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…)
Among its petroleum history records, Florida’s first — but not last — unsuccessful attempt to find commercially viable oil reserves began in 1901, not far from the Gulf Coast panhandle town of Pensacola. Two exploratory wells, the first drilled to a depth of 1,620 feet and the second reaching 100 feet deeper, were abandoned. (more…)
Following the 1859 first commercial U.S. oil discovery in Pennsylvania, the earliest petroleum exploration companies were attracted to California’s natural oil seeps. Small but promising discoveries after the Civil War led to the state’s first gusher in 1876 — and the launching of a new California industry.
Pico Canyon, less than 35 miles north of Los Angeles, produced limited amounts of oil as early as 1855, but there was no market for the petroleum found near natural oil seeps. The first California drilling boom arrived a decade later in the northern part of the state with an oilfield also found near seeps.
Completed in 1865 by the Old Union Matolle Oil Company, the Humboldt County well produced oil near the aptly named Petrolia. The oilfield discovery quickly attracted some of America’s earliest exploration companies.
Detail of a 1908 “Map of Humboldt County Oil Lands” includes post-Civil War commercial oil wells that attracted more drilling to northern California. Map courtesy Humboldt County Map Collection, Cal Poly Humboldt Library Special Collection.
A California historical marker (no. 543) dedicated on November 10, 1955, declared:
California’s First Drilled Oil Wells — California’s first drilled oil wells producing crude to be refined and sold commercially were located on the north fork of the river approximately three miles east of here. The Old Union Mattole Oil Company made its first shipment of oil from here in June 1865 to a San Francisco refinery. Many old wellheads remain today.
Although the “Old Union well” initially yielded about 30 barrels of high-quality oil, production declined to one barrel of oil per day, and the prospect was abandoned, according to K.R. Aalto, a geologist at Humboldt State University.
The Humboldt County well in what became the oilfield “attracted interest and investment among oilmen because of the abundance of oil and gas seeps throughout that region,” Aalto noted in his 2011 article in Oil-Industry History. But the California petroleum industry truly began to the south, at Pico Canyon Oilfield, a few miles west of Newhall.
In Pico Canyon of the Santa Susana Mountains, Charles A. Mentry (1847-1900), who had formed a partnership establishing the California Star Oil Works Company, drilled three exploratory wells between 1875 and 1876. All showed promise, and the first West Coast oil gusher arrived with his fourth well. The oilfield discovery would lead to the creation of a major oil company.
The steam boiler and cable tools, including the “walking beam,” of Pico Well No. 4 in 1877. Photo by Carleton Watkins courtesy Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.
Drilling with a steam-powered cable-tool rig in an area known for its many oil seeps, Mentry discovered the Pico Canyon oilfield north of Los Angeles. California’s first truly commercial oil well, the Pico Well No. 4 gusher of September 26, 1876, prompted more development, including pipeline construction and an oil refinery for producing kerosene.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, the well initially produced 25 barrels a day from 370 feet. Mentry improvised many of his cable tools, including making a drill stem out of old railroad car axles he welded together.
“The railroad had not then been completed, there was no road into the canyon, water was almost unattainable, and there were no adequate tools or machinery to be had,” noted the Times article.
Charles Mentry had already successfully drilled 42 wells near Titusville, Pennsylvania, before exploring in the Santa Clara Valley — and launching California’s petroleum industry. Photo courtesy KHTS Radio, Santa Clara.
Mentry persevered, and his success in Pico Canyon led to the founding of “Mentryville,” the onetime drilling boom town that is today the site of Stevenson Ranch.
“Although his life was tragically cut short by illness on October 4, 1900, from typhoid fever, Mentry’s legacy as a pioneer in California’s oil industry endures,” noted KHTS Radio, Santa Clara. “His work in Pico Canyon not only made him a key figure in the region’s development but also set the stage for California’s future as an oil-rich state,” KHTS reported in 2025.
Visit the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society website to learn more Pico Canyon petroleum exploration and production history.
California Star Oil Works deepened the well to 560 feet, increasing daily production by 125 barrels, and constructed its pipeline from Pico Canyon to the newly built refinery in Newhall, just south of Santa Clarita.
