African American entrepreneurs began their Oklahoma oil venture in 1917.
Discovery of Oklahoma’s giant Healdton oilfield in August 1913 about 20 miles northwest of Ardmore launched years of investment as petroleum companies competed to secure leases and drill. In the African American community, four entrepreneurs formed the Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company.
Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company opened offices in this building on East 2nd Street in a segregated district of downtown Oklahoma City known for its prospering businesses and jazz music nightlife. Photo courtesy The Black Dispatch, Oklahoma City, April 20, 1922, Vol. 7, No. 20.
Decades of production from the Healdton oilfield would yield more than 200 million barrels of oil — but the prolific field left hundreds of forgotten petroleum companies hidden in its exploration and production history.
Oil production from the Healdton field was shallow, averaging about 1,000 feet, and the low cost of drilling attracted many small ventures that operated on capital raised by aggressive stock sales. State “Blue Sky” laws had yet to restrain advertising excesses and promotions. Competition for investors often was fierce (see Homestead Oil Company).
Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company
When a group of foundering Coffeyville, Oklahoma, investors gave up on their 100-acre oil lease in 1917, four African American entrepreneurs bought out the venture and its unfinished 1,360-foot-deep well, which had encountered “several light sands” and a water-filled borehole.
Wilson Newman, J.C. Pratt, S.M. Holland, and Heston Welborn formed the Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company, capitalized at $50,000, and set up offices on East 2nd Street in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma’s Daily Ardmoreite reported on August 15, 1918, that Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company moved a Star Rig to explore for oil on land adjacent to the town of Tatums. Image from online auction sale.
Today, East 2nd Street is the heart of the “Deep Deuce” district and is known for its historic jazz and culture. But in 1917, that part of downtown was exclusively for “coloreds,” segregated to the other side of the Santa Fe railroad tracks. It was the era of Gov. William “Alfalfa Bill” Murray’s Jim Crow laws (the Civil Rights Act was still half a century away), but along East 2nd Street African-American businesses and neighborhoods prospered.
Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company moved into offices at 319 and 321 East 2nd Street, across from the Black Dispatch weekly, established two years earlier by Roscoe Dunjee. Advertised as the “Largest circulation Negro journal in Oklahoma,” the paper soon carried Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company promotions encouraging readers to invest.
“Buy Stock in a Home Company – With Men Whom You Know at its Head…100 acres leased and shallow wells producing the high-grade of oil,” declared one ad. The company announced plans “to deepen our 1,360 foot well to the lower pay.” Early investors could get in for the bargain price of $1 a share.
As Ardmore Lubricating Oil operations continued into June 1919, news reports for stockholders were mixed. The company completed a producing well on its 100-acre lease that yielded one barrel of oil a day of “high grade lubrication oil.” The company’s chemist predicted it would be worth $10 a barrel at a time when ordinary oil was selling for $2 dollars per barrel.
In 1920, Ardmore Lubricating Oil began moving equipment to drill a well just outside Tatums, about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City. The company announced it would build its own refinery there to process its especially valuable oil from the Healdton field. Tatums was one of about 50 all-black towns in the former Indian Territory that grew from post Civil War reconstruction. These self-segregated communities were reflective of the times; they remain as reminders of America’s struggle with race and identity.
With a new lab opened in 1920 upstairs at its Oklahoma City offices, the company’s wells reportedly could produce “high grade lubrication oil” and “Icthyol Oil,” a salve for eczema and other skin conditions. Image from online auction sale.
The superintendent, manager and stock salesman of the Ardmore Lubricating Oil, H.E. Baker, published a telegraphed message about the Tatums well site: “We have three wells producing the highest grade and most valuable oil found in the United States, the great drug Icthyol Oil, one of the most sought for and needed products of the world today.”
“Icthyol” was a popular European skin ointment produced from dry distillation of sulfur-rich oil shale, but Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company executives declared they could refine it from Tatums’ crude oil and process it in their own laboratory. In February 1920, the company announced a four-day grand opening to celebrate their new lab upstairs.
“The general public is cordially invited to come and see Kerosene, Automobile Oil and Icthyol,” noted an Ardmore Lubricating Oil promotion. Other ads proposed mutually beneficial business arrangements with merchants, investors, farmers, and consumers.
