian Basin of West Texas — featured a Reagan County High School teacher. Based on the “true life” of baseball pitcher Jimmy Morris, it tells the story of baseball coach, Morris (played by Dennis Quaid), who despite being in his mid-30s briefly makes it to the major leagues.
The movie, promoted with the phrase, “It’s never too late to believe in your dreams,” begins with a flashback scene near Big Lake, the Santa Rita No. 1 drilling site.
At the beginning of the 2002 movie “The Rookie,” Catholic nuns christened the Santa Rita No. 1 cable-tool rig. In reality, one of the well’s owners climbed the derrick and threw rose petals given to him by Catholic women investors.
As the well is being drilled, Catholic nuns are shown carrying a basket of rose petals to christen it for the patron Saint of the Impossible – Santa Rita. “Much is made of the almost mythic importance of oil in Big Lake, with talk of the Santa Rita oil well,” explained ESPN in The Rookie in Reel Life.
Learn more about the Permian Basin by visiting the Petroleum Museum in Midland.
Company Town Baseball: Oilmen of Whiting, Indiana
In 1889, the Standard Oil Company began construction on its massive, 235-acre refinery in Whiting, Indiana. Today owned by BP, the Whiting refinery is the largest in the United States.
Whiting has been home to the Northwest Indiana Oilmen since 2012.
In 2012, Whiting fielded a baseball team. On June 3, the Northwest Indiana Oilmen crushed the Southland Vikings 14-3 at Oil City Stadium in Standard Diamonds Park for the first win in franchise history. The Oilmen team became one of eight in the Midwest Collegiate League, a pre-minor baseball league.
Standard Oil’s giant refinery in Whiting, Indiana, processed “sour crude” in the early 1900s. Now owned by BP, it is the largest U.S. refinery. The city of Whiting incorporated in 1903.
“The name Oil City Stadium celebrates Whiting’s history as a refinery town tucked away in the Northwest corner of Indiana for over 120 years,” noted team owner Don Popravak about the oil company town baseball. “The BP Refinery, located just beyond the outfield fence is a constant reminder of the blue-collar attitude Whiting was built on,” he added.
CITGO and Oil History
With the arrival of baseball’s opening day in 2024, David Krell published a book about the Boston Red Sox and the role of the former Cities Service Company — CITGO — red triangle sign at Fenway Park. While researching The Fenway Effect: A Cultural History of the Boston Red Sox, Krell discovered the extensive history behind the company and its sign at Fenway, the team’s home ballpark since 1912.
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Recommended Reading: Textile League Baseball: South Carolina’s Mill Teams, 1880-1955
(2004); The Fenway Effect: A Cultural History of the Boston Red Sox (2024). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
_______________________
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. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Oilfields of Dreams – Gassers, Oilers, and Drillers Baseball.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-art/oil-town-baseball. Last Updated: April 29, 2025. Original Published Date: September 1, 2007.
by Bruce Wells | Apr 26, 2025 | Petroleum Technology
A two-wicked safety lamp for preventing “destructive conflagrations” on oil derricks.
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 the Yellow Dog lamp’s 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.
Inventing the Yellow Dog
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.
Oil Well Supply Company
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.
A John Eaton biography by his great-grandson notes Eaton was considered “the father of the well supply trade” of early Pennsylvania oilfields.
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 20th 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 $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).
Forest Oil Company Logo
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 widely recognized as a leader in secondary oil recovery systems.
Water-flooding boosted oilfield production and arrived as demand for gasoline was growing (see Cantankerous Combustion – First U.S. Auto Show). The rapidly growing science of petroleum geology also led to more “secondary recovery” technologies.
Enhanced recovery would be applied throughout the petroleum industry, extending individual well production by 10 years — especially benefitting the already considerable production from the largest oilfield in the lower 48 states, the East Texas oilfield, discovered in 1930.
Oil Museums
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 the 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
(2000); Images of America: Around Bradford
(1997); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991). 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. © 2025 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: April 22, 2025. Original Published Date: September 1, 2008.
by Bruce Wells | Apr 23, 2025 | Offshore History
Thomas Rowland’s Continental Iron Works produced gas fittings, welded oil storage tanks, and a famous ironclad.
The origins of the modern offshore oil exploration and production industry must include the 1869 offshore rig patent “Rock Drill” design of a skilled New York engineer.
On May 4, 1869, Thomas Fitch Rowland, owner of Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, New York, received a U.S. patent for an unusual “submarine drilling apparatus.” His patent (No. 89,794) for a fixed, offshore drilling platform came just 10 years after America’s first commercial oil discovery in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
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