by Bruce Wells | Jan 13, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
January 14, 1928 – Dr. Seuss begins illustrating Standard Oil Ads –
New York City’s Judge magazine published its first cartoon drawn by Theodor Seuss Geisel — who would develop his skills as “Dr. Seuss” while working for the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.
Theodore Geisel’s 1928 magazine cartoon featured Standard Oil’s widely popular bug spray Flit.
In the 1928 cartoon that launched his professional career as an advertising illustrator, Geisel drew a peculiar dragon trying to dodge Flit, a popular bug spray of the day. “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” soon became a catchphrase nationwide. Flit was one of Standard Oil of New Jersey’s many consumer products derived from petroleum. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 6, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
January 7, 1864 – Oilfield Discovery at Pithole Creek –
The once famous Pithole Creek
oilfield was discovered in Pennsylvania with the United States Petroleum Company’s well reportedly located using a witch-hazel dowser. The discovery well, which initially produced 250 barrels of oil a day, brought a “black gold” rush as boom town Pithole made headlines five years after the first U.S. oil well drilled at nearby Titusville.
Boom town Pithole City’s history is preserved at Pennsylvania’s Oil Creek State Park. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Adding to the boom were Civil War veterans eager to invest in the new industry. Newspaper stories added to the oil fever — as did the Legend of “Coal Oil Johnny.” Tourists today visit Oil Creek State Park and its education center on the grassy expanse that was once Pithole.
January 7, 1905 – Humble Oilfield Discovery rivals Spindletop
C.E. Barrett discovered the Humble oilfield in Harris County, Texas, with his Beatty No. 2 well, which brought another Texas drilling boom four years after Spindletop launched the modern petroleum industry. Barrett’s well produced 8,500 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 1,012 feet.
The population of Humble jumped from 700 to 20,000 within months as production reached almost 16 million barrels of oil, the largest in Texas at the time. The field directly led to the 1911 founding of the Humble Oil Company by a group that included Ross Sterling, a future governor of Texas.
An embossed postcard circa 1905 from the Postal Card & Novelty Company, courtesy the University of Houston Digital Library.
“Production from several strata here exceeded the total for fabulous Spindletop by 1946,” notes a local historic marker. “Known as the greatest salt dome field, Humble still produces and the town for which it was named continues to thrive.” Another giant oilfield discovery in 1903 at nearby Sour Lake helped establish the Texaco Company.
Humble Oil, renamed Humble Oil and Refining Company in 1917, consolidated operations with Standard Oil of New Jersey two years later, eventually leading to ExxonMobil.
January 7, 1957 – Michigan Dairy Farmer finds Giant Oilfield
After two years of drilling, a wildcat well on Ferne Houseknecht’s Michigan dairy farm discovered the state’s largest oilfield. The 3,576-foot-deep well produced from the Black River formation of the Trenton zone.
After 20 months of on-again, off-again drilling, Ferne Houseknecht’s well revealed a giant oilfield in the southern Michigan basin.
The Houseknecht No. 1 discovery well at Rattlesnake Gulch revealed a producing region 29 miles long and more than one mile wide. It prompted a drilling boom that led to production of 150 million barrels of oil and 250 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the giant Albion-Scipio field in the southern Michigan basin.
“The story of the discovery well of Michigan’s only ‘giant’ oilfield, using the worldwide definition of having produced more than 100 million barrels of oil from a single contiguous reservoir, is the stuff of dreams,” noted Michigan historian Jack Westbrook
in 2011.
Learn more in Michigan’s “Golden Gulch” of Oil.
January 7, 1913 – “Cracking” Patent improves Refining
William Burton of the Standard Oil Company’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery received a patent for a process that doubled the amount of gasoline produced from each barrel of oil refined. Burton’s invention came as gasoline demand was rapidly growing with the popularity of automobiles. His thermal cracking concept was an important refining advancement, although the process would be superseded by catalytic cracking in 1937.
January 8, 1903 – Sour Lake discovery leads to Texaco
Founded a year earlier in Beaumont, Texas, the Texas Company struck oil with its Fee No. 3 well, which flowed at 5,000 barrels a day, securing the company’s success in petroleum exploration, production, transportation and refining.
A monument marks the site where the Fee No. 3 well flowed at 5,000 barrels of oil a day in 1903, helping the Texas Company become Texaco.
