by Bruce Wells | Sep 11, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
A Utah company sought oil from Gilsonite deposits in 1917.
Although attempts to extract commercial amounts of oil from Utah’s abundant shale formations failed, the effort of Ute Oil Company in the Uinta Basin was far ahead of its time.
A survey party in 1861 described the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah as “one vast contiguity of waste and measurably valueless, except for nomadic purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and to hold the world together.”
After reading the survey report, Brigham Young, who had founded Salt Lake City in 1847, scrapped his plans to send a group of Mormon settlers to the area.
Gilsonite is a coal-like natural asphalt found in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah.
Young thought the arid region better suited for a Ute Indian reservation, according to the Utah Humanities Council, and President Abraham Lincoln created the Uintah Reservation by executive order for what is today the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
However, by the time Utah became the 45th state in 1896, the sparsely populated region bordering Colorado had begun revealing its mineral wealth, including gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, and a soft coal-like substance.
Coalbed Methane
Coal and a coal-like hydrocarbon — Gilsonite — brought mineral exploration companies to eastern Utah soon after the turn of the century. Gilsonite, also known as North American Asphaltum, was unique to the region known for its thick shale deposits.
Hoping to squeeze oil from shale in the 1920s, companies extracted shale and Gilsonite from narrow mines. The coal-like natural asphalt had industrial uses but was expensive to mine.
By the early 20th century, aspiring entrepreneurs had arrived to exploit these new petroleum resources. Several new ventures would be among the earliest anywhere attempting to make money by squeezing oil from shale. The Uinta Basin has since become one of the largest coalbed methane areas in the United States.
By 2015, petroleum engineers estimated the vast desert plateau in Utah and Colorado contained between eight trillion cubic feet and 10 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves.
The Gilsonite Maneuver
“The first attempt at oil shale exploitation took place in 1917 by the Ute Oil Company,” noted the Bureau of Land Management in a 2007 technical report about oil shale and tar sands areas in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
Established in 1916, Ute Oil Company was created to refine petroleum from a dense shale mined north of Watson, Utah. Oil shales had proven abundant there. So had the Gilsonite found in deep vertical veins. The coal-like natural asphalt had many industrial uses.
Ute Oil found Gilsonite and oil shales in northeastern Utah — but processing the shale proved expensive as conventional discoveries lowered oil prices. Map courtesy Utah Geological Society.
Gilsonite had been vigorously promoted since 1886 by Samuel H. Gilson, its principal investigator, marketer, and namesake. He formed a company to mine and market Gilsonite on a commercial scale.
Gilson, a former rider for the Pony Express between California and Missouri, believed his Gilsonite (or Uintahite) practical for use in everything from a waterproof coating for wooden pilings, insulation for wire cable, and as paint or a varnish. He even promoted the natural, resinous hydrocarbon as an additive for chewing gum.
Utah’s Gilsonite was selling for more than $12 a ton when, in 1888, despite Bureau of Indian Affairs protests, Congress opened a 7,040-acre oil shale and Gilsonite-laden strip on the Uintah Ouray Reservation for placer mine claims.
An October 1918 article in “Petroleum Age” magazine described a planned shale oil plant at Watson, Utah, that would be the largest in United States. The author is the plant’s designer, St. Louis engineer George W. Wallace, who will become superintendent of Ute Oil Company.
Placer claims could be filed for mining a fixed amount of acreage by a person or group. These claims on Indian Reservations often led to lengthy litigation. The law required production of resources in order for the claimant to be granted a legitimate right to the land. Learn more about the Placer Act in First Wyoming Oil Well.
Ute Oil Company’s interest was in oil shale’s kerogen (naturally occurring organic matter) content. Oil shales like Gilsonite can yield petroleum when sufficiently “cooked.” The distillates boil off and are captured as in other refining operations.
In eastern Utah, Ute Oil Company made a 100-acre placer claim near Watson alongside the White River, about 100 feet up a hillside where promising oil shale deposits could be cheaply mined and then refined. Other companies had the same idea.
Shale Oil Boom
The boom towns of Watson, Dragon Junction, and Rainbow were spawned amidst new Gilsonite mines. A narrow-gauge (and short-lived) Uintah Railroad was built specifically to link them to the Rio Grande Western Railway 63 miles away.
Oil shale mining technologies of the 1920s were dangerous. Above is Ute Oil’s processing plant under construction.
By 1911, what was called the “crookedest railroad in the West” had overcome steep mountain grades and crossed 40 bridges to reach Watson and the Rainbow Gilsonite mine, above the White River. Crane Shale Oil, Utah Shale & Oil, and the Western Shale Oil Company all planned oil and gasoline reduction plants near Watson.
As the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began tracking these early efforts to make money by extracting oil from shale, Ute Oil led the way as a petroleum industry pioneer for the oil shale boom that began in the mid-2000s.
Although the company would never complete its ambitious construction of a retorting plant for processing shale, it explored new technologies to maximize production. A 2007 BLM report explained how the company planned to build its plant at Watson, today a Uintah County ghost town.