By 1880, California’s first commercial refinery processed oil from its first commercial oil well to make kerosene and other products. Photo courtesy the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society.
Producing kerosene and lubricants, Newhall’s Pioneer Refinery on Pine Street would become the first successful commercial refinery in the West. Giant stills set on brick foundations included two capable of producing 150 barrels a day each. The city of Santa Clarita received California’s first successful refinery as a gift from Chevron in 1997.
The Santa Clarita refinery, today preserved as a tourist attraction, is among the oldest in the world. The major oil company can trace its beginnings to the 1876 Pico Canyon oil well, which has been designated a historic site by the California Office of Historic Preservation.
Chevron Corporation, once the Standard Oil Company of California, in 1900 acquired Pacific Coast Oil Company. Pacific Coast had become majority owner of California Star Oil Works in 1879.
Santa Clarita acquired California’s first refinery as a gift from Chevron in 1997. It is one of the oldest existing oil refinery sites in the world. Photo by Konrad Summers.
California’s commercial refineries were among the first in America, where the industry began with small refineries in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, producing kerosene for lamps. The oil came from Titusville area oilfields — and a giant 1871 field discovered at Bradford, about 70 miles to the northeast.
The Bradford oilfield, which became known as America’s “first billion-dollar oilfield,” launched many Pennsylvania refineries, including the still-operating American Refining Group. The field’s first well produced just 10 barrels a day from 1,110 feet.
By 1875. Bradford leases reached as high as $1,000 per acre. A decade later, a sudden decline in the oilfield’s production led to a technological breakthrough. Pioneers in the new science of petroleum geology suggested that water pressure on oil sands could be used to increase oil production — “waterflooding” the geologic formation.
The oldest operating U.S. oil refinery began in 1881 in Bradford, Pennsylvania.
In Neodesha, Kansas, the Norman No. 1 well of 1892 revealed a petroleum-rich geologic region that would extend across Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. Standard Oil built a refinery in Neodesha in 1897 that refined 500 barrels of oil a day. Standard was the first to process oil from the giant Mid-Continent field (learn more in Kansas Well reveals Mid-Continent).
In 2024, there were 134 operable petroleum refineries in the United States, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The newest refinery with significant downstream capacity — a facility in Garyville, Louisiana — came online in 1977.
Built in 1897, a Standard Oil refinery in Neodesha, Kansas, refined 500 barrels of oil per day – the first to process oil from the Mid-Continent field. From “Kansas Memory” collection of the Kansas Historical Society.
For an investigation into which California oil well was the first, see this 2011 SearchReSearch blog of Dan Russell.
Learn more California petroleum history in the Signal Hill Oil Boom.
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Recommended Reading: California State University, Dominguez Hills
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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 © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information: Article Title: “First California Oil Well.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/first-california-oil-well. Last Updated: September 17, 2025. Original Published Date: September 9, 2015.
The first Louisiana oil well in 1901 revealed the giant Jennings field and launched the Pelican State’s petroleum industry. By 1911, offshore exploration included barges, floating pile drivers, and drilling platforms on Caddo Lake.
Nine months after the 1901 “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop, Texas, oil erupted 90 miles to the east in Louisiana. W. Scott Heywood — already a successful wildcatter at Spindletop — drilled the discovery well of the Jennings oilfield. His September 21, 1901, gusher initially produced 7,000 barrels of oil a day.
Louisiana’s first commercial oil well, the Jules Clements No. 1, was completed on the Clements farm, about seven miles northeast of the small town of Jennings.
Mrs. Scott Heywood, “the widow of Louisiana’s oil discoverer, the late W. Scott Heywood,” unveiled a historical marker on September 23, 1951, as part of the Louisiana Golden Oil Jubilee. Times Picayune (New Orleans) image courtesy Calcasieu Parish Public Library.
Local investors earlier had formed the Jennings Oil Company and hired Scott, who recognized that natural gas seeps found nearby were nearly identical to the conditions observed at Spindletop. Scott would insist on drilling deeper than many investors thought wise.
The Jennings Oil Company No. 1 well, which discovered the first commercial oilfield in Louisiana on September 21, 1901. Photo courtesy Louisiana Geological Survey.