“After gambling its future on the site’s drilling rights, the discovery during a heavy downpour near Sour Lake’s mineral springs, turned the company into a major oil producer overnight, validating the risk-taking insight of company co-founder J.S. Cullinan and the ability of driller Walter Sharp,” explained a Texaco historian. The Sour Lake field — and wells drilled in the Humble oilfield two years later — led to the Texas Company becoming Texaco (acquired by Chevron in 2001).
Learn more in Sour Lake produces Texaco.
January 10, 1870 – Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil Company
John D. Rockefeller and five partners incorporated the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio. The new oil and refining venture immediately focused on efficiency and growth. Instead of buying barrels, the company bought tracts of oak timber, hauled the dried timber to Cleveland on its own wagons, and built its own 42-gallon oil barrels.
A stock certificate issued in 1878 for Standard Oil Company, which would become Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) following the 1911 breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s oil monopolies.
Standard Oil’s cost per wooden barrel dropped from $3 to less than $1.50 as the company improved refining methods to extract more kerosene per barrel of oil (there was no market for gasoline). By purchasing properties through subsidiaries, dominating railroads and using local price-cutting, Standard Oil captured 90 percent of America’s refining capacity.
January 10, 1901 – Spindletop launches Modern Petroleum Industry
The modern U.S. oil and natural gas industry began 123 years ago on a small hill in southeastern Texas when a wildcat well erupted near Beaumont. The Spindletop field, which yielded 3.59 million barrels of oil by the end of 1901, would produce more oil in one day than all the rest of the world’s oilfields combined.
The Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum in Beaumont, Texas, opened in 1976 to educate visitors about the importance of the 1901 “Lucas Gusher.”
The “Lucas Gusher” and other nearby discoveries changed American transportation by providing abundant oil for cheap gasoline. The drilling boom would bring hope to a region devastated just a few months earlier by the Galveston Hurricane, still the deadliest in U.S. history. Petroleum production from the well’s geologic salt dome had been predicted by Patillo Higgins, a self-taught geologist and Sunday school teacher.
Learn more in Spindletop launches Modern Petroleum Industry.
January 10, 1919 – Elk Hills Oilfield discovered in California
Standard Oil of California discovered the Elk Hills field in Kern County, and the San Joaquin Valley soon ranked among the most productive oilfields in the country. It became embroiled in the 1920s Teapot Dome lease scandals and yielded its billionth barrel of oil in 1992. Visit the petroleum exhibits of the Kern County Museum in Bakersfield and at the West Kern Oil Museum in Taft.
January 10, 1921 – Oil Boom arrives in Arkansas
“Suddenly, with a deafening roar, a thick black column of gas and oil and water shot out of the well,” noted one observer in 1921 when the Busey-Armstrong No. 1 well struck oil near El Dorado, Arkansas. H.L. Hunt would soon arrive from Texas (with $50 he had borrowed) and join lease traders and speculators at the Garrett Hotel — where fortunes were soon made and lost. “Union County’s dream of oil had come true,” reported the local paper. The giant Arkansas field would lead U.S. oil output in 1925 with production reaching 70 million barrels.
Learn more in First Arkansas Oil Wells.
January 11, 1926 – “Ace” Borger discovers Oil in North Texas
Thousands rushed to the Texas Panhandle seeking oil riches after the Dixon Creek Oil and Refining Company completed its Smith No. 1 well, which flowed at 10,000 barrels a day in southern Hutchinson County. A.P. “Ace” Borger of Tulsa, Oklahoma, had leased a 240-acre tract. By September, the Borger oilfield was producing more than 165,000 barrels of oil a day.
A downtown museum exhibits Borger’s oil heritage. Photo by Bruce Wells.
After establishing his Borger Townsite Company, Borger laid out streets and sold lots for the town, which grew to 15,000 residents in 90 days. When the oilfield produced large amounts of natural gas, the town named its minor league baseball team the Borger Gassers. The team left the league in 1955 (owners blamed air-conditioning and television for reducing attendance).
Dedicated in 1977, the Hutchinson County Boom Town Museum in Borger celebrates “Oil Boom Heritage” every March.
January 12, 1904 – Henry Ford sets Speed Record
Seeking to prove his cars were built better than most, Henry Ford set a world land speed record on a frozen Michigan lake. At the time his Ford Motor Company was struggling to get financial backing for its first car, the Model T. It was just four years after America’s first auto auto show.
The Ford No. 999 used an 18.8 liter inline four-cylinder engine to produce up to 100 hp. Image courtesy Henry Ford Museum.
