This Week in Petroleum History: May 11 – 17
May 11, 1880 – Dresser patents Oil Well Device –
Solomon Dresser of Bradford, Pennsylvania, patented a rubber “packer” for sealing downhole pressure in wells. The technology behind the patent (no. 227419) helped confine gas, “which enters the well from the lower rocks and utilizes its force or pressure to expel the oil from the well.”
Detail from Solomon R. Dresser’s innovative 1880 patent for a rubber “packer” to seal downhole pressure in wells.
With the success of his Dresser “Cap Packer” in the giant Bradford oilfield, the inventor founded the S.R. Dresser Manufacturing Company. In 1885, he patented a flexible coupling known as a “Dresser Joint,” a widely adopted pipeline coupling method using rubber for tight seals, which permitted long-range transmission of natural gas.
After expanding into manufacturing oilfield pumps, engines, and compressors, Dresser’s company went public in 1928, moving its headquarters from Bradford to Dallas in 1950. Dresser Industries merged with oilfield supply rival Halliburton for about $7.7 billion in stock in 1998 (also see Halliburton cements Wells).
May 11, 1947 — Helicopter used for Oil Survey
A Bell 47B helicopter costing $75 per hour to operate was used for a gravity-meter survey in the Terrebonne Parish area of Louisiana. “The very first helicopter-aided oil survey in the Gulf took place between May 11 and August 12, 1947,” reported a 2009 article in Vertical Rewind, adding that helicopters replaced “marsh buggies used along the mosquito-infested coast of Louisiana.”
Petroleum-Bell Helicopter pilot Phil Fillingham in front of a Bell 47D-1 in March 1954. Bell 47s were the first helicopters used to transport personnel to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo courtesy Phil Fillingham/Vertical Rewind.
With the Bell helicopter based at Houma Airport, the survey was completed in three months, “while it took a year to do working with marsh buggies,” the article explained (also see First Florida Oil Well). Due to maintenance and repairs, the helicopter flew only 115 hours over the contract’s 93 days. “Even with those problems, this first use of a helicopter in oil exploration was considered a success.” Petroleum-Bell Helicopter Services, known as “Pet Bell,” was established in Lafayette in 1949. Learn more in Offshore Petroleum History.
May 12, 2007 – Oil Museums open in Oklahoma
ConocoPhillips opened two petroleum museums as part of the 2007 Oklahoma statehood centennial celebrations. The company spent $10 million on the museums in Bartlesville and Ponca City. Conoco merged with Phillips Petroleum Company in 2002, after beginning in the 1880s as the Continental Oil Company, a grease and kerosene distributor in Utah. Continental Oil merged with Ponca City-based Marland Oil Company in 1929.
An 1880s tank-wagon exhibit at the Conoco Museum in Ponca City, Oklahoma, today open by appointment only. Photo by Bruce Wells.
ConocoPhillips in 2012 separated its downstream operations into a separate company, Phillips 66, which in 2025 closed the Bartlesville museum, citing a decline in attendance. The Ponca City Conoco Museum has remained open with limited hours and appointments required for visiting. Learn more in ConocoPhillips Petroleum Museums.
May 14, 1906 – Louisiana Law conserves Natural Gas
Joining the growing number of states producing natural gas, Louisiana enacted conservation measures for preventing waste. Lawmakers passed an “Act to Protect the Natural Gas Fields of this State” empowering the governor “to close, cap, or plug offending wells” at the owner’s expense.
Expanded in 1910, the act marked the beginning of legislative control of the state’s petroleum industry, according to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Penalties were imposed for “failure to cap out-of-control wells, doing injury to pipe lines, or wastefully burning natural gas from any well into the air.” The conservation law sought to prevent the excessive practices that had depleted fields during the Indiana gas boom.
May 14, 1953 – Golden Driller debuts at Petroleum Exposition
A golden, 76-foot statue of a roughneck first appeared at the 30th annual International Petroleum Exposition in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sponsored by the Mid-Continent Supply Company of Fort Worth, the giant attracted crowds and returned refurbished for the 1959 exposition. Mid-Continent Supply then donated it to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds, where it was completely rebuilt in 1966. The “golden driller” would be refurbished several more times by 1980.
The original Golden Driller of 1953, left, proved so popular that a more permanent version (supported with steel rods) returned for the 1966 Petroleum Expo. Photos courtesy Tulsa Historical Society.
Today a Tulsa tourist attraction, the mustard-shaded driller, weighing 43,500 pounds, is one of the largest freestanding statues in the world, according to city officials. Promotional t-shirts, ties, and scarfs — and in 2020 a Covid-19 mask — have occasionally adorned the statue. Learn more in Golden Driller of Tulsa.
May 14, 2004 – Museum Opens in Oil City, Louisiana
Louisiana’s first publicly funded museum dedicated to the petroleum industry opened in Oil City, about 20 miles north of Shreveport. The Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum, originally called the Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Museum, opened at a former depot of the Kansas City Southern Railroad.
Louisiana’s Caddo Parish petroleum museum includes outdoor exhibits of modern oil production technology.
The museum has since preserved the Caddo Parish oilfield discoveries in 1905, which brought economic prosperity to North Louisiana. Museum exhibits reveal the technologies behind the earliest Louisiana oil wells — and a 1911 well drilled by Gulf Refining Company that is considered one of the earliest “offshore” oil wells. Completed on Caddo Lake, the well produced 450 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 2,185 feet. Learn more in Louisiana Oil City Museum.