Increasingly creative financing and uninterrupted stock sales were needed for Ardmore Lubricating Oil to remain solvent. The Black Dispatch in 1921 praised H.E. Baker, noting his company’s “development grows by leaps and bounds…You can get into this company now on the ground floor, $10 is all that you can invest at this time for each member of the family, this will insure at the outset an equal opportunity for all, later on the hundreds of stock holders can get together and determine as to the larger plan of organization.”
Tatums’ townspeople in 1927 hosted and acted in “Black Gold,” a silent picture produced by Norman Studios and featuring an “All Colored Cast.” Posters courtesy IMDB.com and Norman Studios.org.
However, construction of the Ardmore Lubricating Oil refinery in Tatums still had not begun by August 1921. News about the company’s oil wells grew scarce as Baker sold his own leases. The last appeals for new investors appearing in the Black Dispatch were nevertheless optimistic:
“Wonderful Opportunities In Larger Faith And Deeper Hole,” proclaimed the newspaper. “To anyone with a limited amount of brains it can be seen that a little more faith and a deeper hole will bring into the hands of the Negro landholders in this section the millions of dollars, which their white neighbors all around them are reaping hourly from the derricks that have lunched great holes in the earth and are spouting liquid treasure everywhere.”
A few years later, but too late for Ardmore Lubricating Oil, the area around Tatums did experience an oil boom that was celebrated on the big screen. In 1927, townspeople hosted the making of Black Gold, a silent picture produced by Norman Studios and distributed to all-black theaters the next year. The Florida-based studio described its movie as a “stirring epic of the oil fields” with a cast including, “U.S. Marshall L.B. Tatums. and the entire all-colored City of Tatums, Oklahoma.”
The action-packed melodrama featured Ace Brand, his sweetheart Alice, and a one-legged cowboy (named Peg), who overcame both adversity and injustice in the oil patch. While the film’s happy ending delivered an oil gusher, Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company did not.
Few financial records remain about the company, but Gateway to Oklahoma History and the Black Dispatch’s archives offer more context to this almost forgotten story from U.S. petroleum history.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company.” Author: Aoghs.org Editors. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/stocks/ardmore-lubricating-oil-company. Last Updated: February 21, 2024. Original Published Date: July 4, 2019.
Col. William F. Cody searched for Wyoming black gold.
Col. William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s legacy extends beyond his famous Wild West show. A Wyoming town named Cody preserves his Big Horn Basin heritage, but less known is his adventure into the oil business.
“Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World” once made W.F. Cody the most recognized man in the world. His fanciful Indian attacks on wagon trains, the marksmanship by Annie Oakley, and other attractions drew audiences in America and Europe. (more…)
Before and after independence from the Standard Oil Company.
John D. Rockefeller, who in 1870 founded Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio, by 1890 had established his dominance throughout the U.S. petroleum industry — putting every small oil venture at risk. In an effort fight back, in 1887 a group independent producers founded the Ohio Oil Company in Lima. Seventy-five year later, their company became Marathon Oil.(more…)
Giant Texas oilfield discovery in 1901 coincided with gasoline demand for automobiles.
On January 10, 1901, the “Lucas Gusher” on a small hill in Texas revealed the Spindletop oilfield, which would produce more oil in a single day than the rest of the world’s oilfields combined.
Although the 1899 Galveston hurricane (still the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history) brought great misery to southeastern Texas as the 20th century dawned, a giant oilfield discovery three miles south of Beaumont launched the modern oil and natural gas industry. (more…)
A 1954 well drilled by the Ohio Oil Company well reached more than four miles deep.
Founded in 1887 by Henry M. Ernst, the Ohio Oil Company got its exploration and production start in northwestern Ohio, at the time a leading oil producing region. Two years later, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust purchased the growing company — known as “The Ohio” — and in 1905 moved headquarters from Lima to Findlay.
Soon establishing itself as a major pipeline company, by 1908 the Ohio controlled half of the oil production in three states. The company resumed independent operation in 1911 following the dissolution of the Standard Oil monopoly.
The Ohio Oil Company’s exploration operations would expand into Wyoming and further westward.
The Ohio Oil Company in 1930 purchased Transcontinental Oil, a refiner that had marketed gasoline under the trademark “Marathon” since 1920. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
In 1915, the company’s infrastructure added 1,800 miles of pipeline, as well as gathering and storage facilities, from its newly acquired Illinois Pipe Line Company. The Ohio then purchased the Lincoln Oil Refining Company to better integrate and develop more crude oil outlets.
