by Bruce Wells | Oct 18, 2024 | 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 9, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
After months of drilling, a 1917 oil well roared in at Ranger, Texas.
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 detail from an image of the “Roaring Ranger” oilfield discovery well of October 1917. The gusher created an oil boom across Eastland County, Texas. Photo courtesy Ranger Historical Preservation Society.
As the area’s cotton farmers struggled with severe drought, Ranger town officials hoped to strike “black gold” with the help of William K. Gordon, vice president of the Texas and Pacific Coal Company in Thurber.
McCleskey No. 1
After one failed test with a shallow well, Gordon agreed to drill the second attempt up to 3,500 feet deep. Drilling with a cable-tool rig, 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 played an important part in getting people, equipment and oil in and out of Ranger. A circa 1920 postcard shows the depot, today home of the Roaring Ranger Museum.
When completed, “Roaring Ranger” initially produced 1,600 barrels of oil a day of high gravity oil. 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 company reorganized as the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company.
“Almost over-night, you couldn’t even see the homes for the derricks,” says Ranger historian Jeane B. Pruett. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Eastland County oil discoveries brought economic booms to Ranger, Cisco, Desdemona (today a ghost town) and Eastland.
The Abilene Reporter-News reported Ranger’s population swelled from less than 1,000 to more than 30,000 — mostly men. 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 enforce laws. When jails in Ranger overflowed, the lawmen handcuffed prisoners to telephone poles. Texas Rangers earlier had led to the town’s establishment as a Ranger camp.
Independent and major oil companies soon opened other 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” wins WWI
“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.”
Ranger’s boom ended in the early 1920s when excess oil production caused wells to fail, but the discoveries confirmed existence of a large petroleum-producing region, the Mid-Continent with hundreds of oilfields stretching from Texas into Oklahoma and Kansas.
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 (learn more in Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel).
Eastland County oil discoveries, which began with the “Roaring Ranger” well of 1917, brought economic booms to Ranger, Cisco, and Desdemona. 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” Museum — inside the original Texas and Pacific Railway’s depot — exhibits drilling equipment, historic photos 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.
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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.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter 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: “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 11, 2024. Original Published Date: July 1, 2004.
by Bruce Wells | Oct 8, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
Conrad Hilton saw a line of roughnecks waiting outside a Texas hotel — and recognized an opportunity.
Hilton Hotels began in 1919 after Conrad Hilton witnessed a crowd of roughnecks waiting in front of a small hotel in Cisco, Texas. He had intended to buy a bank in the booming Ranger oilfield. “He can keep his bank!” declared the businessman before buying the Mobley Hotel.
On October 17, 1917, the McCleskey No. 1 well hit an oil-bearing sand at 3,432 feet deep and launched the world-famous Ranger oilfield boom. Thanks to this “Roaring Ranger,” in just 20 months the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company — whose stock had skyrocketed from $30 to $1,250 a share — was drilling 22 wells in the area.
Conrad Hilton visited Cisco, Texas, intending to buy a bank. When the deal fell through, he went from the train station across the street to a two-story red brick building called the Mobley Hotel. He noticed roughnecks from the Ranger oilfield waiting in line for a room.
Eight Eastland County refineries were soon open or under construction, and Ranger’s four banks added $5 million in deposits. The Ranger oilfield and other nearby North Texas discoveries gained international fame by eliminating critical oil shortages during World War I — allowing the Allies to “float to victory on a wave of oil.”
Ranger’s Main Street in the 1920s. The North Texas town’s petroleum boom came at a time when the industrialized world depended more and more on oil.
Investment capital and aspiring millionaires soon overwhelmed the little town of Ranger as well as nearby Cisco, where the Texas Central Railroad crossed the Texas & Pacific.
The new Texas oilfield gave birth to countless stories of fortunes made with gushers and good luck. But one tale endures of a fortune made because oil was easier to find than a good place to sleep.
The McCleskey No. 1 well struck oil in October 1917, reached a daily production of 1,700 barrels — and launched an economic boom in Eastland County, Texas.
Conrad Hilton learned the banking business in his hometown of San Antonio, New Mexico (still a territory when he was born there in 1887). As a young man with only $2,900 capital, he founded the New Mexico State Bank of San Antonio. His tenacity in pursuit of investors and deposits paid off.
In two years, Hilton built his bank’s assets to $135,000. He believed he had found his life’s work. World War I interrupted his plans, prompting Hilton to sell his bank and serve his country.
A postcard provides a view of downtown Cisco, Texas, in the 1920s.
Upon returning from France after the Armistice, Hilton began anew. He set out for Albuquerque, determined to start again in the banking business. But times had changed and banking opportunities had dried up. Despite Hilton’s best efforts, he couldn’t break back into the business.
Then a longtime Albuquerque friend, Emmett Vaughey, suggested Texas, where the Ranger oilfield was making millionaires. Persuaded and confident, Hilton boarded the train bound for Wichita Falls.
However, just as Hilton had discovered in Albuquerque, there was no room for a “new guy” in the solidly locked-up banking community of Wichita Falls. The same was true even further south, in Breckenridge.
