by Bruce Wells | Jun 21, 2024 | Petroleum Art
Alexandre Hogue and other artists depicted America’s oilfields during the Great Depression.
“Oil Fields of Graham,” a 1939 mural by Alexandre Hogue, can be found in its original Texas community’s U.S. Postal Service building, a Graham museum preserving the work of oil art.
During the Great Depression, when President Franklin Roosevelt created public projects like the New Deal Federal Arts Program, Alexandre Hogue and other artists received commissions to illustrate scenes of America and its history on the walls of public buildings.
Among his paintings, the artist’s petroleum-related work include “Oil Fields of Graham” (1939), a 12-foot mural now on exhibit in the city’s historic U.S. Post Office building.
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by Bruce Wells | Jun 3, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
June 3, 1979 – Bay of Campeche Oil Spill
Drilling in about 150 feet of water, the semi-submersible platform Sedco 135 suffered a blowout 50 miles off Mexico’s Gulf Coast. The state-owned company Pemex well Ixtoc 1 spilled 3.4 million barrels of oil before being brought under control nine months later. Considering the size of the spill, its environmental impact was limited, according to a 1981 report by the Coordinated Program of Ecological Studies in the Bay of Campeche.
Although the extent of environmental alterations from the Ixtoc 1 blowout remain unknown, field surveys of Campeche Sound conducted in 1979–1980 noted, “evaporation, dispersion, photo-oxidation and biodegradation processes played a major role in attenuating the harmful environmental effects of the oil spill.”
June 4, 1872 – Pennsylvania Oilfields bring Petroleum Jelly
A young chemist living in New York City, Robert Chesebrough,
patented “a new and useful product from petroleum,” which he named “Vaseline.” His patent proclaimed the virtues of this purified extract of petroleum distillation residue as a lubricant, hair treatment, and balm for chapped hands.
Robert Chesebrough consumed a spoonful of Vaseline each day and lived to be 96 years old. Photo courtesy Drake Well Museum.
When the 22-year-old chemist visited the new Pennsylvania oilfields in 1865, he had noted that drilling was often confounded by a paraffin-like substance that clogged the wellhead. Drillers used the “rod wax” as a quick first aid for abrasions.
Chesebrough returned to New York City and worked in his laboratory to purify the oil well goop, which he first called “petroleum jelly.” Female customers would discover that mixing lamp black with Vaseline made an impromptu mascara. In 1913, Mabel Williams employed just such a concoction, and it would lead to the founding of a major cosmetic company.
Learn more in The Crude History of Maybel’s Eyelashes.
June 4, 1892 – Devastation of Pennsylvania Oil Region
After weeks of thunderstorms in Pennsylvania’s Oil Creek Valley, the Spartansburg dam on Oil Creek burst, sending torrents of water that killed more than 100 people and destroyed homes and businesses in Titusville and Oil City. The disaster was compounded when fires broke out.
Titusville, Pennsylvania, residents used the “Colonel Drake Steam Pumper” during the great flood and fire of 1892. Photo courtesy Drake Well Museum.
“This city during the past twenty-four hours has been visited by one of the most appalling fires and overwhelming floods in the history of this country,” reported the New York Times from Oil City. Oilfield photographer John A. Mather — who lost his studio and 16,000 glass plate negatives — documented the destruction, which preceded the Johnstown Flood by six years.
Learn more in Oilfield photographer John Mather.
June 4, 1896 – Henry Ford drives his “Quadricycle”
Driving the first car he ever built, Henry Ford left a workshop behind his home on Bagley Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. He had designed his “Quadricycle” in his spare time while working as an engineer for Edison Illuminating Company. Ford chose the name because his handmade, 500-pound “horseless carriage” ran on four bicycle tires. Inspired by advancements in gasoline-fueled engines, he founded Henry Ford Company in 1903.
