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…)
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 Ohio Oil Company’s exploration operations would expand 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.
In 1915, the company’s infrastructure 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, a collector of gas station antiques, 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.
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.
As deep drilling technologies continued to advanced 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 the Ohio Oil Company — which would become Marathon Oil — set a record despite being “halted by a fishing job.” The well was a financial lost.
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
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
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: August 4, 2024. Original Published Date: December 28, 2014.
The rush for “black gold” took off in 1886, after William Rowland and partner William Lacy completed several producing oil wells at Rancho La Puente. Their company, Rowland & Lacy (later called the Puente Oil Company), revealed the Puente oilfield. News spread, launching a drilling boom.
By 1912, a host of inexperienced exploration companies were drilling more than 100 wells in the Fullerton area alone. According to reports, two of the inevitable dry hole holes that resulted were drilled by a new venture, the Puente Crude Oil Company.
Puente Crude Oil Company was one of many small ventures that hoped to find oil in southern California’s prolific oil fields near Brea Canyon and Fullerton at the turn of the century.
Puente Crude Oil Company was capitalized at only $500,000 and offered stock to the public at 10 cents a share in 1900, but its two unsuccessful wells in the Puente field’s eastern extension brought the company to a quick financial crisis. One well was lost to a “crooked hole” and the other found only traces of oil and natural gas.
Enthusiastic advertisements solicited investment. Some ads referred to the better known Sunset oil field, discovered in 1892 in Kern County to the north. By May 1901 company stock was offered at two cents per share to relieve indebtedness and enable further drilling on the company’s 870 acres in Rodeo Canyon.
One year later, San Bernardino newspapers reported the company in trouble.
“This history of misadventure has not been pleasing to the stockholders of the Puente Crude Oil Company,” noted one article. “An auditing committee was appointed for the purpose of examining the books and accounts of the company,” it added.
Further reports in 1902 noted the company had issued no statements, “financial or otherwise,” for a year. Puente Crude Oil Company is absent from records thereafter.
South of Los Angeles, in Orange County, the Brea Museum and Heritage Center tells the story of the Olinda Oil Well No. 1 well of 1898 – one of many important California petroleum discoveries. Visit the Olinda Oil Museum and Trail at 4025 Santa Fe Road in Brea.
The stories of exploration and production (E&P) companies joining U.S. petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found updated in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Join today as an AOGHS supporting member. Help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2021 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Much of the Puente Oil’s former oil producing land has long since been managed by the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority, and in 2022 the Port of Los Angeles handled more than 220 million metric tons — 20 percent of all incoming cargo for the United States.
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Recommended Reading: Los Angeles, California, Images of America
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Puente Crude Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/puente-crude-oil-company. Last Updated: January 4, 2024. Original Published Date: July 2, 2013.
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It was the greatest petroleum exploration and production since the birth of the U.S. oil industry in 1859. Hundreds of new companies formed in the wake of the spectacular 1901 “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas. Few had experience in the highly competitive and risky business of exploring for oil.
Among those ready to make fortunes for investors were two new “Gladys Oil” companies. One was from Beaumont, the other from Galveston. Contemporary maps show the Gladys Oil Company of Beaumont to have drilled a successful well very close to the famous January 10, 1901, “Lucas Gusher” well at Spindletop Hill that launched the modern U.S. petroleum industry.
Also in 1901, after 29 days of drilling in block 37, the company reported production from “Gusher No. 67” at a depth of 1,025 feet. Locating the “black gold” did not necessarily promise success.
By 1903 the Texas Secretary of State reported that Gladys Oil Company of Beaumont had “forfeited its right to do business in the state of Texas” due to a failure to pay franchise taxes. In a scenario that would repeat itself in other oilfields in coming decades, production from the giant field soon brought a collapse in oil prices.
By January 1902, stocks of both Gladys Oil companies were trading for less than 10 cents a share. The company was sued, lost, and United States Investor magazine reported it to be worthless two years later. Meanwhile, because some cash-strapped and desperate companies made questionable claims, newspapers began referring to the historic 1901 discovery as “Swindletop.”
In 1907, Success Magazine named the company in its “Fools and their Money” expose of fraudulent promotion schemes perpetrated by the New York, Chicago, and Beaumont Security Oil Trust. The Gladys Oil Company of Galveston lasted a little longer than its Beaumont twin, but not without controversy.