Disappointed but determined, Hilton continued down the Texas Central Railroad to the Cisco railway station, just east of Ranger’s booming oilfield in Eastland County. He was 31 years old and determined to build a banking empire.
Conrad Hilton described his first hotel as “a cross between a flophouse and a gold mine.”
With $5,011 in his pockets, Hilton walked to the first bank he saw in Cisco and found to his delight that it was for sale — asking price — $75,000. Accustomed to finding financial backers and undeterred by the $70,000 shortfall, he wired the absentee Kansas City owner to close the deal.
First Hilton Hotel
Conrad Hilton was poised to build the banking empire he had long dreamed of when the Cisco bank seller sent him a telegram tersely raising the sale price to $80,000.
In his autobiography, Be My Guest, Conrad Hilton recalled telling the startled telegraph operator, “He can keep his bank! Then I strode out of the station and across the street to a two-story red brick building boosting itself as the ‘Mobley Hotel.’”
Henry Mobley, the hotel’s owner, was making the most he could off of the Ranger oilfield boom. His lobby was constantly packed with tired workers, maneuvering for space and impatiently awaiting their turn to rent a room. Mobley rented the hotel’s 40 beds in eight-hour blocks corresponding to shifts.
The Mobley Hotel, purchased by Conrad Hilton in 1919, today serves as a community center — and tourist attraction.
Hilton joined the crowd in line, suddenly alert to an unanticipated opportunity. He approached Henry Mobley, who was convinced that the real money was in oil, not in the “glorified boarding house” business. Before long, they closed a $40,000 deal and Conrad Hilton had his first hotel. He would never return to banking.
Later in the year, with profits earned from the Mobley Hotel, Hilton bought the Melba Hotel in Fort Worth, and the following year the Waldorf in Dallas.
Although petroleum production from the Ranger field collapsed in 1921, taking with it scores of businesses and a number of failed banks, Hilton’s business continued to expand.
By 1923. Hilton owned five Texas hotels; the Dallas Hilton in 1925 became the first to use the Hilton name. By 1930, he was the largest hotel operator in the region.
The Depression and the years that followed brought Hilton many challenges. While memories of the Ranger boom slipped away, his business grew to dominate the hotel marketplace.
The Mobley building endures as a Cisco landmark and museum. Two of the hotel’s original rooms have been restored.
According to a National Register of listed sites narrative about the Mobley Hotel, Hilton considered his purchase the “ideal hotel to practice on.” Two principles now basic to all Hilton hotels were first tried in the Mobley: maximum reduction of wasted space and “esprit de corps” among the employees.
Hilton is remembered not as a banker but as a preeminent hotelier…and an oilfield entrepreneur. The restored and renovated Mobley Hotel, which Hilton once referred to as “a cross between a flophouse and a gold mine,” has become home to the Cisco Chamber of Commerce and serves as a community center, museum, and park.
Hilton later said he regarded his oil boom town purchase as his “first love” and “a great lady.”
In the years after World War I, as more “motor hotels” opened for automobile travelers, Hilton’s hotel competitors coined the term motel by 1925.
Learn more North Texas oil and gas history in Pump Jack Capital of Texas.
Bad Santa of Cisco
Adding to the lore of Cisco, Texas — in addition to being near the 1917 “Roaring Ranger” oilfield and home of Hilton’s first hotel — on December 23, 1927, a man disguised as Santa Claus made an ill-fated attempt to rob a bank two days before Christmas.
Marshall Ratliff donned a Santa Claus disguise and tried to rob the First National Bank with three armed accomplices. A running gun battle with police and citizens ensued before Ratliff was captured.
The mortal wounding of a guard during an escape attempt sealed bank-robbing Santa’s fate.
“After the gun smoke cleared, six people were dead, eight others wounded, two little girls and a young man had been kidnapped, and two bloody gun battles had been fought, launching the largest manhunt in Texas history,” explained Damon C. Sasser in “The Bloody Cisco Santa Claus Christmas Caper.”
In November 1928, Ratliff attempted to escape from the Eastland County jail and mortally wounded a guard before being subdued. The next morning, enraged citizens dragged Ratliff from the jail and strung him up from a nearby utility pole. When the first rope broke, they got a new one that did not.
Organized in 1992, the Eastland County Museum & Historical Society maintains an archive of period photographs and other memorabilia related to the county.
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Recommended Reading: Be My Guest
(1957); Ranger, Images of America (2010). 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 become an AOGHS annual supporter 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: “Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/first-hilton-hotel. Last Updated: October 10, 2024 Original Published Date: July 1, 2005.
by Bruce Wells | Oct 3, 2024 | 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 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.
Well site 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: (I) 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.
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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.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter 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 – “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 3, 2024. Original Published Date: October 9, 2018.
by Bruce Wells | Oct 2, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
Driller of first U.S. oil well accidently ignited it 41 days later.
Along Oil Creek at Titusville, Pennsylvania, the wooden derrick and engine house of America’s first well specifically 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 | Sep 29, 2024 | 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 oil, not natural gas, that brought prosperity east of Wichita. (more…)
