by Bruce Wells | Oct 14, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
A popular 1837 book by Washington Irving helped reveal natural resources of the Far West.
Tales of a Wyoming “tar spring” convinced the experienced Pennsylvania oilfield explorer Mike Murphy to drill a shallow well in 1883. He sold his oil to Union Pacific to lubricate train axles. Others would follow in the search for Wyoming oilfields.
Civil War veteran Philip Shannon explored for oil at Salt Creek outside of Casper in 1890. His well revealed what proved to be a 22,000-acre oilfield. An oil gusher drilled by a Dutch company made headlines in 1908.
But the story of Wyoming’s petroleum really began with Washington Irving, author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Oct 11, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
After months of hard drilling, a North Texas oil well roared in at Ranger in 1917.
As World War I continued in Europe, the “Roaring Ranger” oilfield discovery well of October 1917 in Eastland County, Texas, revealed a giant oilfield that would help fuel the Allied victory.
Residents of the town of Ranger — about halfway between Dallas and Abilene — had been eager to find oil, especially after reading newspaper accounts of an oilfield discovery on April Fool’s Day 1911 at Electra in neighboring Wichita County. A decade earlier in southeastern Texas, the “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop Hill had launched the modern U.S. petroleum industry.
A family photo of the “Roaring Ranger” McCleskey No. 1 well, which launched a series of Eastland County oil discoveries and brought North Texas drilling booms to Ranger, Cisco, and Desdemona. Photo courtesy Jeane B. Pruett and the family of W.K. Gordon Jr.
As the area’s cotton farmers struggled with severe drought, Ranger town officials hoped to strike “black gold.” For help, they turned to William K. Gordon, vice president of the Texas and Pacific Coal Company in Thurber. His company mined shale from hills near Thurber.
“Roaring Ranger”
After one failed test with a shallow well, Gordon agreed to drill the second attempt up to 3,500 feet deep. Drilling with basic cable-tool technology, Gordon and contractor Warren Wagner spudded the exploratory wildcat well on July 2, 1917, on the McCleskey farm, two miles south of Ranger.
After more than three months of drilling, the J.H. McCleskey No. 1 well erupted a geyser of oil on October 17, 1917, from a depth of 3,432 feet.
Following the October 1917 oilfield discovery, the Texas and Pacific Railroad transported people, equipment, and petroleum in and out of Ranger. A circa 1920 postcard shows the depot, future home of the Roaring Ranger Oil Boom Museum.
When completed, “Roaring Ranger” initially produced 1,600 barrels of high-gravity oil per day. Later oil gushers yielded up to 10,000 barrels of oil daily. Within 20 months, Texas and Pacific Coal Company stock jumped from $30 a share to $1,250 a share. The suddenly wealthy petroleum exploration company added “oil” to its name, reorganizing as the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company.
“Almost overnight, you couldn’t even see the homes for the derricks.” Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Eastland County oil discoveries brought economic booms to Ranger, Cisco, and Desdemona — today a ghost town. As leasing intensified in and around Desdemona by 1918, convincing the congregation of a Baptist church to allow drilling proved to be a challenge (see Oil Riches of Merriman Baptist Church).
Among the veterans visiting booming Eastland County after the war was a young Conrad Hilton, who visited Cisco intending to buy a bank. When he witnessed the long line of roughnecks waiting for a room at the Mobley Hotel, he decided to buy the hotel (see Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel).
The Abilene Reporter-News reported Ranger’s population swelled from less than 1,000 to more than 30,000 — mostly men. “Almost overnight, you couldn’t even see the homes for the derricks,” said Ranger historian Jeane Pruett. Opportunities for illicit financial gain also attracted notorious oilfield hucksters like J.W. “Hog Creek” Carruth (see Exploiting North Texas Oil Fever).
The 2016 Roaring Ranger Day Parade took place on the 99th birthday of the town’s famous oil gusher. Photo courtesy Ranger Historical Preservation Society.
Eastland County’s drilling and production boom grew rapidly as petroleum companies rushed to Ranger to develop the giant oilfield, according to historian Damon Sasser.
