by Bruce Wells | Sep 14, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
Acadia Parish oil seeps inspired 1901 Jennings oilfield discovery.
The first Louisiana oil well in 1901 revealed the giant Jennings field and launched the Pelican State’s petroleum industry. By 1911, offshore exploration included barges, floating pile drivers, and drilling platforms on Caddo Lake.
Nine months after the 1901 “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop, Texas, oil erupted 90 miles to the east in Louisiana. W. Scott Heywood — already a successful wildcatter at Spindletop — drilled the discovery well of the Jennings oilfield. His September 21, 1901, gusher initially produced 7,000 barrels of oil a day.
Louisiana’s first commercial oil well, the Jules Clements No. 1, was completed on the Clements farm, about seven miles northeast of the small town of Jennings.
Mrs. Scott Heywood, “the widow of Louisiana’s oil discoverer, the late W. Scott Heywood,” unveiled a historical marker on September 23, 1951, as part of the Louisiana Golden Oil Jubilee. Times Picayune (New Orleans) image courtesy Calcasieu Parish Public Library.
Local investors earlier had formed the Jennings Oil Company and hired Scott, who recognized that natural gas seeps found nearby were nearly identical to the conditions observed at Spindletop. Scott would insist on drilling deeper than many investors thought wise.
The Jennings Oil Company No. 1 well, which discovered the first commercial oilfield in Louisiana on September 21, 1901. Photo courtesy Louisiana Geological Survey.
“At the age 29, W. Scott Haywood was already a seasoned, experienced and successful explorer,” noted Scott Smiley, a Louisiana Geological Survey (LGS) historian. “He had gone to Alaska in 1897 during the great Yukon gold rush, sinking a shaft and mining a profitable gold deposit.”
Haywood, who also had drilled several successful oil wells in California, was one of the first to reach Spindletop following news of the January 1901 oilfield discovery. Haywood eventually convinced the reluctant Clements to allow drilling in the farmer’s Acadia Parish rice field. The Clements farm was at the small, unincorporated community of Evangeline, northeast of Jennings.
Walter Scott Heywood (1872-1950)
However, after drilling to 1,000 feet without finding oil or natural gas, the Jennings Oil Company’s investors wanted to abandon the first attempt.
“After all, 1,000 feet had been deep enough to discover the tremendous oil gushers at Spindletop field,” explained Smiley in a 2001 history of the Jennings field. “Instead of drilling two wells to a depth of 1,000 feet each, Heywood persuaded the investors to change the contract to accept a single well drilled to a depth of 1,500 feet.”
More drilling pipe was brought in and the well deepened.
Deeper Drilling Pays Off
Heywood found signs of oil at a depth of 1,700 feet – after some discouraged investors had sold their stock when drilling reached 1,000 feet. By 1,500 feet, shares of the Jennings Oil Company still sold for as little as 25 cents each. Patient investors were rewarded when 7,000 barrels of oil per day suddenly erupted from the well.
“The well flowed sand and oil for seven hours and covered Clement’s rice field with a lake of oil and sand, ruining several acres of rice,” reported the Jennings Daily News.
W. Scott Heywood (5) and Elmer Dobbins (3) — “one of the drillers of the original Spindletop discovery in Texas.” Photo courtesy Louisiana Geological Survey.
Although the Jules Clements No. 1 well is on only a 1/32 of an acre lease, it marked the state’s first oil production and launched the Louisiana petroleum industry. It opened the prolific Jennings field, which Heywood developed by securing leases and building pipelines and storage tanks. The Jennings oilfield reached its peak production of more than nine million barrels in 1906.
Meanwhile, an October 1905 discovery in northern Louisiana further expanded the state’s young petroleum industry. Another giant oilfield arrived in January 1919 when Consolidated Progressive Oil Company completed a well four miles west of Homer in Claiborne Parish.
“Homer was a happening place and all people could think about was oil, notes Wesley Harris in Oil Boom Overwhelmed Homer. “Imagine Homer’s courthouse square with no place to park, nowhere to eat, and business establishments packed to overflowing.” Visit the Louisiana Oil Museum in aptly named Oil City.
According to Smiley, Scott Haywood returned to Alaska in 1908 on a big-game hunting trip. The geologist then retraced much of his travels to the Klondike gold fields.
“After a brief retirement in California, he returned to Jennings and drilled several wells at Jennings and elsewhere in Louisiana,” Smiley reports, adding that as an independent producer, Haywood found success drilling in the Borger and Panhandle oilfields in Texas.
Rapid development of the Jennings oilfield in the early 1900s led to new conservation laws. A lack of spacing regulations forced “each leaseholder to drill their own well to prevent the draining of oil from the lease by an adjacent well.” Circa early 1900s photo courtesy Louisiana Geological Survey.
