by Bruce Wells | Feb 5, 2025 | Petroleum History Almanac
Picturing California petroleum history in a family album.
Preserving a family’s photographs from Los Angeles Harbor brought insights into California’s maritime and petroleum heritage — including the 1920s story of Puente Oil Company.
Among many others, a photograph of men working at an oil facility at San Pedro Harbor of Los Angeles preserves the petroleum heritage of the Raynor family. Seeking to share the legacy of her father career at the Los Angeles Harbor Authority, Valerie Raynor contacted the American Oil & Gas Historical Society in 2017 (see AOGHS Oil Families).
The search for a permanent home for Paul Thome’s collection did not take long. His daughter, a longtime resident in the Los Angeles area, decided to donate them to the Los Angeles Maritime Museum after talking with Mary Frances, the museum’s director.
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by Bruce Wells | Dec 10, 2024 | Petroleum History Almanac
Grandfather scouted Philadelphia streets for earliest gas station locations.
Seeking to preserve heirlooms, families often turn to local museums, colleges, and historical societies for help. When related to petroleum business careers, the American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) website maintains updated links to special resources, community oil and gas museums, and some help for researching old oil company stock certificates.
A petroleum industry artifact on the AOGHS Oil & Gas Families page has its own connection with refining history — and is an heirloom in search of an permanent home.
“I have an old Atlantic Richfield brochure that I’d be glad to donate to any interested party,” Jane Benner noted in a June 2022 email to AOGHS. “My grandfather (G.E. Cooper) and his brother (Albert Cooper) as well as a future brother-in-law (W.R. Pierce) are pictured among the staff salesmen and administrators. The handwriting identifying them is that of my grand mother, Eleanor Cooper Benner.”
The Atlantic Connecting Rod
Seeking advice for locating a suitable museum or archive, Benner attached the cover and interior photos from her family’s 1921 issue of “The Atlantic Connect Rod” (perhaps an employee publication of the Atlantic Refining Company). The Philadelphia-based venture incorporated in 1870 to refine lamp kerosene and other petroleum products.
Jane Benner’s grandfather George Edward Cooper stands among other Atlantic Refining Company salesmen and administrators in 1921.
Taken over by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust by the end of the 20th century, Atlantic Refining Company returned as an independent company following the U.S. Supreme Court’s dissolution of the monopoly in 1911.
With its South Philadelphia refinery among the largest in the United States, in 1966 Atlantic Refining merged with Richfield Oil Corporation, creating the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). Two years later, the new major oil company made the first oil discovery in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, leading to construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the mid-1970s.
Early Philly Gas Stations
“All I know of my grandfather’s work is that he was responsible for identifying locations to open gas stations in Philadelphia (right side of the road, heading out of town, as my mother told me). He died in 1927, so likely his work there was during the 1910s and 1920s,” Benner explained.
The Gulf Refining Company had opened America’s first gas station in Pittsburgh in late 1913, and three years later, the company’s “Good Gulf Gasoline” also went on sale in West Philadelphia.
The Atlantic Refining publication features Albert Cooper, brother of Jane Benner’s grandfather, as well as a future brother-in-law (W. R. Pierce). The handwriting identifying them is that of her mother, Eleanor Cooper Benner.
The Gulf station opening at 33rd and Chestnut streets was the start of the “Battle for Gasadelphia,” according to PhillyHistory. In April 1916, Gulf added a second station at at Broad Street and Hunting Park Avenue.
“How did the competition respond? The Philadelphia and Pittsburgh-based Atlantic Refining Company formed a committee to brainstorm,” the 2013 blog noted. Gulf Refining’s first station used a distinctive pagoda style architecture. More designs would emerge to attract consumers.
Both refining companies used service station location and architecture to explore the earliest combinations of integrating functionalism with new or classical designs, noted Keith A. Sculle in his 2004 article, “Atlantic Refining Company’s Monumental Service Stations in Philadelphia, 1917-1919,” published in the Journal of American & Comparative Cultures (see Wiley Online Library).
Preserving Oil History
To find a home for her family’s Atlantic Refining artifact, Benner has been contacting Pennsylvania museums while researching more about the company and her grandfather’s career. She hopes her small but meaningful family heirloom will be preserved as part of America’s petroleum history.
“The booklet is remarkably informative about the company and their sales objectives at that time, including locations and photos of the early stations,” Benner noted in her email to AOGHS. “It’s fine to post my family story, as sparse as it is,” concluded the granddaughter of G.E. Cooper.
Benner added that she planned on contacting curators and archivists at oil museums, “in case anyone is interested.”
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Recommended Reading: An Illustrated Guide to Gas Pumps
(2008). 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 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. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Preserving a 1921 Atlantic Refining Publication.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/laviness-family-oilfield-history. Last Updated: July 12, 2022. Original Published Date: July 12, 2022.
by Bruce Wells | Aug 5, 2024 | Petroleum Companies, Petroleum History Almanac
Searching for petroleum wealth in risky Mid-Continent fields.
