Shelling of the Ellwood field at Santa Barbara created mass hysteria — and the “Battle of Los Angeles.”
Soon after America entered World War II, an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine attacked a refinery and oilfield near Los Angeles, the first attack of the war on the continental United States. The submarine’s deck gun fired about two dozen rounds, causing little damage — but it resulted in the largest mass sighting of UFOs in American history.
A February 1942 Imperial Japanese Navy submarine’s shelling of a California refinery caused little damage but created invasion (and UFO) hysteria in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy Goleta Valley Historical Society.
At sunset on February 23, 1942, Imperial Japanese Navy Commander Kozo Nishino and his I-17 submarine lurked 1,000 yards off the California coast. It was less than three months since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Los Angeles residents were tense. (more…)
Wildcat wells near Reno inspired decades of gambling.
The search for commercial amounts of petroleum in Nevada began in 1907 with a well drilled southwest of Reno. After reaching a depth of 1,890 feet, the remote wildcat in Washoe County proved unproductive — an expensive “dry hole.”
A second exploratory well was rumored to have been drilled seeking an oilfield northwest of Reno, but few details about it survived since drilling permits were not required until 1953. (more…)
January 20, 1886 – Great Karg Well erupts Natural Gas in Ohio –
A well drilled for oil near Findlay, Ohio, erupted natural gas flowing at 12 million cubic feet per day from pressure that could not be controlled by technologies of the day. The “Great Karg Well” ignited into a flame that burned for four months and became a Findlay tourist attraction. Eight years earlier, a gas well in Pennsylvania had made similar headlines (see Natural Gas is King in Pittsburgh).
A plaque dedicated in 1937 at Findlay, Ohio, commemorated the state’s 1886 giant natural gas discovery.
Although Ohio’s first natural gas well was drilled in 1884 by the Findlay Natural Gas Company, the Karg well launched a gas-drilling boom that attracted manufacturing industries. Glass works companies were lured by the inexpensive gas (also see Indiana Natural Gas Boom), and new businesses included eight window glass factories, two bottle, two chimney lamp, one light bulb, one novelty, and five for tableware.
By 1887, Findlay was known as the “City of Light,” according to a historical marker erected in 1987 at the first field office of the Ohio Oil Company, which adopted the name Marathon Oil in 1962. The Hancock Historical Museum has preserved Great Karg Well history less than two miles from the well site.
January 21, 1865 – Testing the Roberts Torpedo
Civil War veteran Col. Edward A.L. Roberts (1829-1881) conducted his first experiment to increase oil production by using an explosive charge deep in the well. Roberts twice detonated eight pounds of black powder 465 feet deep in the bore of the “Ladies Well” on Watson’s Flats south of Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Civil War veteran Col. E.A.L. Roberts demonstrated his oil well “torpedo” south of Titusville, Pennsylvania.
The “shooting” of the well was a success, increasing daily production from a few barrels of oil to more than 40 barrels, according to Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine. By 1870, Roberts’ torpedoes using nitroglycerin became common in oilfields.
In April 1865, Roberts received the first of many patents for his “exploding torpedo,” and one year later the Titusville Morning Herald reported, “Our attention has been called to a series of experiments that have been made in the wells of various localities by Col. Roberts, with his newly patented torpedo. The results have in many cases been astonishing.”
January 22, 1861 – Pennsylvania Stills produce Kerosene
The first U.S. multiple-still oil refinery was brought on-stream one mile south of Titusville, Pennsylvania, by William Barnsdall, who had drilled the second successful well after Edwin Drake’s first U.S. oil discovery. Barnsdall and partners James Parker and W.H. Abbott spent about $15,000 to build six stills for refining kerosene. Equipment was purchased in Pittsburgh and shipped up the Allegheny River to Oil City where a refinery produced two grades of kerosene, white and the less expensive yellow.
January 22, 1910 – Standard Oil of California strikes Oil
Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) drilled its first successful oil well, a gusher in Kern County that initially produced 1,500 barrels of oil a day from the Midway-Sunset field. The discovery came after the 1906 merger of Pacific Coast Oil Company (see First California Oil Well) and Standard Oil Company of Iowa to create Socal.
Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) began in 1879 as the Pacific Coast Oil Company and was renamed Chevron in 1981. Image courtesy Chevron.
The new company needed more oil reserves after it had “stepped up its marketing efforts, particularly in gasoline sales, which nearly doubled between 1906 and 1910,” according to a company history. “Until now, Standard had left the hunt for oil to others.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1911 ordered Socal separated from its parent, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. After absorbing Standard Oil of Kansas in 1961 and making other acquisitions, the California company in 1984 rebranded as Chevron, headquartered in San Ramon.