By 1919, the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company had 22 oil wells — and eight refineries open or under construction. More freight was unloaded in Ranger by the railroad than at any other place upon its line, including stations in Fort Worth, Dallas and New Orleans.
The J.H. McCleskey No. 1 discovery well of October 1917 created a mammoth oil boom at Ranger and across Eastland County, Texas. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
The flood of people also brought Texas Rangers to the boom town, which had begun as a Ranger camp in the 1870s. When Ranger jails overflowed, the lawmen handcuffed prisoners to telephone poles.
Meanwhile, independent and major exploration companies discovered nearby oilfields, including the Parsons, Sinclair-Earnest, and Lake Sand fields.
Photos courtesy Sarah Reveley and Barclay Gibson, who have photographed Texas Historical Commission markers and helped locate hundreds of historic sites from Louisiana to New Mexico.
Production from the Breckenridge oilfield in neighboring Stephens County was 10 million barrels of oil by 1919. It peaked at more than 31 million barrels of oil in 1921.
“Wave of Oil”
“Roaring Ranger” and the region’s production had proved essential to the Allied victory in World War I. When the armistice was signed in 1918, a member of the British War Cabinet declared, “The Allied cause floated to victory upon a wave of oil.”
From the New York Times digital archive: LONDON, Nov. 21, 1918. Earl Curzon, member of the British War Cabinet, presided tonight at a dinner given by the British Government to the Inter- Allied Petroleum Conference. In toasting the French, American and Italian delegates, Earl Curzon declared that the Allied cause had been “floated to victory on a wave of oil,” because if it had not been for the great fleets of motor trucks the war could not have been won.
The Ranger oilfield boom ended in the early 1920s when excess oil production caused wells to fail, but the discoveries confirmed the existence of a large petroleum-producing region, the Mid-Continent, with hundreds of oilfields stretching from Texas into Oklahoma and Kansas.
Detail from family album scene of the McCleskey No. 1 well erupting oil in Eastland County and launching a North Texas drilling boom that would continue at Burkburnett in 1918. Photo courtesy Jeane B. Pruett and the family of W.K. Gordon Jr.
Established by the Ranger Chamber of Commerce in 1982, the Roaring Ranger Oil Boom Museum — inside the original Texas and Pacific Railway’s depot — exhibits drilling equipment, historic photographs, and a vintage cable-tool rig.
Ranger residents annually celebrate their 1917 oilfield discovery with a festival and parade down Main Street. When the parade crosses the historic train depot’s tracks, participants pass a small, gray granite marker dedicated to the “First Oil Well Drilled in Eastland County.”
The 1936 Texas Centennial marker remains “a highly cherished monument that Ranger should be very proud of,” according to Eastland County resident Sarah Reveley, who documented many Texas Historical Commission sites.
Other dedicated advocates for preserving local petroleum history included Jeane B. Pruett (1935-2022), a longtime friend of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Ranger, Images of America
(2010); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
(2008); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975). 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 free monthly newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Roaring Ranger wins WWI.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/roaring-ranger-wins-wwi. Last Updated: October 9, 2026. Original Published Date: July 1, 2004.
by Bruce Wells | Oct 7, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
Navajo Nation wells produced oil, natural gas, and helium in the 1950s.
Reports of natural seeps in the late 1890s encouraged exploration for commercial quantities of oil more than a decade before Arizona statehood in 1912. Finding a productive oilfield would prove elusive.
At the start of the 20th century, Joseph Heslet, a part-time prospector from Pennsylvania, drilled several unsuccessful wells that showed traces of oil. His efforts caught the attention of other exploration companies, including several that arrived from the 1901 giant oilfield discovery at Spindletop Hill in Texas.
The cover of a 1961 Arizona Oil and Gas Conservation Commission report featured a painting by E.M. “Buck” Schiwetz. Image courtesy Humble Oil and Refining Company.
A 1905 wildcat well drilled in the Chino Valley, 20 miles north of Prescott, reached a depth of 2,000 feet before being abandoned as an expensive failure. Another well drilled one year later in Graham County was abandoned at a depth of 1,400 feet.