May 15, 1911 – Supreme Court mandates Breakup of Standard Oil
After reviewing 12,000 pages of court documents, the Supreme Court issued its majority opinion mandating dissolution of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey into 34 separate companies. The Justice Department had filed an antitrust lawsuit against Standard Oil in 1909. The Supreme Court’s ruling upheld a circuit court decision that Standard Oil’s practices violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The company was given six months to spin off its subsidiaries.
May 15, 1940 — Nylon Stockings Go on Sale
One year after being unveiled at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, nylon stockings went on sale for the first time at Gimbels Department Store in Manhattan. Promoted as “strong as steel, as fine as spiderweb,” first-year sales reached about 64 million pairs at $1.35 each for the DuPont Company’s petroleum product, according to ABC News.
“Women’s love affair with nylon stockings has had a long run,” the network proclaimed in 2010. Nylon had been used for toothbrush bristles for “Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft” as early as February 1938 (see Nylon, a Petroleum Polymer).
May 16, 1817 – U.S. Geology Described and Mapped
Scottish-American geologist William Maclure presented his detailed study of U.S. geology to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He would be named president of the Academy, a post he would hold for 22 years, and become known as the “father of American Geology.”
An 1818 map by William Maclure provided a more detailed version of a geological map he published in 1809. Image courtesy the Historic Maps Collection, Princeton Library.
The American Philosophical Society published Maclure’s detailed study in 1818 as “Observations on the Geology of the United States of North America.”
May 16, 1934 – National Stripper Well Association established
The National Stripper Well Association (NSWA) organized in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to represent operators of stripper wells — marginal wells that produce less than 15 barrels of oil a day or less than 90 thousand cubic feet of natural gas a day. In 2024, about 400,000 oil stripper wells accounted for more than 7.4 percent of U.S. oil production, according to NSWA. About 360,000 natural gas stripper wells accounted for 8.2 percent of gas production.
May 16, 1961 – Museum opens over Natural Gas Field
In southwestern Kansas, the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton opened above a natural gas-producing formation extending 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. The town’s museum has since educated visitors about one of the largest natural gas fields in North America — the Hugoton field. A well drilled in 1945 still produces natural gas outside the small museum.
A Stevens County natural gas museum in Hugoton, Kansas, preserves the history of a giant natural gas field.
Although the Hugoton field’s once-dominant natural gas production gave way to gas shale and coalbed methane regions, including production from Fayetteville, Arkansas (2004), and Haynesville, Louisiana (2008), the Hugoton-Panhandle gas continues to be a leading source of helium. Learn more in Hugoton Natural Gas Museum.
May 17, 1882 – Mystery Well Production revealed
The true oil production of a closely guarded discovery well in the Warren County, Pennsylvania, township of Cherry Grove was revealed to be 1,000 barrels of oil a day. News about Jamestown Oil Company’s “Mystery Well” sent shock waves through petroleum market centers.
“The excitement in the oil exchanges was indescribable,” noted Paul H. Giddens in his 1938 classic, The Birth of the Oil Industry. “Over 4,500,000 barrels of oil were sold in one day on the exchanges in Titusville, Oil City and Bradford.”
Cherry Grove, Pennsylvania, oil patch historians and volunteers built a derrick to celebrate their historic 1882 “Mystery Well.”
Although the Cherry Grove discovery demoralized the market and drove oil prices down to less than 50 cents per barrel, hundreds of derricks appeared around Cherry Grove, and thousands of people moved there while the boom lasted. It was short-lived, according to volunteers of the Cherry Grove Old Home and Community Day Committee, which has kept the “Oil Excitement” alive. Learn more in Cherry Grove Mystery Well.
May 17, 1901 – Gulf Oil begins at Spindletop Hill
James M. Guffey organized Guffey Petroleum Company to buy the famous “Lucas Gusher” well drilled the previous January at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas. Guffey purchased about half of the oilfield discovery well’s production (the Mellon family of Pittsburgh owned the remainder). Guffey created the Gulf Refining Company to refine and market the oil produced by Guffey Petroleum. In 1907, Andrew Mellon acquired J.M. Guffey Petroleum and Gulf Refining companies of Texas and reorganized them as Gulf Oil.
May 17, 1973 – Last Nuclear fracturing of Natural Gas Well
Atomic Energy Commission scientists conducted the last experiment of the Plowshare Program with a nearly simultaneous detonation of three 33-kiloton devices in a Colorado natural gas well. Project Rio Blanco was the third and final underground detonation to test nuclear fracturing of gas wells.
The first had been Project Gasbuggy in 1967 when a 29-kiloton nuclear device fractured a New Mexico well. A second experiment, Project Rulison, detonated a 40-kiloton device in a Colorado well in 1969. All three projects improved production, but the natural gas proved too radioactive.
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Recommended Reading: Groundbreakers: The Story of Oilfield Technology and the People Who Made it Happen (2015); Conoco: 125 Years of Energy
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Support this energy education website, our monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
oilfield discovered in Pennsylvania by a well drilled by the United States Petroleum Company — reportedly located by using a witch-hazel dowser. The discovery well, which initially produced 250 barrels of oil a day, made headlines and created the 
