by Bruce Wells | Aug 21, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
The “Snake Hollow Gusher” brought Pittsburgh a $35 million natural gas drilling boom — and bust.
“Rarely, a community sees its pulse quicken with a get-rich-quick beat, feels the boom fever strike, suffers the chill of disillusion when the ‘El Dorado’ fades out and then recovers,” noted the Pittsburgh Press in 1934, decades after the excitement began.
“But this is what happened at the McKeesport gas field, scene of the Pittsburgh district’s biggest boom and loudest crash,” the newspaper added. McKeesport Gas Company was among the many petroleum company casualties.
Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields attracted investors to many ambitious drilling ventures, including McKeesport Gas Company.
Following the first U.S. oil discovery at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in late August 1859, natural gas development began in western Pennsylvania.
With new oilfields came discoveries of large volumes of gas suited for illumination, heating, and manufacturing. Natural gas began to be widely used after two brothers drilled into a giant, highly pressurized field on November 3, 1878.
The Haymaker brothers’ discovery brought the new energy resource to Pittsburgh factories and steel mills. By the late 1880s, Pittsburgh skies cleared for the first time in decades as mills and factories burned natural gas instead of coal.
Learn more about the once nationally famous Haymaker gas well of 1878 in Natural Gas is King in Pittsburgh.
Biggest Boom
For investors in 1919, the region’s natural gas history seemed to be repeating itself. McKeesport Gas Company was one of about 300 petroleum companies that sprang up within six months of an August 30, 1919, discovery — a runaway natural gas well near McKeesport.
The “Snake Hollow Gusher” between the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers blew in at more than 60 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. The headline-making gas well, drilled by S.J. Brendel and David Foster, prompted a frenzy that saw $35 million dollars invested during the boom’s seven-month lifespan.
McKeesport Gas Company incorporated on December 5, 1919, and two weeks later enticed investors with advertisements in the Pittsburgh Press and the Gazette Times newspapers. “Over 500 Acres of Leases in the Heart of the McKeesport Gas Fields,” proclaimed one newspaper ad, offering stock at $1.25 a share.
“Many residents signed leases for drilling on their land,” noted another local reporter. “They bought and sold gas company stock on street corners and in barbershops transformed into brokerage houses in anticipation of fortunes to be made.”
Then the natural gas reserves ran out.
Loudest Crash
By the beginning of 1921, McKeesport’s natural gas production was falling in about 180 producing wells and new drilling resulted in about 440 unsuccessful wells — dry holes. The field would be reported as “the scene of the Pittsburgh district’s biggest boom and loudest crash.”
Of the estimated $35 million sunk into the nine square mile area of the boom, only about $3 million came out.
A detail from “McKeesport, Snake Hollow, Gas Belt,” a circa 1920 panoramic image by Hagerty & Griffey. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
A circa 1920 panoramic photograph at the Library of Congress captured the drilling boom at the McKeesport, Snake Hollow, Gas Belt, by Hagerty & Griffey.
McKeesport Gas Company likely drilled a few of the boom’s hundreds of dry holes, and with funds exhausted, disappeared into petroleum history. Fifteen years later, McKeesport Mayor George H. Lysle explained to a Pittsburgh newspaper reporter how the town survived the “seven-month wonder” natural gas boom:
“Other boom towns,” he said, “were built merely on the strength of the wealth that was to pour from their wells or mines. But McKeesport and vicinity was established before the boom came.”
When the drilling ended, Lysle added, “People still had their jobs in the mills and stores, the permanent population remained, and the natural resources of the district, except for gas, were still as great as ever. We were still a great industrial community.”
Advances in the science of petroleum geology and improved production technologies have brought surer results than the Snake Hollow Gusher. As early as 2010, the region’s gas boom — the Marcellus Shale — extended across western Pennsylvania into other Appalachian Basin states.
Because of the region’s history, McKeesport Gas Company stock certificates are considered collectible; the stories of other exploration companies trying to join petroleum booms (and avoid busts) can be found in the updated research in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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Recommended Reading: McKeesport – Images of America: Pennsylvania
(2007); Western Pennsylvania’s Oil Heritage
(2008); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); 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: “McKeesport Gas Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/stocks/mckeesport-gas-company. Last Updated: August 21, 2025. Original Published Date: April 29, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Jul 23, 2026 | Petroleum Companies, Petroleum History Almanac
Seeking petroleum riches in risky Mid-Continent fields.
The Kansas petroleum industry began in 1892 with an oilfield at Neodesha. In 1915, an oilfield discovery at El Dorado near Wichita revealed the giant Mid-Continent field, but it took years for business sense to arrive, according to the editor of a 1910 History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jul 3, 2026 | Petroleum Art
Some say L. Frank Baum’s 1880s oil business inspired the Tin Man.
The Tin Man in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz can trace his roots to the earliest U.S. oilfields where L. Frank Baum operated a lubricant business before becoming the famous children’s book author. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jun 1, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
When Edwin L. Drake drilled the first U.S. oil well in 1859 along a creek at Titusville, Pennsylvania, he transformed the landscape of the Allegheny River valley — and America’s energy future. The former railroad conductor’s discovery launched a new industry as investors and drillers rushed to cash in on the new resource for making kerosene for lamps.
