by Bruce Wells | May 14, 2025 | Petroleum Technology
Texas well disaster of 1933 helped bring advancements in directional drilling.
A Depression-era disaster in a giant oilfield near Conroe, Texas, brought together the inventor of portable drilling rigs and the father of directional drilling. George E. Failing and H. John Eastman employed new technologies that allowed “the bit burrowing into the ground at strange angles.”
Early Conroe oil wells revealed shallow but “gas charged” oil-producing sands in what would prove to be the third-largest oilfield in the United States at the time. By the end of 1932, more than 65,000 barrels of oil flowed daily from 60 wells in the region north of Houston. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | May 13, 2025 | Petroleum Pioneers
The Ohio petroleum industry took off with an 1885 oilfield discovery in Allen County.
The “Great Oil Boom” of northwestern Ohio began when Benjamin C. Faurot, drilling for natural gas, found oil instead. His Ohio oil well of May 19, 1885, revealed the petroleum-rich Trenton Limestone at a depth of 1,252 feet.
“The oil find has caused much excitement and those who are working at the well have been compelled to build a high fence around it to keep curiosity seekers from bothering them,” Lima’s Daily Republican reported the next day.
Postcards promoted the oil prosperity of Lima, Ohio, which began in 1885 with a well that found an oilfield while drilling for natural gas. Circa 1910 postcard published by Robbins Bros., Boston.
“If the well turns out, as it looks now that it will, look out for the biggest boom Lima ever had,” the newspaper proclaimed. The oil excitement rivaled the Trenton formation in Indiana (learn more in Indiana Natural Gas Boom).
In February 1885, looking for cheap energy for a paper mill he owned, Faurot had brought in cable-tool drillers from Pennsylvania to bore a natural gas well,” noted a 2019 article in the Lima News. His company, Lima Paper Mill, produced straw board and egg cases at its plant on the Ottawa River east of downtown.
After the oil discovery, Faurot organized the Trenton Rock Oil Company. Excited Lima citizens organized their own oil exploration venture, the Citizens’ Oil Company, which allowed only 100 investors with none allowed to hold more than five shares of stock sold at $20 per share.
The Faurot well had revealed the Lima oilfield — soon the largest oil producer in the world.
Cable-tool equipment with a wooden derrick and walking beam, once common sights in Allen County, Ohio. Circa 1910 postcard published by Thomas & Co., Findlay.
“In May of 1885, Lima was a bustling community of some 8,000 people with a new courthouse and, thanks to leading businessman Benjamin C. Faurot, an opera house. It claimed a soon-to-be-electrified city street car system, railroad connections in all directions and a handful of newspapers,” noted the Lima News.
“The great enterprise of piping oil from the Lima fields to Chicago manufacturing establishments is now, in this year of 1888, being undertaken by the Standard Oil Company, who practically control all the oil territory around Lima,” noted one reporter at the time.
Wooden tanks (with a workover drilling rig in background) stored Lima oil before it was shipped to Cleveland refineries. Circa 1900 photo courtesy of Allen County Historical Society.
Among those attracted to Lima was the future four-time mayor of Toledo, Samuel Jones, who helped found the Ohio Oil Company (Marathon), patented an improved oil production technology, and became widely known as “Golden Rule” Jones of Ohio.
According to historian Richard Timberlake Jr., the “Panic of 1893” was a serious economic depression in the United States. Like a similar nationwide financial collapse two decades earlier, it was marked by the overbuilding of railroads, resulting in a series of bank failures.
In 2006, the Ohio Historical Society dedicated a Faurot oil well marker at 835 East North Street in Lima.
By 1886, Lima was the most productive oilfield in America after producing more than 20 million barrels of oil. Much of the oil was “heavy” — thick and sulfurous — but by the following year Lima oilfields led the world in production.
Although short-lived, “the oil rush brought an influx of people, pipelines, refineries, and businesses, giving a powerful impetus to the growth of northwest Ohio,” concluded the Allen County Historical Society.
After developing a new method for refining the heavy Lima oil, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey began construction on its Whiting refinery in 1889.
The company used improved pipeline technologies to deliver refined Lima oil to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. There, at 72.5 cents per barrel, Standard Oil fueled the world’s largest steam boiler installation at the time. Chicago’s fair ultimately attracted 27.5 million visitors.
Refining Sulfurous “Lima Oil”
An emigrant German chemist would bring Ohio oil riches to John D. Rockefeller. On February 21, 1887, Herman Frasch applied to patent a new process for eliminating sulfur from “skunk-bearing oils.”