“Construction began on a tramway and processing plant,” the report noted. “Processing was supposed to extract 90 percent of the oil contained in the pulverized oil shale to produce an average of 54 gallons of oil per ton of shale.”
It was difficult and dangerous to get the shale out of the isolated region.
By November 1919, construction of Ute Oil’s new refinery was nearing completion near the old White River stagecoach station. The company predicted yields of 51.5 gallons of oil and 3.6 gallons of gasoline per ton of processed oil shale when the 18 retorts went onstream. The new plant had a projected capacity of 400 tons daily.
Even using modern technology, the U.S. Geological Survey has reported typical shale yields are between 15 gallons and 25 gallons of oil per ton.
In 1920, industry trade publications continued to praise oil shale developments in Utah and Colorado but noted that high processing costs for limited production were proving hard to overcome with the day’s technology (see Central Oil Shale Refining Company, a Chicago venture that sought to profit from shale during World War I).
Hard Shale Oil Lessons
The economic possibilities of shale oil intrigued investors; the “American Gas Engineering Journal” of January 3, 1920, crowed, “Twenty-Two Billion Barrels of Oil a Possibility of the Process – Estimates of Production Cost Show Possibility of Shale Oil Competing with Gasoline at Its Lowest Previous Level.”
A Geological Survey investigator proclaimed oil shales offered “more than eight times all of the oil available from the oilfields of the United States!”
Petroleum industry trade publications recognized that Gilsonite and products made from other oil shales like asphaltite might supplement production from U.S. oilfields, but the business model was risky. Much hinged on a small margin — limited by extraction technologies and the price of crude oil.
“A few crumbling buildings” remain at Watson, Utah, where the Ute Oil was the first company to attempt to profit from oil shale. Quote and 1998 photos courtesy Jeremy Carter, Ghosttowns.com.
“Crude shale oil, obtained by retorting oil shale, cannot find a general market until the price of well oil is above the cost of producing shale oil,” reported the October 1921 Mining and Oil Bulletin.
“This cost has been conservatively estimated at $1.85 a barrel for mining and retorting,” the trade publication added. “When the price of well petroleum approaches or better — exceeds this figure — the production of crude shale oil will take on renewed activity.”
Ute Oil Company had optimistically projected its cost at only $1.02 per barrel. In 1918, the year after the company formed, oil sold for about $1.98 per barrel, but in 1920, it dropped to $1.73. It would get much worse. By 1931, oil prices had dropped to only about 65 cents per barrel.
Ute Oil’s profit margin depended on a high price for oil, but surging oil supplies from traditional oil wells in Texas and other states drove down the price.
By the 1920s, many industry publications were following attempts to develop oil shales in Utah and Colorado. In addition to the “Oil and Gas News” prediction above, the “American Gas Engineering Journal” envisioned production of 22 billion barrels of oil from shale.
End of Ute Oil
In addition to the financial and technological risks that Ute Oil faced, regulatory issues added to its misery. In 1920, Congress passed the Mineral Leasing Act, updating the archaic 1872 law and requiring for the first time that the federal government receive royalty payments from successful placer claims.
An ominous 1921 “Petroleum Times” article noted work had been delayed “by a controversy with the Government over title to the land.”
The litigation among private, state, federal, and Indian tribal interests would last decades. The controversy came from renewed congressional interest in rectifying injustices that had historically deprived the Uinta Basin Indians since the reservation had been formed in 1861.
Ute Oil Company failed in 1923 before it could complete its uniquely designed retort for processing oil shale.
Although legal battles would continue, Ute Oil’s fate was sealed. Trade publications reported that the company undertook reorganization in 1923 but did not survive. The BLM would later note that “interest in oil shale production rebounded when oil prices peaked in the 1970s.”
In 1909, Earl Douglass, a paleontologist for the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, discovered dinosaur bones in the Utah desert. The site was soon designated the Dinosaur National Monument, and Douglass later became an eloquent spokesman for Utah’s petroleum industry.
J.L. “Mike” Dougan made the state’s first major oil discovery in 1948 after drilling unsuccessfully in Utah for more than 25 years (see First Utah Oil Wells).
In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress declared U.S. oil shale and tar sands strategically important domestic energy resources that should be developed to reduce dependence on imported oil. Five years later, Utah produced more than 8.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas valued at more than $1.7 billion.
Depending on the quality and location of the resource, the U.S. market price of Gilsonite in the early 2020s ranged from $600 to $1,000 a ton — compared to $10 to $12 per ton in the late 1800s.
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Recommended Reading: Utah Oil Shale: Science, Technology, and Policy Perspectives
(2016); From the Ground Up: A History of Mining in Utah (2006); 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 website, subscribe to the monthly email newsletter, and help expand our historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Ute Oil Company — Oil Shale Pioneer.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/stocks/oil-shale-pioneer. Last Updated: September 11, 2026. Original Published Date: April 6, 2016.
by Bruce Wells | Aug 29, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
Future CITGO discovered giant mid-continent oilfields.