“Ohio Oil saw the increasing need for marketing their own products with the ever increasing supply of automobiles appearing on the primitive roads,” explained Gary Drye, a collector of gas station antiques, in a 2006 forum at Oldgas.com.
The company ventured into marketing in June 1924 by purchasing Lincoln Oil Refining Company of Robinson, Illinois. With an assured supply of petroleum, the Ohio Oil’s “Linco” brand quickly expanded.
The Ohio Oil Company marketed its oil products as “Linco” after purchasing the Lincoln Oil Refinery in 1920. Undated photo of a station in Fremont, Ohio.
Meanwhile, a subsidiary in 1926 co-discovered the giant Yates oilfield in the Permian Basin of New Mexico and West Texas. “With huge successes in oil exploration and production ventures, Ohio Oil realized they needed even more retail outlets for their products,” Drye reported. By 1930, the company distributed Linco products throughout Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Kentucky.
Marathon of Ohio Oil
In 1930 Ohio Oil purchased Transcontinental Oil, a refiner that had marketed gasoline under the trademark “Marathon” across the Midwest and South since 1920. Acquiring the Marathon product name included the Pheidippides Greek runner trademark and the “Best in the long run” slogan.
Adopted in 2011, the third logo for corporate branding in Marathon Oil’s 124-year history.
According to Drye, Transcontinental “can best be remembered for a significant ‘first’ when in 1929 they opened several Marathon stations in Dallas, Texas in conjunction with Southland Ice Company’s ‘Tote’m’ stores (later 7-Eleven) creating the first gasoline/convenience store tie-in.”
The Marathon brand proved so popular that by World War II the name had replaced Linco at stations in the original five state territory. After the war, Ohio Oil continued to purchase other companies and expand throughout the 1950s.
Ohio Oil’s California Record
As deep drilling technologies continued to advanced in the 1950s, a record depth of 21,482 feet was reached by the Ohio Oil Company in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Petroleum Engineer magazine in 1954 noted the well set a record despite being “halted by a fishing job.”
The deep oil well drilling attempt about 17 miles southwest of Bakersfield in prolific Kern County, experienced many challenges. A final problem led to it being plugged with cement on December 31, 1954. At more than four miles deep, down-hole drilling technology of the time was not up to the task when the drill bit became stuck.
The challenge of retrieving obstructions from deep in a well’s borehole – “fishing” – has challenged the petroleum industry since the first tool stuck at 134 feet and ruined a well spudded just four days after the famous 1859 discovery by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania. See The First Dry Hole.
In a 1954 article about deep drilling technology, The Petroleum Engineer noted the Kern County well of the Ohio Oil Company — which would become Marathon Oil — set a record despite being “halted by a fishing job.” The well was a financial lost.
A 1953 Kern County well drilled by Richfield Oil Corporation produced oil from a depth of 17,895 feet, according to the magazine. At the time, the average U.S. cost for the nearly 100 wells drilled below 15,000 feet was about $550,000 per well. Learn more California petroleum exploration history by visiting the West Kern Oil Museum.
More than 630 exploratory wells with a total footage of almost three million feet were drilled in California during 1954, according to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists — the AAPG, established in 1917.
In 1962, celebrating its 75th anniversary, The Ohio changed its name to Marathon Oil Company and launched its new “M” in a hexagon shield logo design. Other milestones include:
1981 – U.S. Steel (USX) purchased the company. 1985 – Yates field produced its billionth barrel of oil. 1990 – Marathon opened headquarters in Houston. 2005 – Marathon became 100 percent owner of Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, which later became Marathon Petroleum Corp. 2011 – Completed a $3.5 billion investment in the Eagle Ford Shale play in Texas.
On June 30, 2011, Marathon Oil became an independent upstream company and unveiled an “energy wave” logo as it prepared to separate from Marathon Petroleum, based in Findlay. Read a more detailed history in Ohio Oil Company and visit the Hancock Historical Museum in Findlay.
On May 29, 2024, Marathon Oil announced it was being acquired by ConocoPhillips in an all-stock transaction valued at $22.5 billion.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Marathon of Ohio Oil.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/stocks/marathon-ohio-oil. Last Updated: August 4, 2024. Original Published Date: December 28, 2014.
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