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.
In the 1920s, companies extracted oil shale and Gilsonite from narrow mines.
By the early 20th century, aspiring entrepreneurs had arrived to exploit these new petroleum resources. Several new ventures would be among the earliest anywhere seeking 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.
Although Ute Oil Company found Gilsonite and oil shales abundant in northeastern Utah, processing the hard shale proved too expensive as other conventional U.S. discoveries brought far lower oil prices. Color 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, an 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 production mining technologies of the 1920s were dangerous and expensive. Above is Ute Oil Company’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” are all that reman of Watson, Utah, where the Ute Oil Company was the first company to attempt to profit from oil shale. Quote and 1998 photo 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.
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 12, 2025. Original Published Date: April 6, 2016.
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. Stock certificates have only collectible value.
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.
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 inIs my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
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.
Updated research and articles about the histories of old oil company stock and petroleum company histories.
Found an old oil company stock certificate and hoping for a petroleum financial gusher?
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society’s research and accompanying forum depend upon your individual financial support. The historical society is an independent, energy education organization — unaffiliated with upstream or downstream petroleum companies, state or federal government, or industry advocacy groups.
A petroleum company’s old oil stock certificate vignette sometimes has value for collectors of scripophily – the buying and selling of certificates after they have no redeemable value as a security.
Although use of fossil fuels today is highly controversial, the history of U.S. petroleum exploration, production, and transportation provides context for modern energy debates.
From 19th-century kerosene for lamps, 20th-century gasoline for cars, and modern plastic polymers for everyday products, the petroleum industry’s huge social, economic and technological heritage should be preserved.
Do you have an old oil stock certificate found in an attic? You can research the certificate and its company history yourself — or pay for a professional financial researcher. Am you now rich? Probably not. Since first commercial U.S. oil well in 1859, the petroleum industry’s boom and bust cycles have left many casualties.
A Popular Vignette
Collectors have found a surprising number of examples where quickly formed exploration companies picked the exact same oilfield scene for stock certificates.
In the rush to print stock certificates during oil booms, new companies often chose to print certificates using a vignette of derricks. Many ended up using the exact same scene of derricks in an oilfield.
It might have saved time and money by choosing a common vignette today found on shares of Centralized Oil & Gas Company; Double Standard Oil & Gas Company; Evangeline Oil Company; Texas Production Company; Tulsa Producing and Refining Company; Hecla-Wyoming Oil Company; Oil Prospectors Inc.; Craven Oil & Refining; Buck Run Oil and Refining; Home Oil & Gas; Hog Creek Carruth Company; Buffalo-Texas Oil Company; and the Champion Oil Company (see links to them below).
The vast majority of old oil stock certificates — especially petroleum exploration companies formed prior to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — simply become family mementos. As a financial adviser can explain, documents from old company mergers rarely bring wealth today. For one that led to extended court battles, see Not a Millionaire from Old Oil Stock.
America’s first oil company — the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York, organized in 1855, and was reorganized by 1859 to drill the first U.S. oil well as the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut.
Unfortunately, this small historical society cannot grant requests for free research regarding individual company histories and the potential value of stock certificates. As you may have discovered, financial research is difficult and time consuming. If you are fortunate, a visitor to this website or a society volunteer may have posted helpful information.
If your certificate is not listed here, and to share further research experiences, you are invited to submit your query in the current Stock Certificate Q&A Forum.
Below is research submitted by a leading volunteer of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. The company histories presented often tell fascinating stories – and are exclusive of the Stock Certificate Q&A forum posts also on this website. Check back here for more of these rare histories.
Kantexo Oil & Gas Company* Keck Oil Company* Ken-Saw Petroleum Corporation* King George Oil Company* Kokernot Oil Company Kutz Canon Oil & Gas Company* * Research in Progress
Your old oil stock not listed? Please support research by the American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) with a donation. You are invited to submit your query in the current Stock Certificate Q&A Forum.
Rise and fall of a California oil exploration company.
A new “black gold” rush in California 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 Crude Oil Company), helped reveal the Puente oilfield.
The exploration venture — and a more successful one with a similar name, the Puente Oil Company — were among those seeking oil in southern California at the turn of the century. By 1912, many inexperienced companies had drilled more than 100 wells in the Fullerton area southeast of the Los Angeles field. Two expensive “dry holes” were completed by the Puente Crude Oil Company.