The trust had proclaimed, “it was impossible to lose” with an investment Gladys Oil Company of Galveston. In 1911 R.M. Smythe’s, Obsolete American Securities and Corporations, reported the stock to be worthless. Read about Pattillo Higgins, the man behind the great Spindletop discovery — and his Gladys City Oil, Gas & Manufacturing Company — see Prophet of Spindletop.
The stories of exploration and production companies joining petroleum booms (and avoiding busts) can be found updated in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS supporter and help maintain this website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Gladys Oil Company — Oil Shale Pioneer.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/gladys-oil-company. Last Updated: December 4, 2024. Original Published Date: September 11, 2013.
In the Solomon Hills of central Santa Barbara County, California, the search for oil and natural gas began in 1904 at Cat Canyon. Exploration companies unsuccessfully drilled there for four years before Palmer Oil Company discovered an oilfield about 10 miles southeast of Santa Maria.
Palmer Oil Company derricks and refinery in Santa Barbara County, California, circa 1920s.
Palmer Oil’s Santa Maria well initially produced 150 barrels of oil a day, but within a few months it jumped to 10,000 barrels a day. The company completed a second well that also proved to be a true gusher. With it and other 1908 discoveries, Palmer Oil opened the Cat Canyon oilfield — the largest in Santa Barbara County at the time.
“The Palmer Oil Company is generally concluded to have opened one of the biggest and richest oil fields in California by the bringing in of its two gushers in the Cat Canyon District, now doing 10,000 barrels per day between them,” declared the trade publication “Oil Age Weekly” on September 9, 1910.
Although the Cat Canyon oilfield produced “heavy oil” with a high sulfur content, the success of Palmer Oil brought new investors, and the company was capitalized at $10 million by the beginning of 1911. The latest oil boom (see First California Oil Wells) attracted 26 exploration companies that completed 35 producing wells.
By 1927, Palmer Oil Company had reorganized into Palmer Union Oil Company as it continued to drill on Santa Barbara, California, leases.
By 1927, despite Cat Canyon’s proven oil reserves, drilling and production challenges of the heavy, high sulfur content prompted investors to look for better returns on their investments.
New drilling in Cat Canyon stalled — as did Palmer Oil, which began the first of its many corporate convolutions by becoming the Palmer Union Oil Company.
In January 1932, Palmer Union Oil became Palmer Stendel Oil Corporation, beginning decades of mergers and acquisitions: Palmer Stendel Oil Company – Petrocarbon Chemicals Incorporated – Great Western Producers – Pleasant Valley Wine Company – Taylor Wine Company – Coca-Cola Company.
After the Great Depression and World War II, water-flooding technology resurrected the Cat Canyon field’s production capability to a peak in 1953. Millions of barrels of oil were recovered and even in 1983, production was still about 350 barrels a day.
One century after its discovery by Palmer Oil Company, the Cat Canyon oilfield had 243 active oil wells. In a state long known for its natural oil seeps, enhanced recovery technologies revived oil production in Santa Barbara County and California’s other heavy oil-producing regions.
To extract reserves previously considered unrecoverable, companies like HVI Cat Canyon (Greka Energy), ERG Resources, and others used tertiary thermal recovery techniques. Improved technologies have dramatically lessened dangers to the environment, but not eliminated them.
A 1927 Palmer Union Oil Company stock certificate purchased at a garage sale in 2008 sparked a legal battle with Coca-Cola.
In 2023, a U.S. District Court found HVI Cat Canyon Inc. (formerly Greka Oil & Gas Company) liable for oil spills and ordered the company to pay $40 million in civil penalties for the spills; $15 million for violations of federal regulations, and $2.5 million in cleanup costs.
The U. S. Energy Information Administration in 2013 ranked Cat Canyon as 17th on its list of the nation’s top 100 producing oilfields — with no company having partial ownership in Coca-Cola Company (see Not a Millionaire from Old Oil Stock).
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2023 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Palmer Oil Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL:https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/palmer-oil-company. Last Updated: December 7, 2023. Original Published Date: December 7, 2023.
Decades before Alaska became a state, many petroleum exploration companies drilled expensive dry holes in the remote U.S. territory. The Alaska Oil & Gas Development Company was among them.
Although drillers completed the first Alaska Territory commercial oil well in 1902, significant oilfield production did not arrive until 1957, two years before statehood.
Before switching to a rotary rig in 1954, the Alaska Oil & Gas Development Company drilled its Eureka No. 1 using this Walker-Neer Manufacturing Company cable-tool “spudder.” Photo courtesy the Anchorage Museum.