“Heywood returned to Jennings in 1927 and assisted Gov. Huey P. Long in passing legislation to provide schoolbooks for children,” concluded the geologist in Jennings Field – The Birthplace of Louisiana’s Oil Industry, September 2001.
Offshore Caddo Lake
Gulf Refining Company in 1911 drilled Ferry Lake No. 1 on Caddo Lake, Louisiana, using a fleet of tugboats, barges, and floating pile drivers. When the first well produced 450 barrels of oil per day, Gulf constructed platforms every 600 feet on each 10-acre lakebed (see Offshore Drilling History).
Although the Caddo Lake wells were often cited as the birthplace of America’s offshore drilling industry, oil patch historian in Mercer County, Ohio, discovered oil was produced from platforms on Grand Lake St. Marys as early as 1887.
In Pennsylvania, about 15 miles east of the first U.S. well at Titusville, dozens of wells produced oil on Tidioute Island and from rafts in the Alleghany River in the fall of 1860, according to the according to the Warren County Historical Society.
Challenging Louisiana Oil History
Extensive research by a retired professor at McNeese State University in Lake Charles challenged Louisiana petroleum history in 2011, according to the Southwest Daily News in Sulphur. The newspaper reported a September presentation at a Lake Charles library by Thomas Watson, PhD, who taught at McNeese State for 35 years, including a decade as the head of the history department.
“Dr. Thomas Watson has uncovered evidence that the first producing oil well in Louisiana was at the Sulphur Mines in 1886,” noted the newspaper, which was closed in 2024 after being acquired by MediaNews Group.
“This information could alter the history of oil production in Louisiana,” proclaimed the article, adding, “The interesting fact he has discovered in his research was announced formally at the Carnegie Library during a 10 a.m. presentation entitled ‘Oil and Sulphur Drilling’ on Sept. 6, 2011.”
The Weekly Echo was established in 1868, the same year Lake Charles incorporated. The paper dropped “weekly” from its title in 1876, becoming the Lake Charles Echo, which ceased in 1898. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
Professor Thomas Watson’s 2011 Carnegie Library presentation on Louisiana petroleum history began with a story, according to the Southwest Daily News article “Retired Professor Challenges Louisiana Oil History.”
“There’s a story of D.S. Perkins, who saw a bear come out of the woods with oil on its paw. The group traced the tracks back to a spring (Choupique Bayou) with oil collecting on top. It came to be known as Oil Springs,” began Watson slowly. He explained that the oil spring produced a useable lubricant that was collected by people living around the area.
But the dream of oil was still alive. The Sulphur company decided to drill again in 1886.
During these years the Weekly Echo was the Lake Charles newspaper at the time, with editor John Wesley Bryan and publisher Dr. William H. Kirkman. Dr. Kirkman, along with the Perkins brothers from Sulphur, Eli and William, was following the activity at the mine and they, along with other investors, decided to drill again.
When the news broke out, the Weekly Echo announced a blow out! Gas came rushing back up to the surface. The well was capped, and the flow of oil was evaluated to [be] 25 barrels a day.
Watson said he considered it to be a heavy oil because it was perceived to be a first class lubricant. Good lube oil sold for more that thin oil (what Pennsylvania was selling). Louisiana crude would go for $5 a gallon as opposed to Pennsylvania oil at $1 a gallon.
The Weekly Echo documented the production and sale of oil from that Sulphur Mine source for three years. One report indicated maximum production hit 100 barrels a day. There were writings at the time that reported that the land around the Sulphur Mines was the richest 54 acres in the US at that time and this was true from 1895 until the 1920’s.
Therefore, 15 years earlier than the production of oil in Evangeline, they were marketing oil from Sulphur. Watson concluded his presentation citing Samuel Lockett documents.
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Recommended Reading: Louisiana’s Oil Heritage, Images of America
(2012); Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil: A Photographic History, 1901-1946
(1982). 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 support this website, subscribe to the monthly email newsletter, and help expand our historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “First Louisiana Oil Well.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/first-louisiana-oil-well. Last Updated: September 2, 2026. Original Published Date: September 1, 2005.
by Bruce Wells | Sep 9, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
A Utah company sought oil from Gilsonite deposits in 1917.
Although attempts to extract commercial amounts of oil from Utah’s abundant shale formations failed, the effort of Ute Oil Company in the Uinta Basin was far ahead of its time.
A survey party in 1861 described the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah as “one vast contiguity of waste and measurably valueless, except for nomadic purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and to hold the world together.”
After reading the survey report, Brigham Young, who had founded Salt Lake City in 1847, scrapped his plans to send a group of Mormon settlers to the area.