Wallace Oil Company would be among the earliest U.S. petroleum companies, and the venture’s fate would presage the riskiness of America’s new exploration and production industry.
Stock certificate detail of exploration company founded by grocery store owner John Wallace in 1865.
The ensuing scramble fueled the nation’s first petroleum drilling boom. Newspapers reported discoveries on farms clustered in the northwestern Pennsylvania oil region.
Newly incorporated oil companies rushed to construct wooden derricks with steam-powered cable tools for “making hole.” Drillers, some skilled at using spring-poles for water wells, came to John Rynd’s farm at the junction of Oil Creek and Cherry Tree Run, the Blood farm to the north, and the widow McClintock farm to the south.
America catches Oil Fever
Operating a grocery store on the Rynd farm in 1859, Irish immigrant John Wallace witnessed the excitement firsthand. When the first of many wells found oil on the farm in 1861, derricks already crowded nearby hillsides. Four years later, the 24-year-old entrepreneur caught oil fever and incorporated Wallace Oil Company in 1865 with an office at 319 Walnut Street in Philadelphia.
Witnessing the oil region’s drilling boom from his Rynd farm grocery store, John Wallace joined it. Oil Region of Pennsylvania,1865 map courtesy David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, F.W. Beers & Co.
With the science of petroleum geology in its infancy, “creekology” and oil seeps often were the only tools for finding promising locations to drill. Some exploration companies turned to dowsing (hazel or peach tree rods preferred) to find oil.
Wallace’s company sold stock certificates and acquired a 3/32 royalty interest in a 200-acre tract on the neighboring McClintock farm (previously owned by investors Curtiss, Haldeman, and Fawcett).
Although records offer no evidence of Wallace Oil Company actually drilling and completing a well, Wallace’s lease trading speculations, financed by his 3/32 royalty income, and energetic sales of stock, made the company money.
“Pleasant morning – Rouseville,” detail from a stereographic view, circa 1875, with petroleum company officers, lawyers, lease agents, and a small oil exchange. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Purchasers of Wallace’s stock stood to gain from both royalties and appreciation. The financial horizon looked promising. In 1865, a 42-gallon barrel of oil sold for $6.59 a barrel (nearly $100 in 2013 dollars).
Boom and Bust
As the gamble to find oil spread, Pithole Creek and other oilfield discoveries inspired more drilling — and speculation at oil exchanges in Titusville, Oil City, and elsewhere.
Those seeking petroleum riches in 1864 included John Wilkes Booth, whose Dramatic Oil Company drilled on a 3.5-acre lease on the Fuller farm.
By the end of 1869, Wallace Oil Company ‘s McClintock farm leases still produced an average of 200 barrels of oil daily from 32 wells. It took three more years before Wallace Oil Company paid its first and only dividend to investors, who received one cent per share in 1874. But by then, one industry publication noted, “oil had left the territory.”
The company dutifully paid the state an annual “Tax on Stock,” and in 1871 paid its first “Tax on Income.”
A circa 1875 Library of Congress stereograph of a small building includes signs for the “Wallace Oil Company,” the “Allegheny & Pittsburgh Oil Co.,” the “Oil Basin Petroleum Co.,” the “Buchanan Royalty Oil Co.,” and the “Rouseville Oil Co.”
Wallace Oil Company in Rouseville is among many stereographic views preserved in the Library of Congress.
Rouseville in 1861 had been the scene of a deadly oil well fire, one the earliest fatal conflagrations of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.
By the early 1890s, Wallace Oil Company’s expanded oil-region holdings were reduced to the original 3/32 royalty from its McClintock property, which no longer produced commercial quantities of oil. Overproduction had drained profitability from the countryside.
In August 1895, American Investor reported Wallace Oil Company had lost its wells and property and could not even muster resources to pay legal fees associated with formal dissolution of the company. The grim assessment concluded, “The company is in a hopeless condition. The stock has no market value.”
Visit the Drake Well Museum and Park in Titusville. More stories of exploration and production companies joining petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry
(2009); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991); History Of Oil Well Drilling (2007). 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. Support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Wallace Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/wallace-oil-company. Last Updated: June 18, 2026. Original Published Date: June 17, 2021.
by Bruce Wells | May 25, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
Shallow Oklahoma oilfield launched many petroleum industry pioneers.
When an Oklahoma drilling boom arrived in 1919 thanks to shallow wells in the Healdton oilfield, a 27-year-oid inventor applied his new method for cementing oil wells. His service company would become one of the largest in the world.
Erle Palmer Halliburton (1892-1957) received a U.S. patent for his “Method and Means for Cementing an Oil Well in 1921 during Oklahoma drilling booms in and around the Healdton oilfield. He had arrived in Duncan after working for service companies in North Texas towns, including boom town Burkburnett.