Ford drove his No. 999 Ford Arrow across Lake St. Clair, which separates Michigan and Ontario, Canada, at a top speed of 91.37 mph. The frozen lake “played an important role in automobile testing in the early part of the century,” explained Mark DIll in “Racing on Lake St. Clair” in 2009. “Roads were atrocious and there were no speedways.”
Learn about a 1973 natural gas-powered world land speed record in Blue Flame Natural Gas Rocket Car.
January 12, 1926 – Texans patent Ram-Type Blowout Preventer
Seeking to end dangerous and wasteful oil gushers, James Abercrombie and Harry Cameron patented a hydraulic ram-type blowout preventer (BOP). About four years earlier, Abercrombie had sketched out the design on the sawdust floor of Cameron’s machine shop in Humble, Texas. Petroleum companies embraced the new technology, which would be improved in the 1930s.
James Abercrombie’s design used hydrostatic pistons to close on the drill stem. His improved blowout preventer set a new standard for safe drilling
First used during the Oklahoma City oilfield boom, the BOP helped control production of the highly pressurized Wilcox sandstone (see World-Famous “Wild Mary Sudik”). The American Society of Mechanical Engineers recognized the Cameron Ram-Type Blowout Preventer as an “Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark” in 2003.
Learn more in Ending Oil Gushers – BOP.
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Recommended Reading: Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); Humble, Images of America
(2013); Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund 1976-2011: A 35-year Michigan Oil and Gas Industry Investment Heritage in Michigan’s Public Recreation Future
(2011); Handbook of Petroleum Refining Processes
(2016); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry (2016); Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
(2004); Giant Under the Hill: A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at Beaumont, Texas, in 1901
(2008); Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil: A Photographic History, 1901-1946
(1982); I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford
(2014); Drilling Technology in Nontechnical Language
(2012). 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 © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
by Bruce Wells | Dec 30, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
December 30, 1854 – First American Oil Company incorporates –
George Bissell and six investors incorporated the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York. Convinced oil could be found in northwestern Pennsylvania, Bissell formed this first U.S. petroleum exploration company “to raise, manufacture, procure and sell Rock Oil” from Hibbard Farm in Venango County. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Dec 23, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
December 23, 1919 – Home Gas Heating System –
When most American homeowners were stocking up on wood and coal to heat their homes, Alice H. Parker patented a gas furnace system with adjustable ducts. The 1910 graduate of Howard University described her patent (no. 1,325,905) as a reliable gas-heating furnace, with “individual hot air ducts leading to different parts of the building, so that heating of the various rooms or floors can be regulated as required.”
Alice Parker in 1919 patented her design for a gas furnace with adjustable hot air ducts.
Although Parker’s patent was not the first for a gas furnace design, according to Heat Treat Today, “It was unique in that it incorporated a multiple yet individually controlled burner system.” By 1927, more than 250,000 U.S. homeowners were heating with natural gas.
December 23, 1943 – Oilfield discovered in Mississippi
Gulf Oil Company discovered a new Mississippi oilfield at Heidelberg in Jasper County. The company’s surveyors had recognized the geological potential of the area southeast of Jackson as early as 1929, and Gulf Oil used newly developed seismography methods and core drilling technologies to look for oil-bearing formations.
Mississippi’s petroleum industry began with a 1939 oilfield discovery in Yazoo County.
The 1943 discovery well revealed one of the state’s largest oilfields since the Tinsley oil-producing formation in 1939. The first major Mississippi oil well was drilled following a geological survey by a young geologist — who had sought a suitable Yazoo County clay to mold cereal bowls for children. “It all began quite independently of any search for oil,” a historian later explained.
Learn more in the First Mississippi Ol Wells.
December 24, 1997 – Petroleum Products in a Holiday Classic
The TNT network began airing “24 Hours of A Christmas Story,” an annual marathon of an independent film made in 1983. The circa 1940 movie’s popularity — and merchandise sales — led to more marathons on TBS. In addition to the plastic leg lamp with black nylon polymer stocking, another petroleum product featured: a paraffin-based novelty candy.
“A Christmas Story” featured Ralphie, his 4th-grade classmates, and an unusual petroleum product. Photos courtesy MGM Home Entertainment.
Paraffin makes its appearance when Ralphie Parker and his fourth-grade classmates smuggle Wax Fangs into class. An older generation may recall the peculiar disintegrating flavor of Wax Lips, Wax Moustaches, and Wax Bottles. Few realize the candy started in the U.S. oil patch — as did another oilfield paraffin product, Crayola Crayons.
Learn more in the Oleaginous History of Wax Lips.