Gilsonite is a coal-like natural asphalt found in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah.
Young thought the arid region better suited for a Ute Indian reservation, according to the Utah Humanities Council, and President Abraham Lincoln created the Uintah Reservation by executive order for what is today the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
However, by the time Utah became the 45th state in 1896, the sparsely populated region bordering Colorado had begun revealing its mineral wealth, including gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, and a soft coal-like substance.
Coalbed Methane
Coal and a coal-like hydrocarbon — Gilsonite — brought mineral exploration companies to eastern Utah soon after the turn of the century. Gilsonite, also known as North American Asphaltum, was unique to the region known for its thick shale deposits.
Hoping to squeeze oil from shale in the 1920s, companies extracted shale and Gilsonite from narrow mines. The coal-like natural asphalt had industrial uses but was expensive to mine.
By the early 20th century, aspiring entrepreneurs had arrived to exploit these new petroleum resources. Several new ventures would be among the earliest anywhere attempting to make money by squeezing oil from shale. The Uinta Basin has since become one of the largest coalbed methane areas in the United States.
By 2015, petroleum engineers estimated the vast desert plateau in Utah and Colorado contained between eight trillion cubic feet and 10 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves.
The Gilsonite Maneuver
“The first attempt at oil shale exploitation took place in 1917 by the Ute Oil Company,” noted the Bureau of Land Management in a 2007 technical report about oil shale and tar sands areas in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
Established in 1916, Ute Oil Company was created to refine petroleum from a dense shale mined north of Watson, Utah. Oil shales had proven abundant there. So had the Gilsonite found in deep vertical veins. The coal-like natural asphalt had many industrial uses.
Ute Oil found Gilsonite and oil shales in northeastern Utah — but processing the shale proved expensive as conventional discoveries lowered oil prices. Map courtesy Utah Geological Society.
Gilsonite had been vigorously promoted since 1886 by Samuel H. Gilson, its principal investigator, marketer, and namesake. He formed a company to mine and market Gilsonite on a commercial scale.
Gilson, a former rider for the Pony Express between California and Missouri, believed his Gilsonite (or Uintahite) practical for use in everything from a waterproof coating for wooden pilings, insulation for wire cable, and as paint or a varnish. He even promoted the natural, resinous hydrocarbon as an additive for chewing gum.
Utah’s Gilsonite was selling for more than $12 a ton when, in 1888, despite Bureau of Indian Affairs protests, Congress opened a 7,040-acre oil shale and Gilsonite-laden strip on the Uintah Ouray Reservation for placer mine claims.
An October 1918 article in “Petroleum Age” magazine described a planned shale oil plant at Watson, Utah, that would be the largest in United States. The author is the plant’s designer, St. Louis engineer George W. Wallace, who will become superintendent of Ute Oil Company.
Placer claims could be filed for mining a fixed amount of acreage by a person or group. These claims on Indian Reservations often led to lengthy litigation. The law required production of resources in order for the claimant to be granted a legitimate right to the land. Learn more about the Placer Act in First Wyoming Oil Well.
Ute Oil Company’s interest was in oil shale’s kerogen (naturally occurring organic matter) content. Oil shales like Gilsonite can yield petroleum when sufficiently “cooked.” The distillates boil off and are captured as in other refining operations.
In eastern Utah, Ute Oil Company made a 100-acre placer claim near Watson alongside the White River, about 100 feet up a hillside where promising oil shale deposits could be cheaply mined and then refined. Other companies had the same idea.
Shale Oil Boom
The boom towns of Watson, Dragon Junction, and Rainbow were spawned amidst new Gilsonite mines. A narrow-gauge (and short-lived) Uintah Railroad was built specifically to link them to the Rio Grande Western Railway 63 miles away.
Oil shale mining technologies of the 1920s were dangerous. Above is Ute Oil’s processing plant under construction.
By 1911, what was called the “crookedest railroad in the West” had overcome steep mountain grades and crossed 40 bridges to reach Watson and the Rainbow Gilsonite mine, above the White River. Crane Shale Oil, Utah Shale & Oil, and the Western Shale Oil Company all planned oil and gasoline reduction plants near Watson.
As the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began tracking these early efforts to make money by extracting oil from shale, Ute Oil led the way as a petroleum industry pioneer for the oil shale boom that began in the mid-2000s.
Although the company would never complete its ambitious construction of a retorting plant for processing shale, it explored new technologies to maximize production. A 2007 BLM report explained how the company planned to build its plant at Watson, today a Uintah County ghost town.
“Construction began on a tramway and processing plant,” the report noted. “Processing was supposed to extract 90 percent of the oil contained in the pulverized oil shale to produce an average of 54 gallons of oil per ton of shale.”