Puente Crude Oil Company was one of many small early 20th-century ventures hoping to find oil in southern California’s prolific oilfields at Brea Canyon and Fullerton.
Initially capitalized with $500,000, Puente Crude Oil 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 as enthusiastic advertisements continued to solicit investment. Some ads referred to the widely known Sunset oilfield, 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.
Much of Puente Oil’s former oil-producing land would later be managed by the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority. In 2022, the Port of Los Angeles handled more than 220 million metric tons — 20 percent of all incoming cargo for the United States.
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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Recommended Reading:Los Angeles, California, Images of America(2001). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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 30, 2025. Original Published Date: July 2, 2013.
Three petroleum exploration companies risked everything on one well in their gamble to to find an Oregon oilfield.
The lure of petroleum wealth invited speculators practically since the first U.S. oil well of 1859 in Pennsylvania. Exploratory wells especially have remained a high-risk investment since almost nine out of ten of these “wildcat” wells fail to produce commercial amounts of oil.
The Morrow No. 1 well, an ill-fated wildcat well first drilled in 1952 in Jefferson County, Oregon. Photo courtesy Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, “The Ore Bin,” Vol. 32, No.1, January 1970.
With under-capitalized operations turning to public sales of stock to raise money, many small ventures have been forced to bet everything on drilling a first successful well to have a chance at a second. Drilling a producing well can bring some wealth, but a “dry hole” brings bankruptcy.
And so it was in the 1950s on a remote hillside in Jefferson County, Oregon, where three companies searched for riches from the same well.
Northwestern Oils Inc.
The first of these three Oregon wildcatters, Northwestern Oils, incorporated in 1951 with $1 million capitalization in order to “carry on business of mining and drilling for oil.”
With offices in Reno, Nevada, in early 1952 Northwestern Oils began drilling a test well about eight miles southeast of Madras, Oregon. Using a cable-tool drilling rig (see Making Hole – Drilling Technology), drillers reached a depth of 3,300 feet on the Baycreek anticline before work was suspended because of “lost circulation troubles.”
Circulation troubles continued with the Morrow No. 1 well – also known as the Morrow Ranch well – in Jefferson County (Section 18, Township 12 South, range 15 East). By March 1956, with no money and no additional drilling possible, Northwestern Oils’ assets were “seized for non-payment of delinquent internal revenue taxes due from the corporation” and auctioned off at the Jefferson County courthouse.
Central Oils Inc.
Central Oils (Seattle) also was formed in 1956. With plans to join the other rare Oregon wildcatters, the company registered with the Security and Exchange Commission on July 30, 1958. It sought to sell one million shares of stock to the public at 10 cents a share. Proceeds would finance leasing and drilling, just like Northwestern Oils.
Central Oils received a permit to deepen Northwestern Oils’ old Morrow Ranch well in 1966 and planned to continue drilling with a cable-tool rig. Nothing happened.
“Commencement of this venture has been delayed until the spring of 1967,” one newspaper reported. But Central Oils had run afoul of the SEC. Oregon regulators recorded the well abandoned as of September 12, 1967, and Central Oils “out of business; no assets.”
Robert F. Harrison
In May 1968, Robert F. Harrison and his associates took over the same well — this time with plans to deepen it to more than 5,000 feet. But two years later the drilling effort was still stuck at a depth of 3,300 feet. Desperate, Harrison tried to clear the borehole by applying technologies for Fishing in Petroleum Wells.
On February 2, 1971, an intra-office report noted that R.F. Harrison “will abandon as soon as weather permits,” never having exceeded the original Northwestern Oils total depth of 3,300 feet. It would be a dry hole.
Harrison finally plugged and abandoned the Morrow No. 1 well as of October 12, 1971. Oregon’s Department of Geology and Mineral Industries has identified the stubborn nonproducer as well number 36-031-00003. There has never been a successful oil well drilled in Oregon.
America’s first dry hole was drilled in 1859 by John Grandin of Pennsylvania – near and just a few days after the first commercial discovery. In 2014, U.S. oil wells produced more than 8.7 million barrels of oil every day, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The stories of many exploration companies trying to join petroleum booms (and avoid busts) can be found in an updated series of research inIs my Old Oil Stock worth Anything?
Citation Information – Article Title: “Oregon Wildcatters.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/old-oil-stocks/oregon-wildcatters. Last Updated: February 26, 2025. Original Published Date: January 29, 2016.