More exploration attempts followed, most lacking knowledge of the emerging science of petroleum geology. The result would be five decades of drilling unsuccessful wells — Arizona dry holes.
“A series of speculative ventures and explorations in oil drilling occurred over the ensuing decades, followed by the discovery of helium, an industrial gas that has become a major industry in the state,” noted a 2004 article at Tucson.com.
Better known for abundant copper deposits, it was the search for petroleum that led to helium discoveries in Arizona.
Although normally low, the concentration of helium in natural gas has been measured from 0.01 percent to 7 percent. Helium content would be enough to confuse residents of Dexter, Kansas, in 1903 when a natural gas discovery well would not burn (learn more in Kansas “Wind Gas ” Well).
In Arizona, Kipling Petroleum Company discovered helium 20 miles east of Holbrook in Navajo County in 1950, but “commercial production of helium in Arizona began in 1961 with the state’s first helium extraction plant producing 9 billion cubic feet of gas over 15 years,” the article explained.
Gas in 1954, Oil in 1959
Arizona became the 30th petroleum-producing state on October 13, 1954, with a natural gas well.
Shell Oil Company completed the state’s first commercial well south of the Utah border on Apache County’s Navajo Indian Reservation. Natural gas flowed after drilling to a depth of 4,540 feet.
Arizona’s first natural gas well in 1954 (top) and first significant oil well in 1959. Image from “Oil, Gas and Helium in Arizona: Its Occurrence and Potential.”
“The first producing well in Arizona was drilled by Shell Oil Company in 1954 on a surface structure known as the East Boundary Butte anticline,” proclaimed a special report by the Arizona Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The Shell Oil discovery well found natural gas and a small amount of oil.
Shell Oil’s East Boundary Butte No. 2 well indicated gas production of 3,150 thousand cubic feet per day; daily oil production was 3.6 barrels of oil (plus 8.4 barrels of salt water per day) from part of the Pennsylvanian geologic formation, the Hermosa, according to the commission’s report.
The 1961 report, Oil, Gas and Helium in Arizona: Its Occurrence and Potential was published by the Arizona Development Board to encourage further exploration. The cover featured a painting by artist Edward “Buck” Schiwetz (1898-1984), courtesy Humble Oil and Refining Company.
Wellsite on the Navajo Reservation in Apache County, Arizona. The 16-million-acre reservation extends into New Mexico and Utah. Circa 1965 photo courtesy Shell Oil Co.
One candidate for the first Arizona oil well, according to the report, was Humble Oil Company’s No. 1 E Navajo well, drilled in 1958 near the Shell Oil natural gas well. Although initial oil production was from the same formation (Hermosa), “subsequent production showed increasing gas,” and by 1961 it was considered a natural gas well.
“Additional drilling on this structure resulted in completion of three more wells producing mostly gas with some distillate and oil,” noted Lee Feemster of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company.
“Oil and gas shows were encountered in the Hermosa, Mississippian, and Devonian but to date the production is confined to the Hermosa,” Feemster added.
Learn about the earliest oilfield discoveries in other petroleum-producing states in First Oil Discoveries.
Seismic Anomaly
In 1956, the Franco Western Oil Company drilled a well based on a seismic anomaly in the Mississippian formation and found more natural gas. A well completed a year later by Superior Oil Company also produced significant amounts of gas from the Hermosa geologic zone.
“Encouraging shows of oil and gas were recorded in the Mississippian and Devonian in this test,” Feemster noted in the commission report. It was his company, Texas Pacific Coal and Oil, that drilled a test well that finally found commercial quantities of oil in Arizona in 1959.
Founded in 1888, Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company had established the mining town of Thurber, Texas, and by the early 1900s provided almost half of the coal supply for Texas. In 1917, the company drilled the state’s famous McCleskey No. 1 “Roaring Ranger” well in Eastland County.
“The People’s Field”
Texas Pacific Coal and Oil’s 1959 first Arizona oil discovery, the Navajo No. 1 well, was completed in the extreme northeastern part of the state.
