by Bruce Wells | Mar 14, 2026 | Petroleum History Almanac
Horrific East Texas oilfield tragedy of 1937.
At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, with just minutes left in the school day and more than 500 students and teachers inside the building, a massive explosion leveled most of what had been the wealthiest rural school in the nation.
Hundreds died at New London High School in Rusk County after odorless natural gas leaked into the basement and ignited. The sound of the explosion was heard four miles away. Parents, many of them roughnecks from the East Texas oilfield, rushed to the school.
Despite immediate rescue efforts, 298 died, most from grades 5 to 11 (dozens more later died of injuries). After an investigation, the cause of the school explosion was found to be an electric wood-shop sander that sparked the residue gas vapors (also called casinghead gas) that had pooled beneath and inside the walls of the school. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 8, 2026 | Petroleum History Almanac
A determined and skilled workforce inspired more to join.
A 2019 book documents remarkable stories of women working in the petroleum industry and offers insights beyond the history of offshore exploration.
In Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry, journalist Rebecca Ponton has assembled a rare collection of personal accounts from pioneering women who challenged convention, stereotypes, and more to work in the offshore oil and natural gas industry.
Journalist Rebecca Ponton has researched and written “condensed biographies” of 25 women — all offshore industry pioneers.
Like their onshore oilfield counterparts of all genders, these ocean roughnecks include petroleum engineers, geologists, landmen — and an increasing number of CEOs.
Offshore Pioneers
Ponton’s Breaking the Gas Ceiling, published by Modern History Press in 2019, tells the stories of the industry’s “WOW — Women on Water,” the title of her introductory chapter.
What follows are “condensed biographies” of women of all ages and nationalities. Their petroleum industry jobs have varied in responsibilities — and many of the women achieved a “first” in their fields.
Ponton, a professional landman, and interviewed this diverse collection of energy industry professionals, producing an “outstanding compilation of role models,” according to Dave Payne, vice president, Chevron Drilling and Completions.
“Everyone needs role models — and role models that look like you are even better. For women, the oil and gas industry has historically been pretty thin on role models for young women to look up to,” noted the Chevron executive. “Rebecca Ponton has provided an outstanding compilation of role models for all women who aspire to success in one of the most important industries of modern times.”
Each chapter offers an account of finding success in the traditionally male-dominated industry — sometimes with humor but always with determination.
Among the offshore jobs described are stories from mechanical and chemical engineers, a helicopter pilot, a logistics superintendent, a photographer, an artist, a federal offshore agency director, and the first female saturation diver in the Gulf of Mexico — Marni Zabarski, who describes her career and 2001 achievement.
Additional insights are provided from water safety pioneer Margaret McMillan (1920-2016), who in 1988 was instrumental in creating the Marine Survival Training Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Offshore oil and natural gas platforms are typically seen at the Port of Galveston, Texas. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Most U.S. offshore oil and natural gas leasing and development activity takes place in the central and western Gulf of Mexico — with thousands of platforms operating in waters up to 6,000 feet deep.
In 2004, McMillan became the first woman to be inducted into the Oilfield Energy Center’s Hall of Fame in Houston.
Another of Ponton’s chapters features 2018 Hall of Fame inductee Eve Howell, a petroleum geologist who was the first woman to work — and eventually supervise — production from Australia’s prolific North West Shelf.
Ponton also relates the story of 21-year-old Alyssa Michalke, an Ocean Engineering major who was the first female commander of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets.
As the publisher Modern History Press explained, Ponton offers insights beyond documenting remarkable women in petroleum history. “In order to reach as wide an audience as possible, including the up and coming generation of energy industry leaders, Rebecca made it a point to seek out and interview young women who are making their mark in the sector as well.”
The milestones of these notable “women on water” may not receive the attention given to NASA’s women spacewalkers, but they also deserve recognition. The modern offshore petroleum industry needs all the skilled workers it can get of any gender.
In 2021, Women Offshore featured Ponton. Books about the accomplishments of these neglected oilfield careers should help.