It was difficult and dangerous to get the shale out of the isolated region.
By November 1919, construction of Ute Oil’s new refinery was nearing completion near the old White River stagecoach station. The company predicted yields of 51.5 gallons of oil and 3.6 gallons of gasoline per ton of processed oil shale when the 18 retorts went onstream. The new plant had a projected capacity of 400 tons daily.
Even using modern technology, the U.S. Geological Survey has reported typical shale yields are between 15 gallons and 25 gallons of oil per ton.
In 1920, industry trade publications continued to praise oil shale developments in Utah and Colorado but noted that high processing costs for limited production were proving hard to overcome with the day’s technology (see Central Oil Shale Refining Company, a Chicago venture that sought to profit from shale during World War I).
Hard Shale Oil Lessons
The economic possibilities of shale oil intrigued investors; the “American Gas Engineering Journal” of January 3, 1920, crowed, “Twenty-Two Billion Barrels of Oil a Possibility of the Process – Estimates of Production Cost Show Possibility of Shale Oil Competing with Gasoline at Its Lowest Previous Level.”
A Geological Survey investigator proclaimed oil shales offered “more than eight times all of the oil available from the oilfields of the United States!”
Petroleum industry trade publications recognized that Gilsonite and products made from other oil shales like asphaltite might supplement production from U.S. oilfields, but the business model was risky. Much hinged on a small margin — limited by extraction technologies and the price of crude oil.
“A few crumbling buildings” remain at Watson, Utah, where the Ute Oil was the first company to attempt to profit from oil shale. Quote and 1998 photos courtesy Jeremy Carter, Ghosttowns.com.
“Crude shale oil, obtained by retorting oil shale, cannot find a general market until the price of well oil is above the cost of producing shale oil,” reported the October 1921 Mining and Oil Bulletin.
“This cost has been conservatively estimated at $1.85 a barrel for mining and retorting,” the trade publication added. “When the price of well petroleum approaches or better — exceeds this figure — the production of crude shale oil will take on renewed activity.”
Ute Oil Company had optimistically projected its cost at only $1.02 per barrel. In 1918, the year after the company formed, oil sold for about $1.98 per barrel, but in 1920, it dropped to $1.73. It would get much worse. By 1931, oil prices had dropped to only about 65 cents per barrel.
Ute Oil’s profit margin depended on a high price for oil, but surging oil supplies from traditional oil wells in Texas and other states drove down the price.
By the 1920s, many industry publications were following attempts to develop oil shales in Utah and Colorado. In addition to the “Oil and Gas News” prediction above, the “American Gas Engineering Journal” envisioned production of 22 billion barrels of oil from shale.
End of Ute Oil
In addition to the financial and technological risks that Ute Oil faced, regulatory issues added to its misery. In 1920, Congress passed the Mineral Leasing Act, updating the archaic 1872 law and requiring for the first time that the federal government receive royalty payments from successful placer claims.
An ominous 1921 “Petroleum Times” article noted work had been delayed “by a controversy with the Government over title to the land.”
The litigation among private, state, federal, and Indian tribal interests would last decades. The controversy came from renewed congressional interest in rectifying injustices that had historically deprived the Uinta Basin Indians since the reservation had been formed in 1861.
Ute Oil Company failed in 1923 before it could complete its uniquely designed retort for processing oil shale.
Although legal battles would continue, Ute Oil’s fate was sealed. Trade publications reported that the company undertook reorganization in 1923 but did not survive. The BLM would later note that “interest in oil shale production rebounded when oil prices peaked in the 1970s.”
In 1909, Earl Douglass, a paleontologist for the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, discovered dinosaur bones in the Utah desert. The site was soon designated the Dinosaur National Monument, and Douglass later became an eloquent spokesman for Utah’s petroleum industry.
J.L. “Mike” Dougan made the state’s first major oil discovery in 1948 after drilling unsuccessfully in Utah for more than 25 years (see First Utah Oil Wells).
In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress declared U.S. oil shale and tar sands strategically important domestic energy resources that should be developed to reduce dependence on imported oil. Five years later, Utah produced more than 8.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas valued at more than $1.7 billion.
Depending on the quality and location of the resource, the U.S. market price of Gilsonite in the early 2020s ranged from $600 to $1,000 a ton — compared to $10 to $12 per ton in the late 1800s.
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Recommended Reading: Utah Oil Shale: Science, Technology, and Policy Perspectives
(2016); From the Ground Up: A History of Mining in Utah (2006); 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 support this website, subscribe to the monthly email newsletter, and help expand our historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Ute Oil Company — Oil Shale Pioneer.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/stocks/oil-shale-pioneer. Last Updated: September 11, 2026. Original Published Date: April 6, 2016.