Arizona’s oil and natural gas fields are in its northeast corner: (1) East Boundary Butte; (2) Bita Peak; (3) Toh-ah-tin; (4) Unnamed Paradox gas and distillate; (5) Dry Mesa; (6) Unnamed Devonian oil; (7) Pinta dome helium area.
The Navajo No. 1 well produced 240 barrels of oil per day at a depth of 5,566 feet in the Mississippian geologic formation, according to Feemster, who added, “The nearest Mississippian production at that time was in the Big Flat field more than 100 miles north in Utah.”
In 1967, the Kerr-McGee Company’s Navajo No. 1 well revealed an oil-producing geologic anticline about 4,000 feet deep. That well joined the others producing on the Navajo Reservation in Apache County (reservation land includes 16 million acres in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah).
By 2012, the Navajo Reservation’s Dineh-bi-Keyah — “The People’s Field” — would produce more than 18 million barrels of oil. Recognizing the importance of advancements in horizontal drilling technology, in 2013 the Arizona Geological Survey issued a report, Potential Targets for Shale-Oil and Shale-Gas Exploration in Arizona.
By 2016, Arizona had 32 operating oil and natural gas wells, according to the state commission. Of the 1,129 wells drilled in the state since 1954, almost 90 percent were dry holes (2014 data). Apache County in the northeast corner of the state has remained the only petroleum-producing county.
By 2023, the state had “no significant proved crude oil reserves, and the state’s few oil wells produced only about 6,000 barrels of crude oil in 2023,” according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Arizona produces more copper than any other state.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Arizona Rocks & Minerals: A Field Guide to the Grand Canyon State
(2010); Helium: Its Creation, Discovery, History, Production, Properties and Uses (2022). 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 free monthly newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information: Article Title – “First Arizona Oil Well.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/first-arizona-oil-well. Last Updated: October 8, 2026. Original Published Date: October 9, 2018.
by Bruce Wells | Oct 1, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
Post-Civil War oilfields launched Allegheny petroleum boom.
Soon after the Civil War ended and demand for kerosene lamp fuel soared, the rapidly growing U.S. petroleum industry discovered oilfields west of Tidioute, Pennsylvania. Wooden derricks replaced trees on Triumph Hill.
Formerly quiet Pennsylvania hillsides of hemlock woods vanished in early October 1866 when oil fever came to Triumph Hill. The U.S. oil industry was barely seven years old. About 15 miles east of the 1859 first U.S. oil well at Titusville, an 1866 oil discovery at Triumph Hill sparked a rush of uncontrolled development.
An 1870s photograph of the east side of Triumph Hill, near Tidioute, Pennsylvania, by Frank Robbins of Oil City. Image is half of stereo card rendered in black and white from original sepia. Photo courtesy Biblioteca Nacional Digital Brazil.
The oil drilling craze would not last long, but boom towns sprang up at Gordon Run and Daniels Run west of Tidioute on Pennsylvania’s Allegheny River.
Like the earlier discoveries at Titusville, Rouseville, and Pithole, hillside trees were turned into derricks and oil storage tanks as drilling intensified. News about a deadly Rouseville oil well fire in April 1861 had been overshadowed by the Civil War.
The excitement at Tidioute (pronounced tiddy-oot) was joined by the roughneck-filled towns of Triumph and Babylon, where “sports, strumpets and plug-uglies, who stole, gambled, caroused and did their best to break all the commandments at once.”
Fresh from the oilfields at booming Pithole 25 miles to the southwest, the infamous Ben Hogan, self-proclaimed “Wickedest Man in the World,” operated a bawdy house on the Triumph hillside along the Allegheny River.
Latest Pennsylvania Oil Boom
Despite growing recognition that crowded drilling reduced reservoir pressures and production, the exploration and production bonanza, which began with the first well on October 4, 1866, prompted a frenzy of drilling as investors tried to cash in before the oil ran out.
Detail from a Frank Robbins stereographic view of the west side of Triumph Hill, “showing buildings, storage tanks, and derricks, as well as two children sitting in chairs outside a building on Triumph Hill, near Tidioute, Pennsylvania,” courtesy Library of Congress.