“At the age 29, W. Scott Haywood was already a seasoned, experienced and successful explorer,” noted Scott Smiley, a Louisiana Geological Survey (LGS) historian. “He had gone to Alaska in 1897 during the great Yukon gold rush, sinking a shaft and mining a profitable gold deposit.”
Haywood, who also had drilled several successful oil wells in California, was one of the first to reach Spindletop following news of the January 1901 oilfield discovery. Haywood eventually convinced the reluctant Clements to allow drilling in the farmer’s Acadia Parish rice field. The Clements farm was at the small, unincorporated community of Evangeline, northeast of Jennings.
Walter Scott Heywood (1872-1950)
However, after drilling to 1,000 feet without finding oil or natural gas, the Jennings Oil Company’s investors wanted to abandon the first attempt.
“After all, 1,000 feet had been deep enough to discover the tremendous oil gushers at Spindletop field,” explained Smiley in a 2001 history of the Jennings field. “Instead of drilling two wells to a depth of 1,000 feet each, Heywood persuaded the investors to change the contract to accept a single well drilled to a depth of 1,500 feet.”
More drilling pipe was brought in and the well deepened.
Heywood found signs of oil at a depth of 1,700 feet – after some discouraged investors had sold their stock when drilling reached 1,000 feet. By 1,500 feet, shares of the Jennings Oil Company still sold for as little as 25 cents each. Patient investors were rewarded when 7,000 barrels of oil per day suddenly erupted from the well.
“The well flowed sand and oil for seven hours and covered Clement’s rice field with a lake of oil and sand, ruining several acres of rice,” reported the Jennings Daily News.
W. Scott Heywood (5) and Elmer Dobbins (3) — “one of the drillers of the original Spindletop discovery in Texas.” Photo courtesy Louisiana Geological Survey.
Although the Jules Clements No. 1 well is on only a 1/32 of an acre lease, it marked the state’s first oil production and launched the Louisiana petroleum industry. It opened the prolific Jennings field, which Heywood developed by securing leases and building pipelines and storage tanks. The Jennings oilfield reached its peak production of more than nine million barrels in 1906.
Meanwhile, an October 1905 discovery in northern Louisiana further expanded the state’s young petroleum industry. Another giant oilfield arrived in January 1919 when Consolidated Progressive Oil Company completed a well four miles west of Homer in Claiborne Parish.
“Homer was a happening place and all people could think about was oil, notes Wesley Harris in Oil Boom Overwhelmed Homer. “Imagine Homer’s courthouse square with no place to park, nowhere to eat, and business establishments packed to overflowing.” Visit the Louisiana Oil Museum in aptly named Oil City.
According to Smiley, Scott Haywood returned to Alaska in 1908 on a big-game hunting trip. The geologist then retraced much of his travels to the Klondike gold fields.
“After a brief retirement in California, he returned to Jennings and drilled several wells at Jennings and elsewhere in Louisiana,” Smiley reports, adding that as an independent producer, Haywood found success drilling in the Borger and Panhandle oilfields in Texas.
Rapid development of the Jennings oilfield in the early 1900s led to new conservation laws. A lack of spacing regulations forced “each leaseholder to drill their own well to prevent the draining of oil from the lease by an adjacent well.” Circa early 1900s photo courtesy Louisiana Geological Survey.
“Heywood returned to Jennings in 1927 and assisted Gov. Huey P. Long in passing legislation to provide schoolbooks for children,” concluded the geologist in Jennings Field – The Birthplace of Louisiana’s Oil Industry, September 2001.
Gulf Refining Company in 1911 drilled Ferry Lake No. 1 on Caddo Lake, Louisiana, using a fleet of tugboats, barges, and floating pile drivers. When the first well produced 450 barrels of oil per day, Gulf constructed platforms every 600 feet on each 10-acre lakebed (see Offshore Drilling History).
Although the Caddo Lake wells were often cited as the birthplace of America’s offshore drilling industry, oil patch historian in Mercer County, Ohio, discovered oil was produced from platforms on Grand Lake St. Marys as early as 1887.
In Pennsylvania, about 15 miles east of the first U.S. well at Titusville, dozens of wells produced oil on Tidioute Island and from rafts in the Alleghany River in the fall of 1860, according to the according to the Warren County Historical Society.