December 26, 1905 – Nellie Bly’s Ironclad 55-Gallon Metal Barrel
Inventor Henry Wehrhahn of Brooklyn, New York, received two patents that would lead to the modern 55-gallon steel drum. He assigned both to his employer, the famous journalist Nellie Bly, who was president of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company.
“My invention has for its object to provide a metal barrel which shall be simple and strong in construction and effective and durable in operation,” Wehrhahn noted. After receiving a second patent for detaching and securing a lid, he assigned them to Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (Nellie Bly), the recent widow of the company’s founder, Robert Seaman.
Nellie Bly was assigned a 1905 patent for the “Metal Barrel” by its inventor, Henry Wehrhahn, who worked at her Iron Clad Manufacturing Company.
Well-known as a reporter for the New York World, Bly manufactured early versions of the “Metal Barrel” that would become today’s 55-gallon steel drum. Wehrhahn later became superintendent of a steel tank company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Learn more in the Remarkable Nellie Bly’s Oil Drum.
December 28, 2017 – Smithsonian features Oilfield Nitro Factory
“The True Story of Mrs. Alford’s Nitroglycerin Factory,” proclaimed an article in Smithsonian magazine about the early oil industry. “Mary Alford remains the only woman known to own a dynamite and nitroglycerin factory,” the magazine added about the 19th-century nitroglycerin factory owner. With the Bradford, Pennsylvania, oilfield in 1881 accounting for 83 percent of all U.S. oil production, Mrs. Alford was reported to be “an astute businesswoman in the midst of America’s first billion-dollar oilfield.”
Learn more in Mrs. Alford’s Nitro Factory.
December 28, 1930 – Well reveals extent of East Texas Oilfield
Three days after Christmas, a major oil discovery on the farm of the widow Lou Della Crim of Kilgore revealed the extent of the giant East Texas oilfield. Her son, J. Malcolm Crim, had ignored advice from most geologists and explored about 10 miles north of the field’s discovery well, drilled in October by Columbus “Dad” Joiner on the farm of another widow, Daisy Bradford.
“Mrs. Lou Della Crim sits on the porch of her house and contemplates the three producing wells in her front yard,” notes the caption of this undated photo courtesy Neal Campbell, Words and Pictures.
The Lou Della Crim No. 1 well erupted oil on a Sunday morning while “Mamma” Crim was attending church. The well initially produced 20,000 barrels of oil a day.
One month later and 15 miles farther north, a third wildcat well drilled by Fort Worth wildcatter W.A. “Monty” Moncrief confirmed the true size of the largest oilfield in the continental United States. The East Texas field would encompass more than 480 square miles.
Learn more in Lou Della Crim Revealed.
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Recommended Reading: Oil in the Deep South: A History of the Oil Business in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, 1859-1945
(1993); How Sweet It Is (and Was): The History of Candy (2003); Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist
(1994); Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019); Anomalies, Pioneering Women in Petroleum Geology, 1917-2017 (2017); Images of America: Around Bradford
(1997); The Black Giant: A History of the East Texas Oil Field
(2003). 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 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.
by Bruce Wells | Dec 16, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
December 17, 1884 – Fighting Oilfield Fires with Cannons –
“Oil fires, like battles, are fought by artillery” proclaimed an article in The Tech, a student newspaper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “A Thunder-Storm in the Oil Country” featured the reporter’s firsthand account of the problem of lightning strikes in America’s oilfields.
Lightning strikes in the Great Plains resulted in oil tank fires — and the need to keep cannons nearby to shoot holes to drain the tanks. Photo courtesy Kansas Oil Museum. El Dorado, Kansas.
The MIT article not only reported on the fiery results of a lightning strike, but also the practice of using Civil War cannons to fight such conflagrations. Shooting a cannonball into the base of a burning tank allowed oil to drain safely into a holding pit until the fire died out. “Small cannons throwing a three-inch solid shot are kept at various stations throughout the region for this purpose,” the article noted.
Learn more in Oilfield Artillery fights Fires.
December 17, 1903 – Natural Gas contributes to Aviation History
A handmade engine burning 50-octane gasoline for boat engines powered Wilbur and Orville Wright’s historic 59-second flight into aviation history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers’ “mechanician,” Charlie Taylor, fabricated the 150-pound, 13-horsepower engine in their Dayton, Ohio, workshop.
Powered by natural gas, a three-horsepower engine drove belts in the Wright workshop.
The workshop included a single-cylinder, three-horsepower natural gas-powered engine that drove an overhead shaft and belts that turned a lathe, drill press — and an early, rudimentary wind tunnel. Natural gas was piped from a field in Mercer County, about 50 miles northwest.
