by Bruce Wells | Jan 2, 2024 | Petroleum Transportation
A Library of Congress photo tells many early automobile tales.
Picturing history, images in the Library of Congress digital collection offer rare insights into the early U.S. petroleum industry.
Details found in just one 1921 black-and-white photograph of a Washington, D.C., suburb capture a scene of petroleum products and transportation infrastructure two decades after the first U.S. auto show. Originally printed from an eight-inch by six-inch glass negative, the Library of Congress image features Takoma Park, Maryland, and its railroad station on the northeastern border of the District of Columbia.
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by Bruce Wells | Jan 1, 2024 | Petroleum Companies
The rush for “black gold” took off in 1886, after William Rowland and partner William Lacy completed several producing oil wells at Rancho La Puente. Their company, Rowland & Lacy (later called the Puente Oil Company), revealed the Puente oilfield. News spread, launching a drilling boom.
By 1912, a host of inexperienced exploration companies were drilling more than 100 wells in the Fullerton area alone. According to reports, two of the inevitable dry hole holes that resulted were drilled by a new venture, the Puente Crude Oil Company.
Puente Crude Oil Company was one of many small ventures that hoped to find oil in southern California’s prolific oil fields near Brea Canyon and Fullerton at the turn of the century.
Puente Crude Oil Company was capitalized at only $500,000 and offered stock to the public at 10 cents a share in 1900, but its two unsuccessful wells in the Puente field’s eastern extension brought the company to a quick financial crisis. One well was lost to a “crooked hole” and the other found only traces of oil and natural gas.
Enthusiastic advertisements solicited investment. Some ads referred to the better known Sunset oil field, discovered in 1892 in Kern County to the north. By May 1901 company stock was offered at two cents per share to relieve indebtedness and enable further drilling on the company’s 870 acres in Rodeo Canyon.
One year later, San Bernardino newspapers reported the company in trouble.
“This history of misadventure has not been pleasing to the stockholders of the Puente Crude Oil Company,” noted one article. “An auditing committee was appointed for the purpose of examining the books and accounts of the company,” it added.
Further reports in 1902 noted the company had issued no statements, “financial or otherwise,” for a year. Puente Crude Oil Company is absent from records thereafter.
South of Los Angeles, in Orange County, the Brea Museum and Heritage Center tells the story of the Olinda Oil Well No. 1 well of 1898 – one of many important California petroleum discoveries. Visit the Olinda Oil Museum and Trail at 4025 Santa Fe Road in Brea.
The stories of exploration and production (E&P) companies joining U.S. petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found updated in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Join today as an AOGHS supporting member. Help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2021 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Much of the Puente Oil’s former oil producing land has long since been managed by the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority, and in 2022 the Port of Los Angeles handled more than 220 million metric tons — 20 percent of all incoming cargo for the United States.
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Recommended Reading: Los Angeles, California, Images of America
(2001). 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. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Puente Crude Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/puente-crude-oil-company. Last Updated: January 4, 2024. Original Published Date: July 2, 2013.
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by Bruce Wells | Nov 13, 2023 | Petroleum Companies
“You will feel pretty good some of these fine mornings when your shares jump to 5 or 10 for one.”
With oil booms in North Texas, especially along the Red River border with Oklahoma, Tulsa Producing and Refining Company incorporated to join the action in America’s growing Mid-Continent oil patch. In February 1919, the Texas El Paso Herald carried an advertisement for Tulsa Producing and Refining.
Stock certificate for the now defunct Tulsa Producing and Refining Company.
“A Strong, Solid Company With Two Wells Now Drilling” the advertisement proclaimed. It offered 250,000 shares of stock at $1 per share.
According to the company’s claims, the two wells were drilling in Comanche County, Texas, where Tulsa Producing and Refining reportedly held 1,000 acres under lease. Advertisements appeared in newspapers as far away as Pennsylvania, where America’s petroleum industry had begun in 1859 with the first U.S. oil well.
Frequent references were made to an oil boom in the remote region with 328,098 barrels of oil already produced. Even more enthusiastic advertisements about Texas discoveries followed in the Pittsburgh Gazette Times in May and June 1919.
“If either of these wells come in big, the shareholders of the Tulsa Producing & Refining Company will cash in strong – and do it quickly,” extolled perhaps one of the more conservative claims.
“You will feel pretty good some of these fine mornings when your shares jump to 5 or 10 for one,” added the company. “We believe this is going to happen – and happen soon, too.”
The predicted happiness apparently didn’t happen. All references to the company disappear thereafter.
Popular Certificate Vignette
Seeking investors to chase “black gold” riches led to a surge in printing scenes of derricks on stock certificates.
Drilling booms often lead to many quickly formed (and quickly failed) exploration companies. As company executives rushed to print stock certificates, they often chose this same scene of derricks and oil tanks.
In the rush to promote their drilling plans, new companies had little time or money to find original art. One oilfield vignette from print shops proved particularly popular.
Among the most often used scenes was of a panorama of derricks found on certificates issued by the Double Standard Oil & Gas Company, the Evangeline Oil Company, the Buffalo-Texas Oil Company, and many other oil exploration ventures.
More articles about the attempts to join exploration booms (and avoid busts) can be found in an the updated research at Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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Recommended Reading: The fire in the rock: A history of the oil and gas industry in Kansas, 1855-1976
(1976); Chronicles of an Oil Boom: Unlocking the Permian Basin
(2014). Your Amazon purchases benefit 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. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2023 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Tulsa Oil and Refining Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL:https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/tulsa-producing-and-refining-company. Last Updated: November 14, 2023. Original Published Date: April 2, 2015.
by Bruce Wells | Oct 30, 2023 | Energy Education Resources
Biography explores father of U.S. oil industry to total depth.
The man who would create the American petroleum industry was down to his last few pennies in August 1859. A letter was on its way from the company that had hired him to drill for oil near in remote Titusville, Pennsylvania. The letter instructed “Colonel” Edwin L. Drake to close operations.
“As far as the company was concerned, the project was finished,” noted William Brice, PhD, in his 2009 biography of the former railroad conductor. “Fortunately that letter was not delivered until after they found oil.” (more…)