The July 1957 discovery well by Richfield Oil Corporation — later known as ARCO — successfully drilled near the Swanson River on the Kenai Peninsula. The first well, which produced 900 barrels of oil a day from 11,215 feet, revealed a giant oilfield.
Many Alaskans already had been wildcatting for black gold.
Among those searching for petroleum riches, Alaska Oil & Gas Development accepted the financial challenges of exploring unproven territory. William A. O’Neill and a former oilfield roughneck incorporated the company on October 31, 1952.
“Bill O’Neill, a local mining engineer and University of Alaska regent, and partner C.F. ‘Tiny’ Shield, a giant of a man, believed they could find oil in the Copper River Basin,” explained Jack Roderick in his 1997 book, Crude Dreams: A Personal History of Oil & Politics in Alaska.
“Before coming to Alaska in the early 1920s, Shield had been a cable-rig ‘tool pusher’ in Montana, Texas and California,” he added.
Within a year, Alaska Oil & Gas Development began drilling near “mud volcanoes” — sulfuric residues bubbling up from the valley floor — and near mud cliffs embedded with giant marine fossils, Roderick reported.
The Eureka No. 1 well with its Walker-Neer cable-tool rig at its remote site just off Glenn Highway about 125 miles northeast of Anchorage. Photo courtesy the Anchorage Museum.
Far from any oil or natural gas producing well in North America, the well site — known as a rank wildcat — was at Eureka Roadhouse, about 125 miles northeast of Anchorage, just 200 feet off the Glenn Highway (part of Alaska Route 1).
Alaska Oil & Gas Development Company offered 300,000 shares of stock at $1 per share, advertising in newspapers:
The money realized from the sale of this stock is being used to purchase equipment and finance operations for oil exploration in the Eureka-Nelchina location. The location of the first exploratory drill hole has been chosen by our consulting geologist after a geological survey of the area.
The Walker-Neer cable-tool rig reached about 2,500 feet deep before drilling was temporarily suspended at the site. A Texas geologist suggested converting to a rotary rig for greater depth. Photo courtesy the Anchorage Museum.
Drilling at the Eureka Roadhouse site began on September 20, 1953, using cable-tool technology — a Walker-Neer Manufacturing Company rig often called a spudder.
“By early 1954, the Eureka No. 1 well had been drilled down more than half a mile, but the antiquated equipment, making each day’s going tougher, eventually forced O’Neill and Shield to shut down the operation,” noted Roderick.
The limitations of outdated cable-tool technology — and the onset of Alaska’s winter — delayed but did not deter the men. “Shield traveled to Texas, and while looking up some tool pusher buddies, contacted Fort Worth independent James H. Snowden,” Roderick explained.
Snowden sent a geologist to Alaska to investigate the well. “He reported that by converting the cable-tool rug to a rotary, the Eureka well could be deepened to 5,500 feet,” Roderick reported.
By the summer of 1954, having switched the Walker-Neer spudder for a rotary rig, the Eureka No. 1 well reached about a mile in depth — but found no indications of oil.
Alaska Oil & Gas Development Company spudded a well in the Matanuska Valley northeast of Anchorage in June 1953. Map courtesy USGS.
O’Neill and Shield tried again, drilling a second well near Houston, Alaska, on the Alaska Railroad line. It ended as a dry hole as well.
According to Roderick, Alaska Oil & Gas Development plugged and abandoned both wells by 1957. Another company also had tried to find oil in the Matanuska Valley, but failed before it could drill even one well (see Chickaloon Oil Company).
With its funds exhausted, the Alaska Oil & Gas Development Company failed to file a required report and was “involuntarily dissolved” by regulators.
In 1957, Richfield Oil Corporation made the first major discovery two years before Alaska statehood. The company struck the territory’s first commercial oil well at Swanson River on the Kenai Peninsula.
Discovery of the Prudhoe Bay field on Alaska’s North Slope in 1968 made the 49th state a world-class oil and natural gas producer. Prudhoe Bay, the largest oilfield in North America, in turn inspired the U.S. petroleum industry’s 1977 engineering marvel, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
The stories of many exploration companies trying to join petroleum booms (and avoid busts) can be found in an updated series of research in Is my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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Recommended Reading: Crude Dreams: A Personal History of Oil & Politics in Alaska (1997); Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2023 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “ Alaska Oil & Gas Development Company.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/alaska-oil-gas-development-company. Last Updated: November 22, 2023. Original Published Date: July 14, 2016.