Learn about advances in high-octane aviation fuel in Flight of the Woolaroc.
December 17, 1910 – Petrolia field brings Helium to North Texas
Although traces of oil had been found as early as 1904 in Clay County, Texas, a 1910 gusher revealed an oilfield soon named after one of the earliest boomtowns, Petrolia, Pennsylvania. The discovery well southeast of Wichita Falls produced 700 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 1,600 feet. The field’s annual oil production peaked in 1914 as discoveries at Electra and Burkburnett overshadowed Petrolia.
Helium derived from natural gas filled the U.S. Navy’s first helium airship, the Shenandoah, built in 1923 and here emerging from its Lakehurst, N.J., hangar.
However, the Petrolia natural gas contained .1 percent helium, a strategic resource at the time. (see Kansas “Wind Gas” Well). “In 1915 the United States Army built the first helium extraction plant in the country at Petrolia, and for several years the field was the sole source of helium for the country,” notes the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).
December 18, 1929 – California Oil Boom in Venice
The Ohio Oil Company completed a wildcat well in Venice, California, on the Marina Peninsula, that produced 3,000 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 6,200 feet. The Ohio Oil Company, which would become Marathon Oil of Ohio, had received a zoning variance to drill within the city limits. The Venice oilfield discovery launched another California drilling boom similar to Signal Hill eight years earlier.
California artist JoAnn Cowans painted scenes of derricks in the Venice and Brea oilfields before they were dismantled.
“The discovery of oil at the beginning of the Depression, at a time when there was little disposable income for Venice’s amusement industry, brought the possibilities of untold wealth for the community,” notes the Vince History Site. In January 1930, a crowd of 2,000 met with city officials and demanded re-zoning to allow oil drilling.
December 18, 1934 – Hunt Oil Company founded in Texas
Hunt Oil Company, among the largest privately held U.S. petroleum companies, incorporated in Delaware and opened an office in Tyler, Texas. Four years earlier, Haroldson Lafayette “H.L.” Hunt had acquired the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well and other East Texas oilfield properties from C. Marion “Dad” Joiner.
H.L. Hunt’s oil career began in Arkansas and East Texas and spanned much of the industry’s history, notes Hunt Oil Company. Photo circa 1911.
“H.L. Hunt bought the lease out ‘lock, stock and barrel,’ financing the deal with a first-of-its-kind agreement to make payments from future ‘down-the-hole’ production,” according to Hunt Energy. “The Bradford No. 3 turned out to be the discovery well of the great East Texas oilfield, which, at the time, was the greatest oilfield in the world.”
Hunt Oil moved its headquarters to Dallas in 1937 and drilled the first Alabama oil well in 1944. The company began offshore exploration in 1958 with leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
December 19, 1924 – Government debates Oil Conservation
Declaring “the supremacy of nations may be determined by the possession of available petroleum and its products,” President Calvin Coolidge appointed a Federal Oil Conservation Board to appraise oil policies and promote conservation of the strategic resource.
With Navy ships converting to oil from coal (see Petroleum and Sea Power), the resulting crude oil shortages in 1919 and 1920 gave credibility to predictions of domestic supplies running out within a decade, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Debates about oil conservation continued during establishment of President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 — and its rejection as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.
December 20, 1951 – Oil discovered in Washington State
A short-lived oil discovery in Washington foretold the state’s production future. The Hawksworth Gas and Oil Development Company exploratory well was completed near Ocean City, producing 35 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 3,700 feet before being abandoned as noncommercial. In 1967, Sunshine Mining Company deepened the well to more than 4,500 feet, but with only minor shows of oil, it was shut in again.
Washington’s 1951 lone oil well yielded a total of just 12,500 barrels of oil over a decade of production.
By 2010, of the 600 exploratory wells drilled in 24 Washington counties, only one produced commercial quantities of oil — a 1959 well completed by Sunshine Mining Company 600 yards north of the failed Hawksworth site. That well, Washington’s only commercial producer, was capped in 1961.
“The geology is too broken up and it does not have the kind of sedimentary basins they have off the coast of California,” explained a Washington Natural Resources geologist in 1997 (also see California Oil Seeps).
December 21, 1842 – Birth of an Oil Town “Bird’s-Eye View” Artist
Panoramic map artist Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Following the fortunes of America’s early petroleum industry, he would produce hundreds of unique maps of the earliest oilfield towns of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas.