By the summer of 1867, Triumph Hill was producing 2,000 barrels of oil a day. The flood of oil bought lower prices — an early example of the petroleum industry’s boom and bust cycles.
Photographer Frank Robbins of Oil City published stereographic images of Triumph Hill, declaring it to be “the most magnificent oil belt (as oil men call a strip of producing land) ever yet discovered.”
He added, “On this belt which is but two miles long, and less than one mile wide — were over 180 producing wells, nearly every one of which was in operation at once.”
Robbins, who moved his studio to Bradford in 1879 when that region was on its way to becoming “America’s first billion-dollar oilfield,” also printed postcards for sale to tourists.
An image from the 1903 edition of “Sketches in Crude-Oil; some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe” by James McLaurin.
“Triumph Hill turned out as much money to the acre as any spot in Oildom,” noted James McLaurin in his 1896 book Sketches in Crude-Oil (some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe).
Many of the hill’s wells averaged 25 barrels of oil a day, McLaurin reported, adding that “the sand was the thickest – often ninety to one hundred and ten feet – and the purest the oil region afforded.” The tempo of oil exploration around Tidioute and boom town debauchery slowed as the region’s daily production fell.
Drilling discipline and well spacing, reservoir engineering and other oilfield management skills would evolve, but Triumph Hill’s glory dissipated within five years as overproduction drained the field.
Today, Triumph Hill remains one of the many quietly beautiful and forest-covered sites along the Allegheny River Valley that has earned a special place in America’s petroleum history.
Tidioute also is among the earliest panoramic maps of America’s petroleum communities. The view was created by Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler, a popular “bird’s-eye view” cartographer. Learn more about Fowler and his maps in Oil Town “Aero Views.”
Traveling from Pennsylvania to Texas at the turn of the century, Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler created oil town “aero views” – panoramic maps of many of America’s earliest petroleum communities. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Early Oilfield Photography
Pioneer petroleum industry photographers like “Oil Creek Artist” John A. Mather documented Northwestern Pennsylvania boom towns. He and others like Frank Robbins captured views of North American oil booms, according to geologist and historian Jeff Spencer, noting, “Common scenes included oil gushers, oilfield fires, teamsters, and boom towns.”
Frank Robbins documented the emerging 1860s Pennsylvania petroleum industry, Spencer noted in a 2011 article for the journal Oil-Industry History. “He was one of the most prolific producers of stereoscopic views of oilfields in the Oil City and Bradford, Pennsylvania, and Olean, New York area,” Spencer noted.
Robbins photographed scenes from oilfields at Triumph Hill, Tidioute, Petrolia, and Pithole, according to Spencer, who in 2003, published Texas Oil and Gas (Postcard History Series) — learn more in Postcards from the Texas Oil Patch. For more resources on oilfield images, see petroleum photography websites.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Cherry Run Valley: Plumer, Pithole, and Oil City, Pennsylvania, Images of America
(2000); Around Titusville, Pa., Images of America
(2004); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry
(2009). 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 free monthly newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Derricks of Triumph Hill.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/triumph-hill-oil. Last Updated: October 6, 2026. Original Published Date: July 3, 2015.
by Bruce Wells | Oct 1, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
Driller of first U.S. oil well accidentally ignited it 41 days later.
Along Oil Creek at Titusville, Pennsylvania, the wooden derrick and engine house of the first U.S. well drilled for oil erupted in flames on October 7, 1859. The already famous well had been completed on August 27 by Edwin L. Drake, a former railroad conductor hired by the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Oct 1, 2026 | Petroleum Pioneers
A giant Mid-Continent oilfield revealed in 1915 by the emerging science of petroleum geology.
Desperate for their town to live up to its name, community leaders of El Dorado, Kansas, sought petroleum riches after natural gas discoveries at nearby Augusta and at Paola, south of Kansas City. But it would be a giant oilfield, not natural gas, that brought prosperity east of Wichita. (more…)