Inventor and mining engineer Herman Frasch (1851-1914), the Standard Oil chemist later known as the “Sulfur King.”
The former employee of Standard Oil of New Jersey was quickly rehired. Rockefeller had acquired some of the Lima oilfields for bargain prices because the wells produced a thick, sulfurous oil. Despite its difficulty to refine, the petroleum tycoon had accumulated a 40-million-barrel stockpile of the cheap, sour “Lima oil.”
Standard Oil Company bought Frasch’s patent for a copper-oxide refining process to “sweeten” the oil. By the early 1890s, the company’s new Whiting oil refinery east of Chicago was producing odorless kerosene from desulfurized oil, making Rockefeller a fortune.
Paid in Standard Oil shares and becoming very wealthy, Frasch moved to Louisiana — where the skilled chemist and mining engineer invented a new method to extract sulfur from underground deposits by injecting superheated water into wells. By 1911, multimillionaire Frasch was known as the “Sulfur King.”
In 2006, the Allen County Historical Society placed an Ohio historical marker near Benjamin C. Faurot’s oilfield discovery well site at the North Street crossing of the Ottawa River in Lima.
Grand Lake St. Marys in Ohio — the largest man-made body of water in the world — supported commerce on the Erie Canal beginning in 1845. By the late 1880s, Mercer County was producing oil from wells pumping on platforms on the lake. Learn more in Ohio Offshore Oil wells.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Ohio Oil and Gas (2008); Where it All Began: The story of the people and places where the oil & gas industry began: West Virginia and southeastern Ohio
(1994); Herman Frasch -The Sulphur King (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 annual AOGHS supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Great Oil Boom of Lima Ohio.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/great-oil-boom-of-lima-ohio. Last Updated: May 14, 2025. Original Published Date: May 19, 2019.
by Bruce Wells | May 8, 2025 | Petroleum Pioneers
Pennsylvania drillers kept oil production from the 1882 Warren County well a closely guarded secret.
Every year in densely wooded Cherry Grove, Pennsylvania, community members celebrate a 19th-century oil well and its place in American petroleum history. Led by local and visiting oil patch historians in June 2024, the Cherry Grove Old Home and Community Day featured tours of the well that once shook global petroleum markets.
When daily oil production from the “Mystery Well” was revealed in 1882, oil prices plunged worldwide. The discovery well drilled on lot 646 in the wilderness of Warren County had been a closely guarded secret. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | May 7, 2025 | Petroleum History Almanac
Erected for the 1953 International Expo, Tulsa’s towering roughneck grew into an Oklahoma landmark.
With an arm casually resting on a steel derrick, the 76-foot giant cannot be missed by visitors to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Popularly known as the “Golden Driller,” the first version of the 22-ton Oklahoma roughneck appeared in May 1953 as an oilfield supply company promotion during the Tulsa International Petroleum Exposition.
The leading oil and natural gas equipment expo, which began in 1923 as the International Petroleum Exposition and Congress, took place for decades at the Tulsa County Free Fair site. Tulsa independent producer William Skelly established the expo while he was serving as president of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce.
In 1953, a golden “roustabout” statue conceived by the Mid-Continent Supply Company of Fort Worth, Texas, proved so popular it returned in 1959 after receiving a makeover.
Designated an Oklahoma state monument in 1979, the Golden Driller was permanently installed for the 1966 International Petroleum Exposition in Tulsa. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Another refurbishment and then neglect followed the fortunes of the petroleum industry. But civic leaders now proclaim the the Tulsa driller the most photographed landmark in the city once known as the “Oil Capital of the World.”
Although Mid-Continent Supply’s smaller first statue of 1952 impressed expo visitors, it was the 1959 version with an oilfield worker climbing a derrick that led to Tula’s current Golden Driller. “This time he was much more chiseled and detailed and was placed climbing a derrick and waving,” explained a volunteer for the Tulsa Historical Society in 2010.
The original Golden Driller of 1953, left, proved so popular that a smaller, rig-climbing version (called The Roustabout) returned for the 1959 International Petroleum Exposition. The Tulsa fairgrounds opened in 1903. Images courtesy Tulsa Historical Society.
According to the society’s “Tulsa Gal,” the 1959 rig-climbing roustabout’s popularity inspired Mid-Continent Supply to donate it to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds Trust Authority when the international expo ended. Sometime during the next seven years, the giant was redesigned to better withstand the elements, she noted.
Taller and much stronger, the modern Golden Driller debuted in 1966 at Tulsa’s International Petroleum Exposition. The new look came from a Greek immigrant, George “Grecco” Hondronastas, an artist who had worked on the 1953 exposition’s hard-hatted statue.