Oil City, Pennsylvania, prospered soon after America’s first commercial oil discovery in 1859 at nearby Titusville. T.M. Fowler 1896 map courtesy Library of Congress.
Fowler was one of the most prolific of the bird’s-eye view artists who crisscrossed the country during the latter three decades of the 19th century and early 20th century, according to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas. Seemingly drawn from great heights, the views were made with skillful cartographic techniques.
More than 400 Thaddeus Fowler panoramas have been identified by the Library of Congress, including this detail of the booming oil town of Sistersville, West Virginia, published in 1896.
Fowler featured many of Pennsylvania’s earliest oilfield towns, including Titusville and Oil City — and the booming community of Sistersville in the new state of West Virginia. He traveled through Oklahoma and Texas in 1890 and 1891 similarly documenting Bartlesville, Tulsa, and Wichita Falls.
Learn more in Oil Town “Aero Views.”
December 21, 1909 – Arctic Explorer turned Oil Promoter
One year after making widely accepted claims to have reached the North Pole, a special commission at the University of Copenhagen ruled explorer Dr. Frederick Cook had no evidence he reached the pole during his arctic journey. Cook had already become a celebrity when Admiral Robert E. Peary achieved that milestone in April 1909.
Despite the commission’s ruling, Cook used his fame to promote fraudulent oil exploration ventures in Texas, Wyoming, Arkansas, and other states. In 1923. he was convicted of mail fraud and served prison time in Leavenworth, Kansas, until pardoned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.
Learn more in Arctic Explorer turned Oil Promoter.
December 22, 1875 – Grant seeks Asphalt for Pennsylvania Avenue
President Ulysses S. Grant convinced Congress to repave Pennsylvania Avenue’s badly deteriorated plank boards with asphalt. Grant delivered to Congress a “Report of the Commissioners Created by the Act Authorizing the Repavement of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Pennsylvania Avenue was first paved with Trinidad bitumen in 1876. Above, asphalt distilled from petroleum in 1907 repaved the road to the Capitol.
The project would cover 54,000 square yards. “Brooms, lutes, squeegees and tampers were used in what was a highly labor-intensive process.” With work completed in the spring of 1877, the asphalt – obtained from a naturally occurring bitumen lake found on the island of Trinidad – would last more than 10 years.
In 1907, the road to the Capitol was repaved again with a superior asphalt made with petroleum from U.S. oilfields. By 2005, the Federal Highway Administration reported that more than 2.6 million miles of America’s roads were paved.
Learn more in Asphalt Paves the Way.
December 22, 1903 – Carl Baker patents Cable-Tool Bit
Reuben Carlton “Carl” Baker of Coalinga, California, patented an innovative cable-tool drill bit in 1903 after founding the Coalinga Oil Company.
“While drilling around Coalinga, Baker encountered hard rock layers that made it difficult to get casing down a freshly drilled hole,” noted a Baker-Hughes historian in 2007. “To solve the problem, he developed an offset bit for cable-tool drilling that enabled him to drill a hole larger than the casing.”
Baker Tools Company founder R.C. “Carl” Baker in 1919.
Coalinga would become a petroleum boom town thanks to Baker’s leadership, according to the town’s museum. He helped establish several oil companies, a bank, and the local power company. After drilling wells in the Kern River oilfield, he added another innovation in 1907 by patenting the Baker Casing Shoe, a device ensuring uninterrupted flow of oil through the well.
By 1913 Baker organized the Baker Casing Shoe Company (renamed Baker Tools two years later). He opened his first manufacturing plant in Coalinga in a building — today home to the R.C. Baker Museum. Baker never advanced beyond the third grade, but “possessed an incredible understanding of mechanical and hydraulic systems.”
Learn more in Carl Baker and Howard Hughes.
December 22, 1975 – Strategic Petroleum Reserve established
President Gerald R. Ford established the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve by signing the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. With a capacity of 713.5 million barrels of oil in 2018, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency oil in the world. SPR storage sites include five salt domes on the Gulf Coast. In addition to SPR, the Department of Energy maintains a Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve of one million barrels and a one million barrel supply of gasoline.