June 4, 1921 – Petroleum Seismograph tested
A team of earth scientists tested an experimental seismograph device on a farm three miles north of Oklahoma City and determined it could accurately map subsurface structures. Led by Prof. John C. Karcher and W.P. Haseman, the team from the University of Oklahoma found that seismology could be useful for oil and natural gas exploration and production. Further seismic reflection tests, including one in the Arbuckle formation in August, confirmed their results.
June 6, 1932 – First Federal Gasoline Tax
The federal government taxed gasoline for the first time when the Revenue Act of 1932 added a one-cent per gallon excise tax to U.S. gasoline sales. The first state to tax gasoline had been Oregon, which imposed a one-cent per gallon tax in 1919. Colorado, New Mexico, and other states followed. The federal tax, last raised on October 1, 1993, has remained at 18.4 cents per gallon (24.4 cents per gallon for diesel). About 60 percent of federal gasoline taxes are used for highway and bridge construction.
June 6, 1944 – English Channel Pipelines fuel WWII Victory
As the D-Day invasion began along 50 miles of fortified French coastline in Normandy, logistics for supplying the effort would include two top-secret engineering feats — construction of artificial harbors followed by the laying of pipelines across the English Channel.
Operation PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) unspooled flexible steel pipeline across the English Channel, but the channel was deep, the French ports distant.
Code-named “Mulberrys” and using a design similar to modern jack-up offshore rigs, the artificial harbors used barges with retractable pylons to provide platforms to support floating causeways extending to the beaches.
To fuel the Allied advance into Nazi Germany, Operation PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) used flexible steel pipelines wound onto giant “conundrums” designed to spool off when towed. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower later acknowledged the vital importance of the oil pipelines.
Learn more in PLUTO, Secret Pipelines of WW II.
June 6, 1976 – Oil Billionaire J. Paul Getty dies
With a fortune reaching $6 billion (about $32 billion in 2023), J. Paul Getty died at 83 at his estate near London. Born into his father’s petroleum wealth from the Oil Company of Tulsa, Getty made his first million by age 23 from buying and selling oil leases. “I started in September 1914, to buy leases in the so-called red-beds area of Oklahoma,” Getty told the New York Times. “The surface was red dirt and it was considered impossible there was any oil there. My father and I did not agree and we got many leases for very little money which later turned out to be rich leases.”
Getty, who incorporated Getty Oil in 1942, would leave more than $660 million of his estate to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
June 9, 1894 – Water Well finds Oil in Corsicana, Texas
A contractor hired by the town of Corsicana to drill a water well on 12th Street found oil instead, launching the Texas petroleum industry seven years before a more famous discovery at Spindletop hundreds of miles to the southeast.
Drilled using cable-tools, Corsicana’s first oil well produced just 2.5 barrels of oil a day from 1,035 feet deep, but nevertheless brought a rush of exploration companies. By 1898, about 300 produced oil in and around the boom town, which became a center for technological innovation. A Corsicana company manufactured the patented rotary rig that drilled the famous 1901 gusher at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas.
Petroleum transformed Corsicana, Texas, into an oilfield service and industrial center where residents have annually celebrated their oil patch heritage. A colorized postcard depicts Navarro County oil wells, circa 1910.
Despite Corsicana’s discovery well bringing petroleum riches and the drilling boom, city officials paid the contractor only half of the $1,000 fee, citing the agreement for completing a water well. Since 1976 Corsicana has hosted an annual Derrick Days, including a car show and oil history tours. The town also is home to Wolf Brand Chili, established there in 1895 — thanks to the oil boom.
Learn more in First Texas Oil Boom.
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Recommended Reading: Western Pennsylvania’s Oil Heritage
(2008); The Maybelline Story: And the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It
(2010); Around Titusville, Pennsylvania, Images of America
(2004); I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford
(2014); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Code Name MULBERRY: The Planning Building and Operation of the Normandy Harbours
(1977); The Great Getty (1986); Texas Oil and Gas (Postcard History) (2013); Corsicana (2010). 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 become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2024 – Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
by Bruce Wells | May 31, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
Drilling for water in 1894, Corsicana discovered an oilfield and became the richest town in Texas.