A remarkable account of women petroleum geologists was authored in 2017 by Robbie Rice Gries on the 100th anniversary of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (see AAPG — Geology Pros since 1917). Anomalies, Pioneering Women in Petroleum Geology, 1917-2017 includes vivid oil patch personal stories, correspondence and photographs dating to the first decade of the 20th century.
Also see Petroleum Industry Women.
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Recommended Reading: Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019); Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997); Anomalies, Pioneering Women in Petroleum Geology, 1917-2017 (2017). 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 support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Women of the Offshore Petroleum Industry tell Their Stories.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/women-of-the-offshore-petroleum-industry-tell-their-stories. Last Updated: March 8, 2026. Original Published Date: February 18, 2020.
by Bruce Wells | Feb 21, 2026 | Petroleum History Almanac
Famed lawman and wife gambled on Kern County oil leases.
Old West lawman and gambler Wyatt Earp and his wife Josie in 1920 bet oil could be found on a barren piece of California scrub land. A century later, his Kern County lease still paid royalties.
Ushered into modest retirement by notoriety, Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt Earp were known — if not successful — entrepreneurs with abundant experience running saloons, gambling houses, bordellos (Wichita, Kansas, 1874), real estate, and finally western mining ventures.
Circa 1906 photo of Wyatt Earp and wife Josie at their mining camp with dog “Earpie.”
Quietly retired in California, the couple alternately lived in suburban Los Angeles or tended to gold and copper mining holdings at their “Happy Days” camp in the Whipple Mountains near Vidal. Josephine “Josie” Marcus Earp had been by Wyatt’s side since his famous 1881 O.K. Corral gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona.
Also in California, Josie’s younger sister, Henrietta Marcus, had married into wealth and thrived in Oakland society while Josie and Wyatt roamed the West. “Hattie” Lehnhardt had the genteel life sister Josie always wanted but never had. When Hattie’s husband Emil died by suicide in 1912, the widow inherited a $225,000 estate.
Money had always been an issue between the Earps, according to John Gilchriese, amateur historian and longtime collector of Earp memorabilia.
Josie liked to remind Wyatt he had once employed a struggling gold miner — Edward Doheny — as a faro lookout (armed bouncer) in a Tombstone saloon. Doheny later drilled for oil and discovered the giant Los Angeles oilfield in the early 1880s.
The Los Angeles field launched Southern California’s petroleum industry, creating many unlikely oil millionaires — including local piano teacher Emma Summers, whose astute business sense earned her the title “Oil Queen of California.”
In addition to oilman Doheny, Earp socialized with prominent Californians like George Randolph Hearst (father of San Francisco Examiner publisher William), whom he knew from mining days in Tombstone. But the former lawman’s ride into the California oil patch began in 1920 when he gambled on an abandoned placer claim.
Kern County Lease
In 1901, a petroleum exploration venture had drilled a wildcat well about five miles north of Bakersfield in Kern County. The attempt generated brief excitement, but nothing ultimately came of it. When Shasta Oil Company drilled into bankruptcy after three dry holes, the land returned to its former reputation — worthless except for sheep grazing.
Earp decided to bet on black gold where Shasta Oil had failed. But first, California required that he post a “Notice of Intent to File Prospectors Permit.” He sent his wife to make the application. But on her way to pay the fees with paperwork in hand, Josie was diverted by gaming tables. She lost all the money, infuriating Wyatt and delaying his oil exploration venture.
Earp later secured the Kern County lease claim he sought, mostly with money from his sister-in-law, Hattie Lehnhardt,
Wyatt Earp purchased a mineral lease in Kern County, PLSS (Public Land Survey System) Section 14, Township 28 South, Range 27 East.
The San Francisco Examiner declared, “Old Property Believed Worthless for Years West of Kern Field Relocated by Old-Timers.” The newspaper — describing Earp as the “pioneer mining man of Tombstone” — reported that the old Shasta Oil Company parcel had been newly assessed.
