by Bruce Wells | Jun 6, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
Exploration company meets its fate during North Texas drilling boom.
Established soon after World War I, the Ajax Oil Company was among hundreds that rushed into Texas and Oklahoma oilfields seeking petroleum riches,
Joining hundreds of new and established exploration ventures, Ajax Oil Company was organized by members of the Sowell family in Dallas as a joint stock association on July 25, 1919. It was capitalized at $4,950,000 and offered both Class A and Class B shares. Class A shares “had preference as to assets as well as dividends.”
Beginning in September 1919 shareholders were paid dividends of one percent per month for seven consecutive months. Company’s stock sold for about $5 per share.
Ajax Oil acquired leases in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, including leases in the booming, increasing crowded Ranger and the Burkburnett oilfields. Production from these North Texas fields were making headlines worldwide — and causing oil prices to drop as costs for drilling equipment soared.Black Gold Rush
In 1917, a wildcat well in North Texas struck oil near the small town of Ranger. The J.H. McCleskey No. 1 well erupted a geyser of oil on October 17, 1917 (see Roaring Ranger wins WWI).
The Ranger well alone reached a daily production of 1,700 barrels. Its gained international fame for Ranger as the town whose oil wiped out critical oil shortages during World War I, allowing the Allies to “float to victory on a wave of oil.”
About one year later, 135 miles due north at Burkburnett, a July 1918 wildcat well on S.L. Fowler’s farm launched a another North Texas drilling boom along the Red River. It would make the town near Wichita Falls famous (see “Boom Town” Burkburnett).
The Burkburnett oilfield inspired a 1940 motion picture featuring Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. Gable had been a teenager working as a roustabout in nearby Oklahoma oilfields when the discovery was made.
Investment capital and aspiring millionaires overwhelmed Burkburnett and Ranger as well as nearby Cisco, where a young war veteran saw crowds of roughnecks and bought his first motel (see Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel).
The 1918 Burkburnett oilfield discovery was featured in the popular 1940 MGM movie “Boom Town.”
Ajax Oil Company
Ajax Oil Company’s properties reportedly included 11 producing wells and the equipment to drill more. The company reported completed the wells, often in association with the Hercules Petroleum Company and Halleck-Whales Company, but production figures cannot be found.
Dividends abruptly ended in March 1920 and shareholders were advised that the company was investing in new equipment to expand operations. Typical of a petroleum boom, notes one historian, as the region’s increased production lowered oil prices, drilling costs rose.
In August, a B.A. Butterworth sued Ajax Oil Company for debts. It is unclear what happened next, but by December of the following year, Ajax Oil Company was bankrupt and in receivership.
The petroleum booms in Ranger and Burkburnett resulted in many newly formed companies rushing to North Texas. But as local historian Bernadette Pruitt has noted, much of the land already had been leased. Inevitably, almost all companies arrived too late. Many of the new ventures departed — or failed.
Learn more about the era’s Intense competition throughout the Mid-Continent discoveries in Pump Jack Capital of Texas.
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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); History of Oil Well Drilling
(2007). 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. 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: “Ajax Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org. Last Updated: June 11, 2026. Original Published Date: June 24, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Jun 1, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
When Edwin L. Drake drilled the first U.S. oil well in 1859 along a creek at Titusville, Pennsylvania, he transformed the landscape of the Allegheny River valley — and America’s energy future. The former railroad conductor’s discovery launched a new industry as investors and drillers rushed to cash in on the new resource for making kerosene for lamps.
Wallace Oil Company would be among the earliest U.S. petroleum companies, and the venture’s fate would presage the riskiness of America’s new exploration and production industry.
Stock certificate detail of exploration company founded by grocery store owner John Wallace in 1865.
The ensuing scramble fueled the nation’s first petroleum drilling boom. Newspapers reported discoveries on farms clustered in the northwestern Pennsylvania oil region.
Newly incorporated oil companies rushed to construct wooden derricks with steam-powered cable tools for “making hole.” Drillers, some skilled at using spring-poles for water wells, came to John Rynd’s farm at the junction of Oil Creek and Cherry Tree Run, the Blood farm to the north, and the widow McClintock farm to the south.
America catches Oil Fever
Operating a grocery store on the Rynd farm in 1859, Irish immigrant John Wallace witnessed the excitement firsthand. When the first of many wells found oil on the farm in 1861, derricks already crowded nearby hillsides. Four years later, the 24-year-old entrepreneur caught oil fever and incorporated Wallace Oil Company in 1865 with an office at 319 Walnut Street in Philadelphia.
Witnessing the oil region’s drilling boom from his Rynd farm grocery store, John Wallace joined it. Oil Region of Pennsylvania,1865 map courtesy David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, F.W. Beers & Co.
With the science of petroleum geology in its infancy, “creekology” and oil seeps often were the only tools for finding promising locations to drill. Some exploration companies turned to dowsing (hazel or peach tree rods preferred) to find oil.