The Kansas petroleum industry began in 1892 with an oilfield at Neodesha. In 1915, an oilfield discovery at El Dorado near Wichita revealed the giant Mid-Continent field, but it took years for business sense to arrive, according to the editor of a 1910 History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas.
The new science of petroleum geology helped reveal the Mid-Continent’s giant El Dorado oilfield in 1915. Photo courtesy Kansas Oil Museum.
“Sedgwick county has run the gamut of the hot winds, the drought, the floods, the grasshoppers, the boom, the wild unreasoning era of speculation, the land grafters, the oil grafters, the sellers of bogus stocks, speculation, over-capitalization, and all of the attendant and kindred evils,” observed Editor-in-Chief Orsemus Bentley. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 3, 2023 | Petroleum History Almanac
Mid-Continent discoveries and many technology advancements.
Oil discoveries, which began before statehood in 1907, by the mid-20th century had helped established leading major and independent petroleum companies.
Discovered in 1928, the giant Oklahoma City oilfield added stability to the state’s economy during the Great Depression. This field alone produced more than 7.3 million barrels of oil over the next 40 years. Photo courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.
Oklahoma’s petroleum exploration and production history began when exploration companies rushed to Indian Territory in 1897 after a column of oil erupted from a well near Bartlesville, a small town on the Caney River just south of the Kansas border.
The “wildcatters” often used steam boilers to power heavy cable tools for Making Hole – Drilling Technology. It was a technique that had evolved from using a spring pole to drill brine wells for making salt.
The Nellie Johnstone No. 1 well in April 1897 made Oklahoma oil history as its first discovery – and attracting hundreds of exploration companies to Bartlesville in what was then Indian Territory. Photo by Bruce Wells.
The 1897 Bartlesville oil gusher, which came a decade before statehood, was the First Oklahoma Oil Well, although some historians maintain a well drilled a decade earlier should be considered as Oklahoma’s Other First Oil Well.
In addition to attracting exploration companies, Oklahoma’s drilling booms brought traffic jams, including this one in Seminole, Oklahoma, circa mid-1920s. Photo courtesy Oklahoma Oil Museum.
More oilfield discoveries quickly followed, each making national headlines and attracting investors seeking riches in Mid-Continent black gold.
Adding to the region’s oil fever, the 1901 Red Fork Gusher launched another historic drilling boom, soon Making Tulsa “Oil Capital of the World.”
When Missouri investors saw opportunities in the oilfields at the Kansas-Oklahoma border, they formed Cahege Oil & Gas Company. Following statehood in 1907, more major discovers made the Sooner State famous worldwide.
More than 50 refineries once operated in the Cushing area about 50 miles west of Tulsa. Pipelines and storage facilities have since made it “the pipeline crossroads of the world.” Photo from Cushing oilfield, 1910-1918, courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.
Thomas B. Slick
In March 1912 near Cushing, the Wheeler No. 1 wildcat well produced 400 barrels a day from less than 2,350 feet deep. It marked the first of many oil gushers by an independent oilman once known as Thomas “Dry Hole” Slick.
“Capitol of Oklahoma with surrounding derricks. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” August 1939, by Russell Lee (1903-1986) for Farm Security Administration. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Derricks in the Oklahoma City oilfield in 1930 stood silent for one hour in tribute to wildcatter Thomas B. Slick, who discovered Oklahoma’s giant Cushing oilfield in 1912. His drilling career include an 18-year streak discovering some of America’s most prolific oilfields, earning Slick the title of Oklahoma’s King of the Wildcatters.
An historic marker commemorates the August 9, 1921, field testing of seismic technology. The site is located on I-35 about halfway between Oklahoma City and Dallas. Photo by Bruce Wells.
In 1915, the Bartlesville-based Cities Service Company subsidiary discovered the 34-square-mile El Dorado oilfield in Kansas.
In 1928, another subsidiary, Empire Oil & Refining, discovered the massive Oklahoma City oilfield, soon home of the headline (and news reel) making gusher, “Wild Mary Sudik.”
Thanks to a University of Oklahoma physicist, new earth-science technologies like reflection seismography began revolutionizing petroleum exploration in the 1920s. J.C. Karcher’s methods evolved from efforts to locate enemy artillery during World War I. He measured the first reflection seismograph geologic section during an experiment near Ardmore in 1921.
By the 1920s, auctions for Osage Nation mineral leases took place in the shade of a Million Dollar Elm near Pawhuska. Oil production Osage oilfields launched the careers of industry leaders like Frank Phillips, J. Paul Getty, Bill Skelly, E.W. Marland and Harry Sinclair.
South of Oklahoma City, the 1926 oilfield discovery at Seminole launched the Greater Seminole Oil Boom. More than 60 petroleum reservoirs were found in 1,300 square miles of east-central Oklahoma – and seven were giants, producing more than a million barrels of oil each.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS supporting member 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: “Oklahoma Oil History.” Author: Aoghs.org Editors. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/oklahoma-oil-history. Last Updated: February 15 2024. Original Published Date: March 4, 2016.
