A wave of speculation followed North Texas petroleum discoveries beginning in 1911.
Oil booms in Electra, nearby Ranger (1917), and Burkburnett soon after brought many hastily created oil companies rushing to North Texas.
But as petroleum historians have noted, because most of the productive acres already had been leased, most of these companies would fail. Investors often still sought instant riches. (more…)
Although oil seeps along California’s coastline had drawn petroleum companies there as early as the 1890s, it would be decades before the rich pools were revealed. Stretching from Huntington Beach to north of Santa Barbara, several fields contained billions of barrels of oil.The Holly Oil Company was organized under the laws of Colorado, on June 14, 1921, to acquire and develop oil lands located in California’s Huntington Beach oilfield. It was a sugar company’s idea.
Huntington Beach’s growth began following a May 24,1920, discovery of the largest California oil deposit known at the time.
The Huntington Beach oilfield, circa 1926. Although still a productive oilfiled, less drilling by the early 1950s led to dismantling of derricks within the city and along the coast. Photo courtesy Orange County Archives.
Wells sprang up overnight and in less than a month the town grew from 1,500 to 5,000 people. A real estate boom brought thousands to the nearby community of Sunset Beach.
The city’s derricks were disappearing by the time the the last successful well was drilled in 1953 – the same year the city’s first surf shop, Gordie’s Surf Boards, opened.
Oil for Sugar Beets
At Huntington Beach, the Holly Sugar Company’s sugar beet refinery near the intersection of Gothard and Garfield streets had been there since 1911.
In order to devote the 14.7-acre property entirely to drilling for oil, the company disassembled its sugar beet refinery and shipped to Torrington, Wyoming, where it was rebuilt and operating by 1926.
Stockholders of Holly Sugar Company, founded in 1905 in Holly, Colorado, were given first preference to purchase shares of the new Holly Oil Company stock at $2 a share. It seems to have been a sweet deal.
The former sugar beet refinery property soon had 16 producing wells (including a 1,150 barrel a day well in 1922). Five railroad sidings were constructed to handle the 24-hour-a day-oil operations.
By 1923, daily oil production from Holly Oil wells reached 6,300 barrels. Records show the company was still actively drilling in the Huntington Beach oilfield in 1926, drilling the Conrad No. 1 well and the 1927 Huntington No. 2 well.
The California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources’ last record of Holly Oil Company drilling was in 1940 when the company drilled and plugged the Meherin No. 1 well in San Luis Obispo County.
With its finely detailed vignette of an eagle with shield, Holly Oil Company stock certificates can be found online valued at about $50.
America’s offshore exploration industry began in the 1890s with drilling piers along the West Coast. Learn more California petroleum history in Discovering the Los Angeles Oilfield.
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The stories of exploration and production companies joining petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found updated in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything? The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this AOGHS.ORG energy education website. For membership information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2018 Bruce A. Wells.
Architectural drawing of the Boston Building in Denver.
In 1917 and 1918, with the United States fighting in World War I, the Double Standard Oil & Gas Company sought investors for the booming oilfields.
“Double Standard Oil & Gas Company is the owner of valuable oil leases in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming,” the company told potential investors. (more…)
Two years before Alaska statehood, Richfield Oil Corporation made an oil discovery that greatly benefited the exploration company (today’s ARCO) and the “north to the future” state.
Richfield Oil began in the petroleum business in 1915 as the Rio Grande Oil Company of El Paso, Texas. At the time, its main business was supplying U.S. military forces with gasoline in support of operations against Pancho Villa.
By 1936, Rio Grande had reorganized and merged with other companies to become Richfield Oil Corporation. Twenty years later, Richfield discovered an oilfield, that today is considered the state’s first commercial well (a 1902 well actually had revealed the Alaska Territory’s first commercial oilfield).
In July 1957, Richfield Oil’s Swanson River Unit No. 1 well, which produced 900 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 11,150 feet to 11,215 feet. The company had leased 71,680 acres of the Kenai National Moose Range, now the 1.92 million acre Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. More discoveries followed and by June 1962 about 50 wells are producing more than 20,000 barrels of oil per day.
Alaska’s oil production soon accounted for more than 90 percent of Alaska’s general fund revenues.
“The U.S. Congress viewed that discovery as the foundation for a secure economic base in Alaska, and statehood was granted two years later,” noted the Alaska Resources Council. A decade later, the discovery of the giant Prudhoe Bay oilfield on Alaska’s North Slope will make Alaska a world-class oil and natural gas producer – a status reaffirmed in 1969 with the discovery of the nearby Kuparuk field, the second largest in North America after Prudhoe Bay.
Four of the ten largest U.S. oilfields have been discovered on Alaska’s North Slope. In 1973, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act authorized construction of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska pipeline system from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez.
Richfield Oil Corporation merged with the Atlantic Refining Company to form Atlantic Richfield Company in 1966. In 1999 BP Amoco purchased ARCO for $26.8 billion in stock, making BP Amoco the world’s second-largest petroleum company.
Regarding potential value of old Atlantic Richfield Corporation certificates, if the shareholder named on the certificate failed to surrender it during a change of ownership (merger, sale, etc.), the stock shares would have been cancelled on the books and any remaining value turned over to the Unclaimed Property Division of the owner’s state.
For more detailed company history, see From the Rio Grande to the Arctic: The Story of the Richfield Oil Corporation, authored in 1972 by former CEO Charles S. Jones. Obsolete Richfield Oil stock certificates are offered by collectors online for about $10.
The stories of exploration and production companies joining petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found updated in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything? The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Support this energy education website. For membership information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2021 AOGHS. All rights reserved.
It was the greatest petroleum exploration and production since the birth of the U.S. oil industry in 1859. Hundreds of new companies formed in the wake of the spectacular 1901 “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas. See Spindletop creates Modern Petroleum Industry.
It was a highly competitive and risky business. Among those ready to make fortunes for investors were two new “Gladys Oil” companies. One was from Beaumont, the other from Galveston.
Contemporary maps show the Gladys Oil Company of Beaumont to have drilled a successful well very close to the famous January 10, 1901, “Lucas Gusher” well on Spindletop Hill.
That same year, after 29 days of drilling in block 37, the company reported production from “Gusher No. 67” at a depth of 1,025 feet. Locating the “black gold” did not necessarily promise success.
By 1903 the Texas Secretary of State reported that Gladys Oil Company of Beaumont had “forfeited its right to do business in the state of Texas” due to a failure to pay franchise taxes.In a scenario that would repeat itself in other oilfields in coming decades, production from the giant field soon brought a collapse in oil prices. By January of 1902 stocks of both Gladys Oil companies were trading for less than 10 cents a share.
The company was sued, lost, and United States Investor magazine reported it to be worthless two years later.
Meanwhile, because some cash-strapped and desperate companies made questionable claims, newspapers began referring to Spindletop as “swindletop.”
In 1907, Success Magazine named the company in its “Fools and their Money” expose of fraudulent promotion schemes perpetrated by the New York, Chicago, and Beaumont Security Oil Trust.The Gladys Oil Company of Galveston lasted a little longer than its Beaumont twin, but not without controversy.
The trust had proclaimed, “it was impossible to lose” with an investment Gladys Oil Company of Galveston. In 1911 R. M. Smythe’s, Obsolete American Securities and Corporations, reported the stock to be worthless.
Read about Pattillo Higgins, the man behind the great Spindletop discovery, and his Gladys City Oil, Gas & Manufacturing Company. See Prophet of Spindletop.
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The stories of exploration and production companies joining petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found updated in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything? The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this AOGHS.ORG energy education website. For membership information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2018 Bruce A. Wells.