Wallace’s company sold stock certificates and acquired a 3/32 royalty interest in a 200-acre tract on the neighboring McClintock farm (previously owned by investors Curtiss, Haldeman, and Fawcett).
Although records offer no evidence of Wallace Oil Company actually drilling and completing a well, Wallace’s lease trading speculations, financed by his 3/32 royalty income, and energetic sales of stock, made the company money.
“Pleasant morning – Rouseville,” detail from a stereographic view, circa 1875, with petroleum company officers, lawyers, lease agents, and a small oil exchange. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Purchasers of Wallace’s stock stood to gain from both royalties and appreciation. The financial horizon looked promising. In 1865, a 42-gallon barrel of oil sold for $6.59 a barrel (nearly $100 in 2013 dollars).
Boom and Bust
As the gamble to find oil spread, Pithole Creek and other oilfield discoveries inspired more drilling — and speculation at oil exchanges in Titusville, Oil City, and elsewhere.
Those seeking petroleum riches in 1864 included John Wilkes Booth, whose Dramatic Oil Company drilled on a 3.5-acre lease on the Fuller farm.
By the end of 1869, Wallace Oil Company ‘s McClintock farm leases still produced an average of 200 barrels of oil daily from 32 wells. It took three more years before Wallace Oil Company paid its first and only dividend to investors, who received one cent per share in 1874. But by then, one industry publication noted, “oil had left the territory.”
The company dutifully paid the state an annual “Tax on Stock,” and in 1871 paid its first “Tax on Income.”
A circa 1875 Library of Congress stereograph of a small building includes signs for the “Wallace Oil Company,” the “Allegheny & Pittsburgh Oil Co.,” the “Oil Basin Petroleum Co.,” the “Buchanan Royalty Oil Co.,” and the “Rouseville Oil Co.”
Wallace Oil Company in Rouseville is among many stereographic views preserved in the Library of Congress.
Rouseville in 1861 had been the scene of a deadly oil well fire, one the earliest fatal conflagrations of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.
By the early 1890s, Wallace Oil Company’s expanded oil-region holdings were reduced to the original 3/32 royalty from its McClintock property, which no longer produced commercial quantities of oil. Overproduction had drained profitability from the countryside.
In August 1895, American Investor reported Wallace Oil Company had lost its wells and property and could not even muster resources to pay legal fees associated with formal dissolution of the company. The grim assessment concluded, “The company is in a hopeless condition. The stock has no market value.”
Visit the Drake Well Museum and Park in Titusville. More stories of exploration and production companies joining petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry
(2009); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991); History Of Oil Well Drilling (2007). 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. 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: “Wallace Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/wallace-oil-company. Last Updated: June 18, 2026. Original Published Date: June 17, 2021.
by Bruce Wells | Apr 9, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
John Wilkes Booth and his actor friends drilled for Pennsylvania oil in 1864 — and found it.
After forming an oil company and drilling for “black gold” in booming northwestern Pennsylvania, the actor’s dreams of a petroleum fortune collapsed in June 1864. He then sought fame as a martyr to the Confederacy. A failed oilman turned assassin.
As the Civil War approached its bloody conclusion, John Wilkes Booth in January 1864 made the first of several trips to Franklin, Pennsylvania, where he purchased an oil lease on the Fuller farm. Maps reveal the three-acre strip of land on the farm, about one mile south of Franklin and on the east side of the Allegheny River. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Apr 6, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
The brief oilfield journey of a “staveless” wooden barrel maker.
The U.S. petroleum industry was barely a decade old, and as oil discoveries spread from northwestern Pennsylvania’s first commercial well, efficiently transporting the resource became critical. In Brooklyn, New York, the Staveless Barrel and Tank Company organized. The company hoped to exploit a new patent for making barrels.
Capitalized in 1867 at $500,000 with 5,000 shares at $100 each, Staveless Barrel and Tank’s barrel-making process included “application of scale-boards or veneers in layers, the direction of whose grain is crossed or diversified, and which are connected together, forming a material for the construction, lining, or covering of land and marine structures.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Apr 1, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
Marathon before and after independence from the Standard Oil Company.
John D. Rockefeller, who in 1870 founded Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio, by 1890 had established his dominance throughout the U.S. petroleum industry — putting every small oil venture at risk. In an effort fight back, in 1887 a group independent producers founded the Ohio Oil Company in Lima. Seventy-five year later, their company became Marathon Oil. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 31, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
A 1954 well drilled by the Ohio Oil Company reached more than four miles deep.
Founded in 1887 by Henry M. Ernst, the Ohio Oil Company got its exploration and production start in northwestern Ohio, at the time a leading oil-producing region. Two years later, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust purchased the growing company — known as “The Ohio” — and in 1905 moved headquarters from Lima to Findlay.
