by Bruce Wells | Mar 13, 2026 | Petroleum History Almanac
Horrific East Texas oilfield tragedy of 1937.
At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, with just minutes left in the school day and more than 500 students and teachers inside the building, a massive explosion leveled most of what had been the wealthiest rural school in the nation.
Hundreds died at New London High School in Rusk County after odorless natural gas leaked into the basement and ignited. The sound of the explosion was heard four miles away. Parents, many of them roughnecks from the East Texas oilfield, rushed to the school.
Despite immediate rescue efforts, 298 died, most from grades 5 to 11 (dozens more later died of injuries). After an investigation, the cause of the school explosion was found to be an electric wood-shop sander that sparked the residue gas vapors (also called casinghead gas) that had pooled beneath and inside the walls of the school. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 12, 2026 | Petroleum Technology
Ever since the earliest U.S. oil discoveries, detonating dynamite or nitroglycerin downhole helped increase a well’s production. The geologic “fracking” technology commonly used in oilfields after the Civil War would be significantly enhanced when hydraulic fracturing arrived in 1949.
Modern hydraulic fracturing — popularly known as petroleum well “fracking” — can trace its roots to April 1865, when Civil War Union veteran Lt. Col. Edward A. L. Roberts received the first of his many patents for an “exploding torpedo.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 11, 2026 | Petroleum Art
A red Pegasus soared into Dallas petroleum history in 1934.
The Mobil Oil Pegasus perched atop the Magnolia Petroleum building in Dallas from 1934 until 1999, when rust and growing structural issues forced its removal. On the first day of 2000, a carefully crafted duplicate returned to the Dallas skyline.
Thanks to its widespread popularity, Mobil Oil’s high-flying trademark returned to its Texas home with one red Pegasus on each side of a sign painstakingly recreated by the American Porcelain Enamel Company. As the year 1999 drew to a close, the duplicated Pegasus soared again. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 10, 2026 | Petroleum Products
Kerosene-fueled fans once cooled rural America alongside kerosene lamps, stoves, flatirons, and ice makers.
When most Americans could only afford illumination by candles early in the 20th century, kerosene brought light as an inexpensive lamp fuel, significantly impacting daily life before electricity. But often overlooked is the role of kerosene in powering appliances in rural American households and in remote parts of the world.
In 1910, the U.S. Census Bureau established 2,500 as the population threshold to be counted as urban. Many of the new, fast-growing cities already offered technologies like manufactured “city gas” (see History of Con Edison) and electricity.
As America’s urban population centers grew, they provided infrastructure-dependent utilities the abundance of proximate consumers needed to be profitable. By 1920, city dwellers outnumbered the rural population, where farmers and small towns continued to depend on kerosene (see Camphene to Kerosene Lamps). Across these scattered communities, kerosene lamps would continue burning for decades as electric lights remained only a distant possibility. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 10, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
Giant oilfields bring Oklahoma petroleum boom during Great Depression.
Many oil and natural gas discoveries followed the Indian Territory’s first oil well drilled at Bartlesville in 1897, and especially after statehood came a decade later. None of Oklahoma’s 1920s oilfields compares to the economic impact of the Greater Seminole Area oil boom.
Although oil from the 1897 discovery in Indian Territory could not get to refineries for two years (lacking transportation infrastructure), the first Oklahoma oil well brought a surge in exploratory drilling.
More oilfield discoveries followed, including the Red Fork Gusher of 1901, which helped in Making Tulsa “Oil Capital of the World,” but Seminole area oilfields eclipsed them all. (more…)