January 23, 1895 – Standard Oil closes Oil Exchanges
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey’s purchasing agency in Oil City, Pennsylvania, notified independent oil producers it would only buy their oil at a price “as high as the markets of the world will justify” — and not “the price bid on the oil exchange for certificate oil.”
The Oil City, Pennsylvania, Oil Exchange was incorporated in 1874. Three years later, it was the third-largest U.S. financial exchange.
Oil City’s exchange had become the third largest financial exchange of any kind in America, behind New York and San Francisco. But with the Standard Oil Company buying 90 percent of oil production and setting its own price for certificates, all other oil exchanges soon closed.
January 23, 1957 – Wham-O launches a New Petroleum Product
Among the earliest mass-produced products made from plastic, the “Frisbee” was introduced by Wham-O Manufacturing Company of California. The polymer toy originated in 1948 when a company called Partners in Plastic sold its “Flyin’ Saucers” for 25 cents each. In 1955, Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin’s Wham-O bought the rights.
U.S. patent with mold details of a 1967 polyethylene plastic Frisbee.
The Wham-O founders discovered that Phillips Petroleum had invented a high-density polyethylene (called Marlex). They used the new plastic to meet phenomenal demand for manufacturing Frisbees – and Hula Hoops beginning in 1958.
January 23, 1991 – Gulf War brings World’s Largest Oil Spill
The world’s largest oil spill began in the Persian Gulf when Saddam Hussein’s retreating Iraqi forces opened pipeline valves at oil terminals in Kuwait. About 11 million barrels of oil would cover an area extending 101 miles by 42 miles and reaching five inches thick in some places.
Iraqi soldiers sabotaged Kuwait’s main supertanker loading pier, dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf. By February, about 600 Kuwaiti wells had been set ablaze. It would take months to put out the well fires, with the last extinguished in early April (also see Oilfield Firefighting Technologies).
January 24, 1895 – Independent Producers found Pure Oil
To counter Standard Oil Company’s market dominance, Pennsylvania oil producers, refiners, and pipeline operators organized what would become a major Chicago-based oil venture. Originally based in Pittsburgh, Pure Oil Company quickly grew into the second vertically integrated U.S. petroleum company after Standard Oil.
Ohio Cities Gas acquired Pure Oil in 1920 and kept the popular Pennsylvania brand name.
Beginning in early 1896, Pure Oil marketed its petroleum products by horse-drawn tank wagons in Philadelphia and New York — successfully competing with Standard Oil’s monopoly. The Ohio Cities Gas Company of Columbus acquired Pure Oil and in 1920 adopted the former Pennsylvania venture’s brand name.
Pure Oil Company moved into its newly built 40-story Chicago headquarters on East Wacker Drive in 1926.
With a new Chicago headquarters opened in 1926, Pure Oil began exploring offshore technologies within a decade. The company developed early freestanding drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
January 25, 1930 – North Texas Oil Producers form Association
After meeting in Wichita Falls to protest “the recent drastic price cut in crude oil, inaugurated by some of the major purchasing companies,” 50 independent producers organized the North Texas Oil and Gas Association. Other issues included seeking a tariff on foreign oil imports and stopping “hot oil” oilfield thefts. The association merged with the West Central Texas Oil & Gas Association in 1998 to become the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.
January 26, 1931 – Third Well reveals Extent of East Texas Oilfield
As East Texas farmers struggled to survive the Great Depression, an oil discovery confirmed the existence of a massive oilfield. W.A. “Monty” Moncrief of Fort Worth completed the Lathrop No. 1 well, which produced 7,680 barrels of oil a day from 3,587 feet deep. Geologists at first thought a third oilfield had been found.
Moncrief’s discovery well was 25 miles north of the famous Daisy Bradford No. 3 well of October 1930, drilled by Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner. It was 15 miles north of theLou Della Crim No. 1 well, completed at Kilgore three days after Christmas 1930. The 130,000-acre East Texas oilfield would become the largest in the lower 48 states.
The North Texas church once proclaimed as richest in America.
In the fall of 1917 near Ranger, Texas, the cotton-farming town of Merriman was inhabited by “ranchers, farmers, and businessmen struggling to survive an economic slump brought on by severe drought and boll weevil-ravaged cotton fields.”
Everything changed in Eastland County when a wildcat well drilled by Texas & Pacific Coal Company struck oil at Ranger, four miles from Merriman. The J.H. McCleskey No. 1 well produced 1,600 barrels of oil a day.
McCleskey No. 1 cable-tool oil well, the “Roaring Ranger” gusher of 1917, brought an oil boom to Eastland County, Texas, about 100 miles west of Dallas.