Extensive research by a retired professor at McNeese State University in Lake Charles challenged Louisiana petroleum history in 2011, according to the Southwest Daily News in Sulphur. The newspaper reported a September presentation at a Lake Charles library by Thomas Watson, PhD, who taught at McNeese State for 35 years, including a decade as the head of the history department.
“Dr. Thomas Watson has uncovered evidence that the first producing oil well in Louisiana was at the Sulphur Mines in 1886,” noted the newspaper, which was closed in 2024 after being acquired by MediaNews Group.
“This information could alter the history of oil production in Louisiana,” proclaimed the article, adding, “The interesting fact he has discovered in his research was announced formally at the Carnegie Library during a 10 a.m. presentation entitled ‘Oil and Sulphur Drilling’ on Sept. 6, 2011.”
The Weekly Echo was established in 1868, the same year Lake Charles was officially incorporated. The paper dropped the word “weekly” from its title in 1876, becoming the Lake Charles Echo, which ceased in 1898. Image courtesy Library of Congress (LOC).
Professor Thomas Watson’s 2011 Carnegie Library presentation on Louisiana petroleum history began with a story, according to the Southwest Daily News article “Retired Professor Challenges Louisiana Oil History.”
“There’s a story of D.S. Perkins, who saw a bear come out of the woods with oil on its paw. The group traced the tracks back to a spring (Choupique Bayou) with oil collecting on top. It came to be known as Oil Springs,” began Watson slowly. He explained that the oil spring produced a useable lubricant that was collected by people living around the area.
But the dream of oil was still alive. The Sulphur company decided to drill again in 1886.
During these years the Weekly Echo was the Lake Charles newspaper at the time, with editor John Wesley Bryan and publisher Dr. William H. Kirkman. Dr. Kirkman, along with the Perkins brothers from Sulphur, Eli and William, was following the activity at the mine and they, along with other investors, decided to drill again.
When the news broke out, the Weekly Echo announced a blow out! Gas came rushing back up to the surface. The well was capped, and the flow of oil was evaluated to [be] 25 barrels a day.
Watson said he considered it to be a heavy oil because it was perceived to be a first class lubricant. Good lube oil sold for more that thin oil (what Pennsylvania was selling). Louisiana crude would go for $5 a gallon as opposed to Pennsylvania oil at $1 a gallon.
The Weekly Echo documented the production and sale of oil from that Sulphur Mine source for three years. One report indicated maximum production hit 100 barrels a day. There were writings at the time that reported that the land around the Sulphur Mines was the richest 54 acres in the US at that time and this was true from 1895 until the 1920’s.
Therefore, 15 years earlier than the production of oil in Evangeline, they were marketing oil from Sulphur. Watson concluded his presentation citing Samuel Lockett documents.
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Recommended Reading: Louisiana’s Oil Heritage, Images of America
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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 © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “First Louisiana Oil Well.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/first-louisiana-oil-well. Last Updated: September 15, 2025. Original Published Date: September 1, 2005.
After decades of expensive failed exploration attempts (and a few small producers), the first significant Utah oil well was completed on September 18, 1948, in the Uinta Basin. The Ashley Valley No. 1 well, about 10 miles southeast of Vernal, produced 300 barrels a day from a depth of 4,152 feet.
“The honor of bringing in the state’s first commercial oil well went not to the ‘Majors’ but to an ‘Independent’ — the Equity Oil Company,” noted a Utah historian in 1963.
The Uinta Basin witnessed Utah’s first drilling boom following a 1948 oil discovery. A modern boom would return thanks to coalbed methane gas. Photo courtesy Utah State Historical Society.
Lyne Taliaferro Barret completed the first Texas oil well on September 12, 1866. Barret had intended to drill before the Civil War, but paused exploration to serve as a captain in the Quartermaster Corps, Confederate States of America, for the Nacogdoches district. His 1866 well west of the Sabine River did not produce commercial quantities of oil, so it lay dormant for nearly two decades.
In December 1859, less than four months after the successful drilling of Edwin L. Drake’s first U.S. oil well in Pennsylvania, a similarly determined petroleum pioneer named Lyne (Lynis) Taliaferro Barret began searching in East Texas. He look in an area known as Oil Springs. (more…)