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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); The Wright Brothers
(2016); Helium: Its Creation, Discovery, History, Production, Properties and Uses (2022); Black Gold, the Artwork of JoAnn Cowans
(2009); The Three Families of H. L. Hunt: The True Story of the Three Wives, Fifteen Children, Countless Millions, and Troubled Legacy of the Richest Man in America
(1989); Bird’s Eye Views: Historic Lithographs of North American Cities
(1998); Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City
(1994); History of Oil Well Drilling
(2007). 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 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.
by Bruce Wells | Dec 9, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
December 9, 1921 – Scientists discover Anti-Knock Properties of Leaded Gas –
Working for General Motors, scientists Thomas Midgely Jr. and Charles Kettering discovered the antiknock properties of tetraethyl lead. They had spent years examining properties of knock suppressors such as bromine and iodine, but when tetraethyl lead (diluted to a ratio of one part per thousand) was added to the gasoline of a one-cylinder engine, the knocking abruptly disappeared.
Public health concerns would lead to phase-out of tetraethyl lead in gasoline.
GM’s leaded compound went on sale for the first time on February 2, 1923, at a service station in Dayton, Ohio. High-octane leaded gas would prove vital during World War II — even as concerns about tetraethyl lead’s serious health dangers continued to grow. These concerns resulted in its phase-out for use in cars beginning in 1976. Tetraethyl lead has continued to be used in aviation fuel.
Learn more in Ethyl “Anti-Knock” Gas.
December 9, 1924 – Oklahoma Oil Boom at Seminole
Drilling in the Greater Seminole area of Oklahoma, Amerada Petroleum Corporation discovered the Bethel oilfield and its highly pressurized producing zone, the Wilcox sand. The discovery launched another drilling boom in an area where one year earlier independent producer Joe Cromwell had found the Seminole oilfield at a depth of about 3,500 feet. By 1926, yet another discovery opened the Earlsboro field, followed within days by a discovery well that produced 1,100 barrels of oil a day from the Seminole City field.
Learn more in Seminole Oil Boom.
December 10, 1844 – Future “Coal Oil Johnny” adopted in Pennsylvania
A baby who would grow up to become famously known as “Coal Oil Johnny” was adopted by Culbertson and Sarah McClintock. John Steele was brought home to the McClintock farm on the banks of Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania.
John Washington Steele
The petroleum drilling boom prompted by Edwin L. Drake’s discovery 15 years later — America’s first commercial oil well — would lead to the widow McClintock making a fortune in oil royalties. She left the money to Johnny when she died in 1864. At age 20, he inherited $24,500 and $2,800 a day in royalties.
“Coal Oil Johnny” Steele earned his name in 1865 after such a legendary year of extravagance that the New York Times later reported: “In his day, Steele was the greatest spender the world had ever known…he threw away $3 million ($50 million in 2021 dollars) in less than a year.”
Learn more in Legend of “Coal Oil Johnny.“
December 10, 1955 – LIFE features Stella Dysart’s Uranium Well
Mrs. Stella Dysart spent decades fruitlessly searching for oil in New Mexico. Some questionable business dealings led to bankruptcy in the late 1930s, but in 1955, a radioactive uranium sample from one of her failed oil wells made her a very wealthy woman.
LIFE magazine featured Stella Dysart in December 1955.
Dysart was 78 years old when LIFE magazine featured her picture with the caption: “Wealthy landowner, Mrs. Stella Dysart, stands before an abandoned oil rig which she set up on her property in a long vain search for oil. Now uranium is being mined there and Mrs. Dysart, swathed in mink, gets a plump royalty.”
Just three years before the article, Dysart had been $25,000 in debt when cuttings from one of her “dusters” in McKinley County registered strong Geiger counter readings. Test wells confirmed that she owned the world’s richest deposit of high-grade uranium ore.
Learn more in Mrs. Dysart’s Uranium Well.
December 10, 1967 – Project Gasbuggy tests Nuclear Fracturing
Government scientists detonated a 29-kiloton nuclear warhead in a natural gas well about 60 miles east of Farmington, New Mexico. It was “fracking” late 1960s style, designed to test the feasibility of using nuclear explosions to stimulate release of gas trapped in shale deposits.
Scientists in December 1967 lowered a 29-kiloton nuclear device into a New Mexico gas well. Photo courtesy Department of Energy.
Project Gasbuggy included experts from the Atomic Energy Commission, the Bureau of Mines, and El Paso Natural Gas Company. Near three low-production natural gas wells, the team drilled to a depth of 4,240 feet and lowered a 13-foot by 18-inch diameter nuclear device into the borehole.
The experimental explosion was part a series of federal projects known as “Plowshare,” created in the late 1950s to explore peaceful uses of nuclear devices. The Project Gasbuggy downhole detonation created a molten glass-lined cavern 160 feet wide and 333 feet tall that collapsed within seconds. The well produced 295 million cubic feet of natural gas, but the gas was radioactive and useless.