Soon establishing itself as a major pipeline company, by 1908 the Ohio controlled half of the oil production in three states. The company resumed independent operation in 1911 following the dissolution of the Standard Oil monopoly. The new Ohio Oil’s exploration operations expanded into Wyoming and further westward.
The Ohio Oil Company in 1930 purchased Transcontinental Oil, a refiner that had marketed gasoline under the trademark “Marathon” since 1920. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
By 1915, the company’s infrastructure had added 1,800 miles of pipeline as well as gathering and storage facilities from its newly acquired Illinois Pipe Line Company. The Ohio then purchased the Lincoln Oil Refining Company to better integrate and develop more crude oil outlets.
“Ohio Oil saw the increasing need for marketing their own products with the ever-increasing supply of automobiles appearing on the primitive roads,” explained Gary Drye in a 2006 forum at Oldgas.com.
The company ventured into marketing in June 1924 by purchasing Lincoln Oil Refining Company of Robinson, Illinois. With an assured supply of petroleum, the Ohio Oil’s “Linco” brand quickly expanded.
The Ohio Oil Company marketed its oil products as “Linco” after purchasing the Lincoln Oil Refinery in 1920. Undated photo of a station in Fremont, Ohio.
Meanwhile, a subsidiary in 1926 co-discovered the giant Yates oilfield in the Permian Basin of New Mexico and West Texas. “With huge successes in oil exploration and production ventures, Ohio Oil realized they needed even more retail outlets for their products,” Drye reported. By 1930, the company distributed Linco products throughout Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Kentucky.
Marathon of Ohio Oil
In 1930 Ohio Oil purchased Transcontinental Oil, a refiner that had marketed gasoline under the trademark “Marathon” across the Midwest and South since 1920. Acquiring the Marathon product name included the Pheidippides Greek runner trademark and the “Best in the long run” slogan.
Adopted in 2011, the third logo for corporate branding in Marathon Oil’s 124-year history.
According to Drye, Transcontinental “can best be remembered for a significant ‘first’ when in 1929 they opened several Marathon stations in Dallas, Texas in conjunction with Southland Ice Company’s ‘Tote’m’ stores (later 7-Eleven) creating the first gasoline/convenience store tie-in.”
The Marathon brand proved so popular that by World War II the name had replaced Linco at stations in the original five-state territory. After the war, Ohio Oil continued to purchase other companies and expand throughout the 1950s.
Ohio Oil’s California Record
As deep drilling technologies continued to advance in the 1950s, a record depth of 21,482 feet was reached by the Ohio Oil Company in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Petroleum Engineer magazine in 1954 noted the well set a record despite being “halted by a fishing job.”
The deep oil well drilling attempt about 17 miles southwest of Bakersfield in prolific Kern County, experienced many challenges. A final problem led to it being plugged with cement on December 31, 1954. At more than four miles deep, down-hole drilling technology of the time was not up to the task when the drill bit became stuck.
The challenge of retrieving obstructions from deep in a well’s borehole – “fishing” – has challenged the petroleum industry since the first tool stuck at 134 feet and ruined a well spudded just four days after the famous 1859 discovery by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania (see The First Dry Hole).
In a 1954 article about deep drilling technology, The Petroleum Engineer noted the Kern County well of Ohio Oil — which would become Marathon Oil — set a record despite being “halted by a fishing job.” The well was a financial loss.
A 1953 Kern County well drilled by Richfield Oil Corporation produced oil from a depth of 17,895 feet, according to the magazine. At the time, the average U.S. cost for the nearly 100 wells drilled below 15,000 feet was about $550,000 per well. Learn more California petroleum exploration history by visiting the West Kern Oil Museum.
More than 630 exploratory wells with a total footage of almost three million feet were drilled in California during 1954, according to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists — the AAPG, established in 1917.
In 1962, celebrating its 75th anniversary, The Ohio changed its name to Marathon Oil Company and launched its new “M” in a hexagon shield logo design. Other milestones include:
1981 – U.S. Steel (USX) purchased the company.
1985 – Yates field produced its billionth barrel of oil.
1990 – Marathon opened headquarters in Houston.
2005 – Marathon became 100 percent owner of Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, which later became Marathon Petroleum Corp.
2011 – Completed a $3.5 billion investment in the Eagle Ford Shale play in Texas.
On June 30, 2011, Marathon Oil became an independent upstream company and unveiled an “energy wave” logo as it prepared to separate from Marathon Petroleum, based in Findlay. Read a more detailed history in Ohio Oil Company and visit the Hancock Historical Museum in Findlay.
On May 29, 2024, Marathon Oil announced it was being acquired by ConocoPhillips in an all-stock transaction valued at $22.5 billion.
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Recommended Reading: Portrait in Oil: How Ohio Oil Company Grew to Become Marathon
(1962). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
______________________________
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: “Marathon of Ohio Oil.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/stocks/marathon-ohio-oil. Last Updated: March 31, 2026. Original Published Date: December 28, 2014.