Cities Service Company was established in September 1910 by Henry Latham Doherty as a public utility holding company in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, home of the first commercial Oklahoma oil well. Five years after its founding, Doherty’s company would make its own historic discoveries.
Doherty began by selectively purchasing natural gas-producing properties in Kansas and Oklahoma. He acquired distributing companies and linked them to his natural gas supplies. Cities Service Company derived income from the subsidiary corporations’ stock dividends. One natural gas subsidiary drilled exploratory wells in central Kansas.
Occidental Petroleum acquired Cities Service Company in 1982 in a $4 billion merger.
(more…)
by Bruce Wells | Aug 21, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
The “Snake Hollow Gusher” brought Pittsburgh a $35 million natural gas drilling boom — and bust.
“Rarely, a community sees its pulse quicken with a get-rich-quick beat, feels the boom fever strike, suffers the chill of disillusion when the ‘El Dorado’ fades out and then recovers,” noted the Pittsburgh Press in 1934, decades after the excitement began.
“But this is what happened at the McKeesport gas field, scene of the Pittsburgh district’s biggest boom and loudest crash,” the newspaper added. McKeesport Gas Company was among the many petroleum company casualties.
Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields attracted investors to many ambitious drilling ventures, including McKeesport Gas Company.
Following the first U.S. oil discovery at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in late August 1859, natural gas development began in western Pennsylvania.
With new oilfields came discoveries of large volumes of gas suited for illumination, heating, and manufacturing. Natural gas began to be widely used after two brothers drilled into a giant, highly pressurized field on November 3, 1878.
The Haymaker brothers’ discovery brought the new energy resource to Pittsburgh factories and steel mills. By the late 1880s, Pittsburgh skies cleared for the first time in decades as mills and factories burned natural gas instead of coal.
Learn more about the once nationally famous Haymaker gas well of 1878 in Natural Gas is King in Pittsburgh.
Biggest Boom
For investors in 1919, the region’s natural gas history seemed to be repeating itself. McKeesport Gas Company was one of about 300 petroleum companies that sprang up within six months of an August 30, 1919, discovery — a runaway natural gas well near McKeesport.
The “Snake Hollow Gusher” between the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers blew in at more than 60 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. The headline-making gas well, drilled by S.J. Brendel and David Foster, prompted a frenzy that saw $35 million dollars invested during the boom’s seven-month lifespan.
McKeesport Gas Company incorporated on December 5, 1919, and two weeks later enticed investors with advertisements in the Pittsburgh Press and the Gazette Times newspapers. “Over 500 Acres of Leases in the Heart of the McKeesport Gas Fields,” proclaimed one newspaper ad, offering stock at $1.25 a share.
“Many residents signed leases for drilling on their land,” noted another local reporter. “They bought and sold gas company stock on street corners and in barbershops transformed into brokerage houses in anticipation of fortunes to be made.”
Then the natural gas reserves ran out.
Loudest Crash
By the beginning of 1921, McKeesport’s natural gas production was falling in about 180 producing wells and new drilling resulted in about 440 unsuccessful wells — dry holes. The field would be reported as “the scene of the Pittsburgh district’s biggest boom and loudest crash.”
Of the estimated $35 million sunk into the nine square mile area of the boom, only about $3 million came out.
A detail from “McKeesport, Snake Hollow, Gas Belt,” a circa 1920 panoramic image by Hagerty & Griffey. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
A circa 1920 panoramic photograph at the Library of Congress captured the drilling boom at the McKeesport, Snake Hollow, Gas Belt, by Hagerty & Griffey.
McKeesport Gas Company likely drilled a few of the boom’s hundreds of dry holes, and with funds exhausted, disappeared into petroleum history. Fifteen years later, McKeesport Mayor George H. Lysle explained to a Pittsburgh newspaper reporter how the town survived the “seven-month wonder” natural gas boom:
“Other boom towns,” he said, “were built merely on the strength of the wealth that was to pour from their wells or mines. But McKeesport and vicinity was established before the boom came.”
When the drilling ended, Lysle added, “People still had their jobs in the mills and stores, the permanent population remained, and the natural resources of the district, except for gas, were still as great as ever. We were still a great industrial community.”
Advances in the science of petroleum geology and improved production technologies have brought surer results than the Snake Hollow Gusher. As early as 2010, the region’s gas boom — the Marcellus Shale — extended across western Pennsylvania into other Appalachian Basin states.
Because of the region’s history, McKeesport Gas Company stock certificates are considered collectible; the stories of other exploration companies trying to join petroleum booms (and avoid busts) can be found in the updated research in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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Recommended Reading: McKeesport – Images of America: Pennsylvania
(2007); Western Pennsylvania’s Oil Heritage
(2008); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); 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 website, subscribe to the monthly email newsletter, and help expand our historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information: Article Title: “McKeesport Gas Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/stocks/mckeesport-gas-company. Last Updated: August 21, 2025. Original Published Date: April 29, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Jul 23, 2026 | Petroleum Companies, Petroleum History Almanac
Seeking petroleum riches 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. (more…)
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.
_______________________
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.
_______________________
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.