Learn more in Project Gasbuggy tests Nuclear “Fracking.”
December 11, 1950 – Federal Offshore grows beyond Cannon Shot
After decades of controversy and a 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the federal government’s “paramount rights” offshore were established beyond a three nautical mile limit, an 18th century precedent based on the theoretical maximum range of a smooth-bore cannon. The nation’s highest court prohibited any further offshore development without federal approval. In 1954, the Bureau of Land Management held the first Outer Continental Shelf lease sale, earning the government almost $130 million.
Learn more in Offshore Petroleum History.
December 11, 1972 – First Geologist walks on Moon
Astronaut and geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt stepped on the moon, joining Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan. Lunar experiments included a surface gravimeter to measure buried geological structures near the landing site. Schmitt also returned with the largest lunar sample ever collected.
Geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt examined a boulder at the Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow Valley lunar landing site in December 1972. Photo courtesy NASA.
Schmitt, who in 1964 received a PhD in geology from Harvard, was the first and last scientist on the moon, according to Cernan. When they left the Taurus-Littrow Valley landing site on December 14, 1972, he and the lunar geologist were the last of 12 men to walk on the moon. The 19th century petroleum product kerosene fueled all of the launches.
December 13, 1905 – Hybrids evolve with Gas Shortage Fears
“The available supply of gasoline, as is well known, is quite limited, and it behooves the farseeing men of the motor car industry to look for likely substitutes,” proclaimed the monthly journal Horseless Age.
An early hybrid, this 1902 Porsche used a gas engine to generate electricity to power motors mounted on the front wheel hubs.
The magazine, first published in 1895, described early motor technologies, including the use of compressed air propulsion systems, electric cars, steam, and diesel power — as well as hybrids.
About the time of the first American auto show in November 1900, engineer Ferdinand Porsche introduced his gas-electric “Mixte” in Europe. The hybrid used a four-cylinder gasoline engine to generate electricity. The engine powered two three-horsepower electric motors mounted on the front wheel hubs. The car could achieve a top speed of 50 mph.
December 13, 1931 – Oilfield discovered in Conroe, Texas
Independent producer George Strake Sr. completed the South Texas Development Company No. 1 well eight miles southeast of Conroe, Texas, where he had leased 8,500 acres. By the end of 1932 the oilfield was producing more than 65,000 of barrels of oil a day. But disaster struck in the Conroe field in 1933 when derricks and equipment collapsed into a burning crater of oil. The fire would be put out thanks to relief wells drilled by George Failing and his newly patented truck-mounted drilling method (see Technology and the Conroe Crater).
December 13, 1985 – Route 66 decertified
Route 66, the “Mother Road” of modern highways since 1926, was decertified by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which also voted to remove all Route 66 signs. Once stretching more than 2,400 miles from Illinois to California, the historic route was trailblazed in 1857 by a War Department expedition that included camels as pack animals.
By World War II, automobiles and trucks on the iconic roadway “helped to facilitate the single greatest wartime mobilization of labor in the history of the nation,” according to the National Park Service (NPS). By 1985, Route 66’s narrow asphalt paving and antiquated structure had been bypassed by the interstate system.
Learn more U.S. transportation history in America on the Move.
December 14, 1981 – Dowsing No Help in finding Minnesota Oil
Seeking oil investors, a Minnesota promoter proclaimed that dowsing with copper wires had located petroleum deposits in Nobles County, according to the Minneapolis Tribune, which reported the promoter had hired, “a Texas oilman and evangelist to lead a prayerful search for oil.” Despite no geological evidence, local investors paid $175,000 to drill a well that found no indication of oil or natural gas after reaching a depth of 1,500 feet.
Minnesota is one of 17 states without any oil or natural gas production, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
The Minnesota Geological Survey had reported in 1980 that of the state’s 17 exploratory wells drilled, “in suitable geologic settings,” none discovered commercial quantities of oil. The survey concluded, “the geologic conditions for significant deposits of oil and gas do not exist in Minnesota.”
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Recommended Reading: Fill’er Up!: The Great American Gas Station
(2013); A History of the Greater Seminole Oil Field (1981); The Legend of Coal Oil Johnny
(2007); Project Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War America
(2012); Stella Dysart of Ambrosia Lake: Courage, Fortitude and Uranium in New Mexico
(1959); Apollo and America’s Moon Landing Program: Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing
(2017); Electric and Hybrid Cars: A History
(2010); Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City (1994).
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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.