The rush to acquire leases that followed the oilfield discovery became legendary among drilling booms, even for Texas, home of the 1901 “Lucas Gusher”on Spindletop Hill at Beaumont.
As drilling continued, yield of the Ranger oilfield led to peak production reaching more than 14 million barrels in 1919. Production from the “Roaring Ranger” well and its giant North Texas oilfield helped win World War I — with a British War Cabinet member declaring, “the Allied cause floated to victory upon a wave of oil.”
Texas & Pacific Coal Company had taken a great risk by leasing acreage around Ranger, but the risk paid off when lease values soared. The exploration company added “oil” to its name, becoming the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company.
“So as we could not worship God on the former acre of ground, we decided to lease it and honor God with the product,” explained Merriman Baptist Church Deacon J.T. Falls. Photo courtesy Robert Vann, “Lone Star Bonanza, the Ranger Oil Boom of 1917-1923.”
The price of the oil company stock jumped from $30 a share to $1,250 a share as a host of landmen, “scanned the landscape to discover any fractions in these holdings. A little school and church, before too small to be seen, now looked like a sky scraper.”
Warren Wagner, driller of the McCleskey discovery well, leased the local school lot and in August 1918 completed a well producing 2,500 barrels of oil a day. Leasing at Merriman Baptist Church proved to be a challenge.
In February, Deacon J.T. Falls complained drilling new wells, “ran us out, as all of the land around our acre was leased, producing wells being brought in so near the house we were compelled to abandon the church because of the gas fumes and noisy machinery.”
Falls added that, “So as we could not worship God on the former acre of ground, we decided to lease it and honor God with the product.”
Deacon J.T. Falls (second from left) was not amused when the Associated Press reported in 1919 that his church had refused a million dollars for the lease of the cemetery.
A Texas Historical Commission marker erected in 1999 described when the well on the church’s lease began producing oil, earning the congregation a royalty of between $300 and $400 a day. Merriman Baptist Church, “kept a small amount for operating expenses and gave the rest to various Baptist organizations and charities.”
However, drilling in the church graveyard was a different matter. As oil production continued to soar in North Texas, the congregants of Merriman Baptist Church initially resisted one drilling drilling site. As a January 18, 1919, article in the New York Times noted in its headline, “CHURCH MADE RICH BY OIL; Refuses $1,000,000 for Right to Develop Wells in Graveyard.”
Respecting the Dead
At Merriman’s church cemetery, a less seen historical marker erected in 1993 explains the drilling boom’s fierce competition to find property without a well already on it: “Oil speculators reportedly offered members of the Merriman Baptist Church a large sum of money to lease the cemetery grounds for drilling.”
Near Ranger in Eastland County, Texas Historical Commission markers erected in 1993 (left) and 1999 explaining how members of the Merriman Baptist Church shared their wealth from petroleum royalties. Photos courtesy the Historical Marker Database.
When local newspapers reported the church had refused an offer of $1 million, the Associated Press picked it up and newspapers from New York to San Francisco ran the story. Literary Digest even featured, “the Texas Mammon of Righteousness” with a photograph of the “The Congregation That Refuses A Million.”
Deacon J.T. Falls was not amused. “A great many clippings have been sent to us from many secular papers to the effect that we as a church have refused a million dollars for the lease of the cemetery. We do not know how such a statement started,” the deacon opined.
“The cemetery does not belong to the church. It was here long before the church was. We could not lease it if we would and we would not if we could,” the cleric added.
“If any person’s or company’s heart has become so congealed as to want to drill for oil in this cemetery, they could not – for the dead could not sign a lease and no living person has any right to do so,” Falls proclaimed.
The church deacon concluded with an ominous admonition to potential drillers, “Those that have friends buried here have the right and the will to protect the graves and any person attempting to trespass will assume a great risk.”
A 1918 article noted a “Merriman school house” oil well drilled to 3,200 feet in record time for North Central Texas.
Roaring Ranger’s oil production dropped precipitously because of dwindling reservoir pressures brought on by unconstrained drilling. Many exploration and production companies failed (including fraudulent ones like Hog Creek Carruth Oil Company).
In the decades since the McCleskey No. 1 well, advancements in horizontal drilling technology have presented more legal challenges to mineral rights of the interred, according to Zack Callarman of Texas Wesleyan School of Law.
Callarman wrote an award-winning analysis of laws concerning drilling to extract oil and natural gas underneath cemeteries. “Seven Thousand Feet Under: Does Drilling Disturb the Dead? Or Does Drilling Underneath the Dead Disturb the Living?” was published in the Real Estate Law Journal in 2014.