According to writer Tony Beaulieu, Hondronastas was an eccentric and prolific artist who was proud of becoming a U.S. citizen through military service in World War I. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and later became a professor. His design work included business promotions and parade floats.
Mid-Continent Supply Company constructed a permanent version in 1966 with steel rods to withstand up to 200 mph winds but more work would be needed. The giant was refurbished again in 1979, after it was designated an Oklahoma state monument.
Hondronastas came to Tulsa for the first time in 1953, “to help design and build an early version of the Golden Driller,” explained Beaulieu, who also noted the artist “fell in love with the city of Tulsa and later moved his wife and son from Chicago to a duplex near Riverview Elementary School, just south of downtown.”
The artist was immensely proud of designing the Golden Driller — “and he would tell that to anyone he met,” added his son Stamatis, quoted in Beaulieu’s 2014 article, “An Oil Town’s Golden Idol, “ in This Land magazine.
“The battered Golden Driller statue has been declared an official state monument,” noted the Daily Oklahoma more than a decade after Mid-Continent Supply donated its 1966 version to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Rebuilt in 1979 (center), the modern statue has was repainted in 2011. Photos courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.
The late Tulsa photographer Walter Brewer documented construction of the giant with images later donated to the Tulsa Historical Society. Designated a state monument and refurbished again in 1979 (the year Hondronastas died), the statue as it appears today was permanently installed at East 21st Street and South Pittsburg Avenue.
The statue contains 2.5 miles of rods and mesh, along with tons of plaster and concrete. It can withstand up to 200 mph winds, “which is a good thing here in Oklahoma,” according to Tulsa Gal. It was painted it’s golden mustard shade in 2011,
Tulsa’s giant driller has sported t-shirts, belts, beads, neckties and other promotions during state fairs. A Covid-19 mask was added in the summer of 2020. Images courtesy the Tulsa Historical Society.
The Golden Driller’s right hand rests on an old production derrick moved from oilfields near Seminole, Oklahoma — a town that has its own extensive petroleum heritage.
Fully refurbished in the late 1970s, the Golden Driller — by now a 43,500-pound tourist attraction — is the largest free-standing statue in the world, according to Tulsa city officials. “Over time the Driller has seen the good and the bad,” said Tulsa Girl.
“He has been vandalized, assaulted by shotgun blasts and severe weather,” she added. “But he has also had more photo sessions with tourists than any other Tulsa landmark and can boast of many who love him all around the world.”
An unidentified model posed on one of the Golden Driller’s shoes, probably sometime during construction of the permanent version in time for the opening of Tulsa’s 1966 International Petroleum Exposition.
The Golden Driller, a symbol of the International Petroleum Exposition. Dedicated to the men of the petroleum industry who by their vision and daring have created from God’s abundance a better life for mankind. — Inscription on a plaque at the Golden Driller’s base.
An American Oil & Gas Historical Society 2007 Energy Education Conference and Field Trip in Oklahoma City included visits to oil museums in Seminole, Drumright and Tulsa — with a stop at the Golden Driller. Photo by Timothy G. Wells.
Although the first International Petroleum Exposition and Congress had no giant roughneck statue in 1923, the expo helped make Tulsa famous around the world. Leading oil and gas companies were attracted to Tulsa as early as 1901, six years before Oklahoma became a state (learn more in Red Fork Gusher).
An even bigger oilfield discovery arrived in 1905 on a farm south of the future oil capital. On November 22, 1905, the Ida Glenn No. 1 well erupted a geyser of oil southeast of Tulsa. The giant Glenn Pool field would forever change Tulsa and Oklahoma.
Learn more Tulsa history in the extensive collection of the Tulsa Historical Society.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Tulsa Oil Capital of the World, Images of America
(2004); Tulsa Where the Streets Were Paved With Gold – Images of America
(2000). 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: “Golden Driller of Tulsa.” Authors: B.A. and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/golden-driller-tulsa. Last Updated: May 17, 2025. Original Published Date: March 1, 2006.
by Bruce Wells | May 7, 2025 | Energy Education Resources
Kansas museum preserves history of 1920s natural gas field and world’s greatest source of helium.
A small museum in southwestern Kansas preserves the history of one of the largest natural gas fields in the world. The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton opened in 1961 near a gas well drilled in 1945 and still producing.
Hugoton’s petroleum museum, founded by a group of dedicated volunteers led by Gladys Renfro, serves as a Kansas energy education center. Its exhibits are “a memento of the Hugoton gas field and the progressive development of Stevens County.”
(more…)