In the hot summer of 1894, town leaders of Corsicana, Texas, hired a contractor to drill a water well on 12th Street. The driller found oil instead. The small town’s oilfield discovery launched the first Texas oil boom seven years before a more famous gusher at Spindletop Hill far to the southeast.
Corsicana’s first oil well produced less than three barrels of oil a day, but it quickly transformed the sleepy agricultural town into a petroleum and industrial center. The discovery launched industries, including service companies and manufacturers of the newly invented rotary drilling rig.
The first Texas oil boom arrived in 1894 when the Corsicana oilfield was discovered by a drilling contractor hired by the city to find water. An annual Derrick Day Chili & BBQ Cook-Off celebrates the discovery. Colorized postcard of Navarro County oil wells, circa 1910.
Corsicana local historians consider the 1894 discovery well, drilled on South 12th Street, the first significant commercial oil discovery west of the Mississippi (Kansans claim the same distinction for an 1892 Neodesha oil well).
The American Well and Prospecting Company (from Kansas) made the oil strike on June 9, 1894, at a depth of 1,035 feet. The city council — angry and still wanting water for its growing community 55 miles south of Dallas — paid only half of the drilling contractor’s $1,000 fee. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | May 24, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
West Texas discoveries in the 1920s revealed a petroleum region 250 miles wide and 300 miles long.
A West Texas wildcat well blessed by nuns revealed the true size of the petroleum-rich Permian Basin in 1923. A small university in Austin owned the arid land, which had been deemed mostly worthless by experts.
Successful exploration of the Permian Basin, once known as a “petroleum graveyard,” began in February 1920 with a discovery by William H. Abrams in Mitchell County in West Texas. When completed after “shooting” the well with nitroglycerin in July, production averaged 20 barrels of oil a day.
In 1958, the University of Texas moved the Santa Rita No. 1 well’s walking beam and other equipment to the Austin campus. The student newspaper described the well, “as one that made the difference between pine-shack classrooms and modern buildings.” Photo from 2007 by Bruce Wells.
The W.H. Abrams No. 1 oilfield discovery well of the Permian Basin would lead to the area’s first commercial oil pipeline in the Permian Basin, according to a Texas Historical Commission historic marker placed near the well in 1996 (reported missing in 2020). Even with its limited production, the Abrams well began attracting oil exploration to the barren region.
However, it would be another Permian Basin discovery well that launched a stampede of wildcatters to explore the full 300-mile extent of the basin from West Texas into southeastern New Mexico.
With many geologists still unconvinced the Permian Basin was suitable for commercial oil production, the Santa Rita No. 1 wildcat well tapped into a vast and prolific field. The Santa Rita oil well, drilled by Texon Oil and Land Company near Big Lake, Texas, on land leased from the University of Texas, struck oil on May 28, 1923.
The discovery well had not been easy for Texon Oil and Land Company — requiring 21 months of difficult cable-tool drilling that averaged less than five feet per day. Once completed, the well produced for the next 70 years.
Because state legislators had given the land and mineral rights to the university when it opened in 1883 petroleum royalties would endow the University of Texas with $4 million .
Discovery of the Big Lake oil field in 1923 led to many boom towns, including Midland, which some called “Little Dallas.”
The Texas board of regents moved Santa Rita’s drilling equipment to the campus in 1958, “In order that it may stand as a symbol of a great era in the history of the university.” After the dedication, the student newspaper of the day described the well “as one that made the difference between pine-shack classrooms and modern buildings.”
Santa Rita No. 1
The historic well’s oil discovery began in 1919 when attorney and oil speculator Rupert Ricker applied to lease rights on more than 430,000 acres of arid land designated by the state for the financing of the University of Texas. As time ran out to pay a filing fee of about $43,000, Ricker failed to raise money from Fort Worth investors.