“Indications are that a great lake of oil lies beneath the surface in this territory,” the article proclaimed. “Should this prove to be the case, the locators of the old Shasta property have stumbled onto some very valuable holdings.”
Meanwhile, competition among big players like Standard Oil of California and Getty Oil energized the California petroleum market. By July 1924, Getty Oil had won the competition and began to drill on the Earp lease.
On February 25, 1926, a well on the lease was completed with production of 150 barrels of oil a day. During 1926, nine of the wells produced a total of almost 153,000 barrels of oil. “Getty has been getting some nice production in the Kern River field ever since operations were started,” reported the Los Angeles Times.
Rarely exceeding 300 barrels of oil a day, the Getty wells were not as large as other recent California discoveries (see Signal Hill Oil Boom), but they produced oil from less than 2,000 feet deep, keeping production costs low. Royalty checks would begin arriving in the mail.
With the Oil and Gas Journal reporting “Kern River Front” oil selling for 75 cents per barrel, the Earps received $3,174 from 12 active wells producing 282,116 barrels of oil from February 1927 to January 1928, according to the 2019 book A Wyatt Earp Anthology: Long May His Story Be Told.
At age 78, Wyatt Earp’s oil gamble finally paid off — but there was a catch.
No Royalty Riches
Because of her gambling, Josie Earp had become so notoriously incapable of managing money that Earp gave control of the lease to her younger sister, Hattie Lehnhardt. At the same time, he directed that his wife “receive at all times a reasonable portion of any and all benefits, rights and interests.”
From February 1928 to January 1929, production from the dozen Earp wells declined to 91,770 barrels, “grossing $68,827 with Josie’s royalties amounting to a mere $1,032,” noted the anthology’s editors.
Circa 1887 portrait of Wyatt Earp at about 39 years old.
With that, Earp’s venture in the Kern County petroleum business became a footnote to his legend, already well into the making. By the time of his death on January 13, 1929, his gamble on oil, still known as the Lehnhardt Lease, had paid Josie a total of almost $6,000.
The disappointing results would prompt Josie to write, “I was in hopes they would bring in a two or three hundred barrel well. But I must be satisfied as it could have been a duster, too.”
When benefactor Hattie Lehnhardt died in 1936, her children (and some litigation) put an end to the 20 percent of the 7.5 percent of the Getty Oil royalties formerly paid to their widowed aunt Josephine. Eight years later, when Josephine died, she left a total estate of $175, including a $50 radio and a $25 trunk.
The Lehnhardt lease in Kern County would remain active. From January 2018 to December 2022, improved secondary recovery in the Lehnhardt oil properties of the California Resources Production Corporation produced 440,560 barrels of oil, according to records at ShaleXP.
Kern County Museums
Beginning in 1941, the Kern County Museum in Bakersfield has educated visitors with petroleum exhibits on a 16-acre site just north of downtown. The museum offers “Black Gold: The Oil Experience,” a permanent $4 million science, technology, and history exhibition.
The museum also preserves a large collection of historic photographs.
A roughneck monument with a 30-foot-tall derrick was dedicated in Taft, California, in 2010. Photo courtesy West Kern Oil Museum.
In Taft, the West Kern Oil Museum also has images from the 1920s showing more than 7,000 wooden derricks covering 21 miles in southwestern Kern County, according to Executive Director Arianna Mace.
Run almost entirely by volunteers — and celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023 — the oil museum collects, preserves, and exhibits equipment telling the story of the Midway-Sunset field, which, by 1915, produced half of the oil in California. The state led the nation in oil production at the time.
Since 1946, Taft residents have annually celebrated “Oildorado.” The community in 2010 dedicated a 30-foot Oil Worker Monument with a derrick and bronze sculptures of Kern County petroleum pioneers.
Both Kern County museums played credited roles in the 2008 Academy Award-winning movie “There Will Be Blood.” Production staff visited each museum while researching realistic California wooden derricks and oil production machinery. During a visit to the West Kern Oil Museum, the film’s production designer purchased copies of authentic 1914 cable-tool derrick blueprints.