In Chickasaw County, Oklahoma, Healdton Oil Museum exhibits include the Pierce-Arrow of Wirt Franklin, who in 1929 foundered the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
Halliburton’s New Method Oil Well Cementing Company would receive many patents on its way to becoming Halliburton Corporation, which in 2022 employed 42,000 worldwide specializing in “locating hydrocarbons and managing geological data, to drilling and formation evaluation, well construction and completion, and optimizing production through the life of the field.”
The Healdton field was first revealed in August 1913 by the Wirt Franklin No. 1 well about 20 miles northwest of Ardmore. The wildcat well discovered what soon became known as the “poor man’s field,” because of its shallow depth and low cost of drilling.
The Carter County oilfield, about 70 miles east of Burkburnett, quickly attracted independent producers with limited financial backing — often edging out major oil company competitors.
“Within a 22-mile swath across Carter County, one of the nation’s greatest oil discoveries was made — the Greater Healdton-Hewitt Field,” reported Kenny Arthur Franks in his 1989 history of the oilfield.
“Encompassing some of the richest oil-producing land in America, Healdton and Hewitt, discovered in 1913 and 1919 respectively, produced an astounding 320,753,000 barrels of crude by the close of the first half of the 20th century,” Franks explained.
Erle P. Halliburton Halliburton in 1957. Photo courtesy Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
In addition to launching Halliburton’s petroleum career, the shallow field also helped independent producer Wirt Franklin in 1929 become the first president of the then Tulsa-based Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).
The Healdton Oil Museum preserves Franklin’s and other independent producers’ exploration heritage — and many who got their start in the Healdton field. Among them were former Oklahoma Governor Charles Haskell and Roy Johnson, president of the Healdton Petroleum Company.
According to the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS), the towns of Wilson, Ringling, and New Healdton (now Healdton) came into existence during the oilfield’s development. Just a few who began their careers there were Robert Hefner Sr. and Lloyd Noble.
“Hefner, a lawyer, introduced the concept of subsurface leasing into mineral rights law,” OHS notes. “Noble developed an international oil business and established the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, a nonprofit biotechnology research foundation that helps farmers.”
Born in Ardmore in 1896, Noble found early success at Healdton — and at the Seminole oil boom in 1926.
Noble also was instrumental in the success of a top-secret drilling project during World War II (see Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest).
Cement Well Control
Healdton drilling boom and its many shallow wells, Halliburton established his New Method Oil Well Cementing in Duncan (see Halliburton cements Wells). He was soon experimenting with technologies to improve oil well production. Water intrusion hampered many wells, requiring time and expense for pumping out.
Halliburton noted in his 1920 patent application, “Water has caused the abandonment of many wells which would have developed a profitable output.”
The oilfield cementing innovation — at first resisted by some skeptics — isolated the various down-hole zones, guarded against collapse of the casing and permitted control of the well throughout its producing life.
The city of Duncan, Oklahoma, dedicated a Halliburton statue in 1993.
According to William Pike, former editor-in-chief of E&P magazine, Halliburton’s well cementing process revolutionized how oil and natural gas wells were completed.
Halliburton also patented many current modern cementing technologies, including the jet mixer, the remixer and the float collar, guide shoe and plug system, bulk and multiple-stage cementing, and offshore cementing technology.
Halliburton’s only real service company competitor for decades was Carl Baker of Baker Oil Tools. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company in 1938 expanded into offshore work with a barge-mounted unit cementing a well off the Louisiana coast.
Meanwhile, another Oklahoma oilfield service company, the Reda Pump Company, had been founded by Armais Arutunoff, thanks to help from his close friend Frank Phllips and Phillips Petroleum of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Arutunoff invented a practical electric submersible pump). As Phillips foresaw, use of the Arutunoff artificial lift pump would dominate U.S. oilfields by 1938 — and oilfields worldwide after World War II.
Hydraulic Fracking
A major petroleum industry milestone came in 1949, when Halliburton and Stanolind Oil Company completed a well near Duncan, Oklahoma – the first commercial application of hydraulic fracturing (see Shooters – A “Fracking” History).
“Halliburton was ever the tinkerer. He owned nearly 50 patents,” noted Pike. “Most are oilfield, and specifically cementing related, but the number includes patents for an airplane control, an opposed piston pump, a respirator, an airplane tire and a metallic suitcase.”
Thanks in part to his prospering oilfield service company, Halliburton in 1931 started his own airline in Tulsa, the Southwest Air Fast Express — Safeway Airlines — that later merged with American Airlines.
As U.S. production from oil and natural gas shale formations grew in 2018, Halliburton Corporation’s worldwide operations employed 80,000 people.
Learn more about Halliburton’s oilfield inventiveness in Halliburton cements Wells.
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Recommended Reading: Ragtown: A History of the Greater Healdton-Hewitt Oil Field (1989); Erle P. Halliburton: Genius with Cement
(1959). 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. Support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Halliburton and the Healdton Oilfield.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/halliburton-and-healdton-oilfield. Last Updated: June 13, 2026. Original Published Date: July 14, 2015.