“Nobody seemed to have any interest in the deal so with the deadline looming he sold the entire scheme to El Pasoans Frank T. Pickrell and Haymon Krupp for the sum of $2,500,” noted a 2017 article in the Permian Basin Petroleum Association Magazine.
The two men had served in the same Army company during World War I. Their Santa Rita No. 1 well near Big Lake was spudded shortly before midnight on August 17, 1921 — on the last day before the 18-month drilling permit was to expire.
The original Santa Rita equipment is now a permanent exhibit at San Jacinto Boulevard and 19th Street on the Austin campus of the University of Texas. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Pickrell hired an experienced Pennsylvania driller, Carl Cromwell, to drill Texon Oil and Land’s test well. Cromwell had been born in 1889 not far from the first commercial U.S. oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Drilling crews, when available, “consisted mostly of cowboy roustabouts who were distinguished for high absenteeism and steady turnover,” notes one historian. The well was often shut down and roughnecks laid off because cash was not available to pay salaries or buy supplies.
Several months after drilling began, the increasingly desperate Pickrell climbed to the top of the derrick. He threw out rose petals that a group of Catholic women investors from New York had given him. Pickrell christened his wildcat well for the church’s Patroness of Impossible Causes — Santa Rita.
On May 25,1923, oil and natural gas began to show at the well. On May 28, a loud roar was heard and Santa Rita No. 1 blew in. People as far away as Fort Worth traveled to see the well. When the necessary casing and other well equipment arrived a month later, it was brought under control — and the first commercial well in the Permian Basin went into production.
The Big Lake field — at 4.5 square miles — revealed that vast oil reserves in West Texas came from both shallow and deep formations. Exploration spread into other areas of the Permian Basin, still one of the largest oil-producing regions in the United States.
In the fall of 1923, Pickrell found an important investor, Michael L. Benedum, the highly successful independent oilman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Benedum and another Pittsburgh wildcatter, Joseph Trees, purchased Texon properties and formed the Big Lake Oil Company in 1924.
The new company’s president, Levi Smith, would be instrumental in creating Big Lake — the first oil company town in the Permian Basin. Santa Rita No. 1 well, capped in May 1990, would be remembered with a replica erected in the Reagan County Park.
The Big Lake oilfield proved to be 4.5 square miles and demonstrated that vast oil reserves in West Texas came from both shallow and deep horizons. Exploration spread into other areas of the Permian Basin, which would become one of the largest oil-producing regions in the United States.
Learn the story the Permian Basin at the Petroleum Museum in Midland. Not far from the museum, in Odessa, an Ector County historical marker notes “the first Permian Basin dry hole” was drilled in 1924.
Pennsylvania independent operators drilled the well to 900 feet and found only “Red Bed” rock, notes the 1965 marker. The 1924 well was abandoned, but by 1964 Ector County would have 9,600 oil wells.
Hollywood features Big Lake Baseball
The 2002 movie “The Rookie” was filmed almost entirely in West Texas.
In the opening scenes of the movie “The Rookie,” Catholic nuns christened the well with rose pedals. In reality, one of the well’s owners did.
It featured a Big Lake high-school teacher played by Dennis Quaid, who despite being in his mid-30s briefly makes it to the major leagues. As the well is being drilled, Catholic nuns are shown carrying a basket of rose pedals to christen it for the patron Saint of the Impossible – Santa Rita.
Learn more about baseball teams fielded by petroleum “company towns” in Oilfields of Dreams.
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Recommended Reading: Santa Rita: The University of Texas Oil Discovery
(1958); Chronicles of an Oil Boom: Unlocking the Permian Basin
(2014). 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 become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2024 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Santa Rita taps Permian Basin.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/west-texas-petroleum. Last Updated: May 27, 2024. Original Published Date: November 1, 2004.