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Recommended Reading: A Wyatt Earp Anthology: Long May His Story Be Told (2019); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry 
(2016); Early California Oil: A Photographic History, 1865-1940
(1985); Pico Canyon Chronicles: The Story of California’s Pioneer Oil Field
(1985); Black Gold, the Artwork of JoAnn Cowans
(2009). 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 support AOGHS to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Wyatt Earp’s California Oil Wells.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/wyatt-earps-california-oil-wells. Last Updated: February 19, 2026. Original Published Date: October 30, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Feb 4, 2026 | Petroleum History Almanac
The Ranger who tamed oil and gas boom towns during the Great Depression. “Crime may expect no quarter.”
During much of the 1920s, a Texas Ranger became known for strictly enforcing the law in oilfield communities. By 1930, the discovery year of the largest oilfield in the lower 48 states, he was known as “El Lobo Solo” — the lone wolf — the Ranger who brought law and order to East Texas boom towns.
Manuel Trazazas Gonzaullas was born in 1891 in Cádiz, Spain, to a Spanish father and Canadian mother who were naturalized U.S. citizens. At age 15 he witnessed the murder of his only two brothers and the wounding of his parents when bandits raided their home. Fourteen years later, Gonzaullas joined the Texas Rangers.
“Give Texas more Rangers of the caliber of ‘Lone Wolf’ Gonzaullas, and the crime wave we are going through will not be of long duration,” reported the Dallas Morning News in 1934.
“He was a soft-spoken man and his trigger finger was slightly bent,” independent producer Watson W. Wise characterized him during a 1985 interview in Tyler, Texas. “He always told me it was geared to that .45 of his.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 30, 2026 | Petroleum History Almanac
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…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 27, 2026 | Petroleum History Almanac
Preserving a family’s oilfield production prototype and THUMS Islands memorabilia.
Rodney Shively hopes to preserve the oilfield legacies of his grandfather and great-grandfather. After researching details of a May 5, 1953, patent they were awarded from the U.S. Patent Office (no. 2,637,528), he is looking for a permanent home for his family’s prototype oilfield production device.
Shively, who worked as a research scientist in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries for nearly 40 years, has been investigating his grandfathers’ careers in the petroleum industry. Other family artifacts include memorabilia from THUMS, a late-1960s consortium of petroleum companies that constructed five oilfield production islands off Long Beach, California.
“Nearly a decade ago I inherited a few mid-twentieth-century oil technology artifacts from my grandfathers,” Shively explains. The most unique is the prototype of the patented self-adjusting carrier bar for oilfield pump jacks designed by his grandparents.
Shively hopes a U.S. petroleum museum, technology museum, or historical organization will be interested in preserving the prototype “Carrier Rod for Polish Rods” described in the July 1949 patent application.
The oilfield production technology patent was awarded to Rodney Shively’s great-grandfather and grandfather on May 5, 1953.
More Shively family oilfield items encompass a 1960s promotional tray depicting the THUMS production facility at Long Beach, “landscaped and lighted oil island.” Other family items also relate to the trailblazing offshore islands. Five petroleum companies — Texaco, Humble, Union, Mobil, and Shell — built four artificial islands that remain among the most innovative, artfully camouflaged facilities worldwide. (see THUMS — California’s Hidden Oil Islands).
Self-Adjusting Carrier Bar
An object of our invention is to provide a novel carrier bar in which the polish rod can align itself to compensate for misalignment of the carrier bar and also to compensate for the small arch of travel in which the carrier bar moves. — Mace A. Cox and James L. Shively
Shively hopes his 28-pound, self-adjusting carrier bar for pumping unit sucker rods will be of interest to museum curators. His grandfather and great-grandfather received their 1953 patent for an innovative design, possibly the first prototype universal joint carrier bar.
“As a little boy in the 1960s and 1970s, when I visited my grandfather’s home, this item was always on display,” Shively explains. “My father inherited it and the other items when my grandfather passed a quarter century ago. They then passed to me when my father passed a decade back. I have no further family to pass this collection of oilfield artifacts on to.”