Despite yet another North Texas oilfield discovery at Desdemona, by 1920 the Eastland County drilling boom was over. The faithful still gather at Merriman Baptist Church every Sunday.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Oil Riches of Merriman Baptist Church.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/oil-riches-of-merriman-baptist-church. Last Updated: January 12, 2025. Original Published Date: January 18, 2019.
Lucky life of John Steele and America’s earliest petroleum riches.
John Washington Steele’s good fortune began on December 10, 1844, when Culbertson and Sarah McClintock adopted him as an infant. The McClintocks also adopted his sister Permelia, bringing both home to the farm along Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania.
Fifteen years later, the U.S. petroleum industry began with an 69.5-foot-deep oil discovery at nearby Titusville, the first oil well drilled commercially for distilling into kerosene (also called coal oil).
The Pennsylvania oil regions that had been revealed at Oil Creek made the widow McClintock a fortune in royalties. When she died in a kitchen fire in 1864, Mrs. McClintock left her oil wealth to her only surviving child Johnny, who inherited $24,500 at age 20.
John Washington Steele of Venango County, Pennsylvania, inherited oil riches.
Johnny also inherited his mother’s 200-acre farm along Oil Creek between what is now Rynd Farm and Rouseville. The farm already included 20 producing oil wells yielding $2,800 in royalties every day.
“Coal Oil Johnny” Steele would earn his name in 1865 after such a legendary year of extravagance that years later, according to the New York Times.
“In his day, Steele was the greatest spender the world had ever known,” the newspaper proclaimed. “He threw away $3,000,000 in less than a year.”
Philadelphia journalists coined the name “Coal Oil Johnny” for him, reportedly because of his attachment to a custom carriage that had black oil derricks spouting dollar symbols painted on its red doors. He later confessed in his autobiography:
I spent my money foolishly, recklessly, wickedly, gave it away without excuse; threw dollars to street urchins to see them scramble; tipped waiters with five and ten dollar bills; was intoxicated most of the time, and kept the crowd surrounding me usually in the same condition.
“Coal Oil Johnny” illustration from a 2010 Atlantic magazine article.
Of course, such wealth could not last forever. The rise and fall of Coal Oil Johnny, who died in modest circumstances in 1920 at age 76, will linger in petroleum history.
In 2010, the Atlantic magazine published “The Legend of Coal Oil Johnny, America’s Great Forgotten Parable,” an article surprisingly sympathetic to his riches to rags story. It describes the country’s fascination with the earliest economic booms brought by “black gold” discoveries in Pennsylvania.
“Before J.R. Ewing, or the Beverly Hillbillies, or even John D. Rockefeller, there was Coal Oil Johnny,” noted the October 18 feature story.
“He was the first great cautionary tale of the oil age — and his name would resound in popular culture for more than half a century after he made and lost his fortune in the 1860s.”
Refurbished boyhood home of “Coal Oil Johnny” at Oil Creek State Park (and train station) north of Rouseville, Pennsylvania. Photo by Bruce Wells.
For generations after the peak of his career, Johnny was still so famous that any major oil strike – especially the January 1901 gusher at Spindletop Hill in Beaumont, Texas, “brought his tales back to people’s lips,” noted the magazine article, citing Brian Black, a historian at Pennsylvania State University.
“It was wealth from nowhere,” Black explained. “Somebody like that was coming in without any opportunity or wealth and suddenly has a transforming moment. That’s the magic and it transfers right through to the Beverly Hillbillies and the rest of the mythology.”
“Coal Oil Johnny” was a legend and like all legends, “he became a stand-in for a constellation of people, things, ideas, feelings and morals – in this case, about oil wealth and how it works,” he added.
John Washington Steele died in Nebraska in 1920.
“He made and lost this huge fortune – and yet he didn’t go crazy or do anything terrible. Instead, he ended up living a regular, content life, mostly as a railroad agent in Nebraska,” the 2010 Atlantic article concluded. “Surely there’s a lesson in that for the millions who’ve lost everything in the housing boom and bust.”
John Washington Steele’s Venango County home, relocated and restored by Pennsylvania’s Oil Region Alliance of Business, Industry & Tourism, stands today in Oil Creek State Park, just off Route 8, north of Rouseville.
On Route 8 south of Rouseville is the still-producing McClintock No. 1 oil well. “This is the oldest well in the world that is still producing oil at its original depth,” proclaims the Alliance. “Souvenir bottles of crude oil from McClintock Well Number One are available at the Drake Well Museum, outside Titusville.”
Citation Information – Article Title: Legend of “Coal Oil Johnny.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/legend-of-coal-oil-johnny. Last Updated: December 9, 2024. Original Published Date: April 29, 2013.
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