by Bruce Wells | Dec 29, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
George Bissell and six investors incorporated the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York. Convinced by natural seeps that oil could be produced in northwestern Pennsylvania, Bissell formed this first U.S. petroleum exploration company “to raise, manufacture, procure, and sell Rock Oil” from Hibbard Farm in Venango County. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jul 29, 2025 | Petroleum Art
The widely popular Depression Era newspaper comic strip character Alley Oop began in the imagination of a young cartographer who drew Permian Basin oilfield maps in Texas.
The club-wielding Alley Oop caveman appeared for the first time in the summer of 1933 when Victor Hamlin, a former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reporter, published fanciful tales about the Stone Age Kingdom of Moo. Hamlin began syndicating his daily cartoon in Iowa’s Des Moines Register.
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