Shively wants to preserve the prototype — along with other oilfield items — and is willing to donate the collection to a museum. “These items represent mid-twentieth-century oilfield inventiveness, ingenuity, and work,” he says. “It is my hope that these items will be reminders to future generations of the era’s petroleum technology.”
Patented in 1953, the prototype universal joint carrier bar was designed to reduce linear and rotational stress between the rod and jack head, reducing breakage. Photos courtesy Rodney Shively.
Years ago, his grandfather explained to him that carrier bars had been an early part of oilfield production technology, but earlier designs were prone to stress breakage. Broken carrier bars meant wells would spend downtime for repair — and oil not being pumped.
“This new carrier bar was designed to reduce the movement linear and rotational stress between the siphon rod and jack head, reducing breakage and downtime,” Shively reports. “In viewing the image of the prototype carrier bar backside, at the lower end along the center vertical ridge, there is a visible ‘C & S’ as part of the unit. These letters stand for the last names of inventors Mace A. Cox and James L. Shively, my grandfathers.”
Shively adds that the improved carrier bar had a small part in providing a more reliable supply of crude oil following World War II. “The post-war decades were a time when the U.S. interstate expanded and suburban sprawl was beginning,” he notes. “Shipping and air travel also began expansion in these decades with a more reliable supply of crude oil.”
THUMS Memorabilia
Shively in December 2025 reached out to the American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) for help finding a museum home for his family’s oilfield artifacts. He hopes directors or docents will contact him for more details about the carrier bar prototype — or any of his family’s petroleum history artifacts.
From the Shively family collection: a late-1960s “knickknack tray” with Disney-inspired disguised derricks of the THUMS Oil Islands off Long Beach, California.
“A late-1960s knickknack tray promoting the THUMS Oil Islands off the coast of Long Beach, California. On the bottom side there is a number P67, the assumption is this might be a reference to the year of production and/or manufacture, 1967.”
Worker overalls with the THUMS Long Beach logo for the four offshore production islands, which produce oil from California’s Wilmington field, the fourth-largest oilfield in the United States in 2017.
Employee badge of the Long Beach Oil Development Company, where Rodney Shively’s grandfather worked in 1946. He thinks the “66” may refer to the company being located near the end of Route 66.
Long Beach Oil Company Overalls — As part of his job with the city of Long Beach, managing oil derrick operations on THUMS, my grandfather routinely needed to visit the THUMS Oil Island facilities. On those visits, he would need to wear these overalls over his business suit.
Long Beach Oil Company Badge — The Long Beach Oil Development Company badge is old and was included in my grandfather’s items, indicating some relationship or personal prominence,” he observes. The badge has a screw pin on the back for attaching to a hard hat or clothing.
“Though my grandfather’s relationship to this company was unknown originally, I had heard stories he worked in the oilfields in the late 1940s and 1950s. Serendipitously, an old document was discovered showing my grandfather worked for the Long Beach Oil Development Company in 1946,” Shively reports. “The badge center number may be 66 as a logo homage to Route 66 and the petroleum needs for cars and trucks,”
A web search revealed the Long Beach Oil Development Company was filed as a business entity in Carson City, Nevada, on January 10, 1939.
Today living in Washington, Rodney Shively hopes the AOGHS American Oil Families website article will help promote his effort to preserve his grandparents’ petroleum legacies. He would be happy to discuss these items and their possible addition to a museum’s collection — or preservation by a state or county historical society or similar organizations. To learn more, email him at Rshively01@outlook.com.
“Are you aware of any need at an oil industry technology history museum to expand collections with items such as these listed?” he concludes. “When I pass, I believe all these items should be left to be displayed for everyone, not lost to history.”
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an annual AOGHS supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Preserving Shively Family Oil Artifacts.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/shivley-family-oil-artifacts. Last Updated: February 5, 2026. Original Published Date: February 5, 2026.
