William Crapo “Billy” Durant, co-owner of America’s largest manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages, founded General Motors Holding Company in Flint, Michigan. The Durant-Dort Carriage Company, which had taken control of Buick Motor Company, would soon acquire Olds Motor Works of Detroit. (more…)
A 40-kiloton nuclear device was detonated about eight miles southeast of present-day Parachute, in Garfield County, Colorado. Project Rulison was the second of three natural-gas-reservoir stimulation tests that were part of Operation Plowshare, a government program to study uses of nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes.
The first nuclear fracturing test, Project Gasbuggy, detonated a 29-kiloton device in a New Mexico well in December 1967. The third unconventional test to increase production was Project Rio Blanco, a 1973 detonation in a Rio Blanco County, Colorado, natural gas well. (more…)
Henry Doherty organized the Cities Services Company as a public utility holding company in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Doherty bought producing properties in Kansas and Oklahoma as he acquired distributing companies and linked them to natural gas fields.
In 1915, a Cities Service subsidiary discovered the 34-square-mile El Dorado oilfield. In 1928, another subsidiary completed the discovery well of the Oklahoma City oilfield.
Cities Service Company subsidiaries discovered major Mid-Continent oilfields.
Federal court mandates in 1940 resulted in Cities Service’s divestiture of its public utilities, and in 1959 the remaining companies were reformed as Cities Service Oil Company, which changed its marketing brand to Citgo in 1964.
After being acquired by Occidental Petroleum in 1982, Citgo was acquired by the Venezuela state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) in 1990.
Learn more in Cities Service Company.
A third oil boom arrived in Eastland County, Texas, when the Hog Creek Oil Company exploratory well at Desdemona blew in at 2,000 barrels of oil a day — thrilling the venture’s investors. Production from the new oilfield, which joined prolific fields at Breckenridge (1916) and “Roaring Ranger” (1917), would peak at more than 7.3 million barrels of oil in 1919.
“By 1919 the Desdemona field was probably the second largest in the oil belt, and the Hog Creek Oil Company’s stockholders were able to sell their $100 shares for $10,250 each,” noted Edwin Cox in his 1950 History of Eastland County, Texas.
Thanks to its oil leases, Eastland County’s Merriman Baptist Church would be declared the richest congregation in America.
BP discovered an oilfield 250 miles southeast of Houston in the Gulf of Mexico — and set a world depth record by drilling 30,923 feet into seabed from a platform floating more than 4,130 feet above.
The Tiber Prospect field — in 2009 estimated to contain more than three billion barrels of oil — was drilled by the Deepwater Horizon, which later was moved to a new site and destroyed in the deadly explosion and oil spill of April 2010. Learn about other ultra-deep wells in Anadarko Basin in Depth.
Early drilling technology advanced when William Morris, a driller in West Virginia, patented a “Rock Drill Jar.” It was an innovation he had been experimenting with while drilling brine wells.
“The mechanical success of cable-tool drilling has greatly depended on a device called jars, invented by a spring pole driller,” according to historian Samuel Pees, who in 2004 noted Morris began using the technology as early as the 1830s.
Drill jar technology improved efficiency for drilling brine wells — and later, oil wells.
For more advanced cable tools, Morris patented a “manner of uniting augers to sinkers for boring,” with the upper link of the jars helping the lower link to strike the underlying auger stem on the upstroke. This upward blow could dislodge the bit if it was stuck in the rock formation. Cable-tool drillers would soon improve upon Morris’ patented jars.
Learn more in Making Hole — Drilling Technology.
The Chicago Gas Light & Coke Company delivered its first commercial gas processed from coal. “The gas pipes were filled, and the humming noise made by the escaping gas at the tops of the lamp-posts indicated that everything was all right,” reported the Gem of the Prairie newspaper. “Shortly afterward the fire was applied and brilliant torches flamed on both sides of Lake Street as far as the eye could see and wherever the posts were set.”
By 1855, almost 80 miles of pipeline would be installed for about 2,000 manufactured gas consumers in Chicago. The first U.S. public street lamp fueled by manufactured gas illuminated Baltimore, Maryland, in 1817 (see Illuminating Gaslight).
Modern gasoline pump design began with inventor Sylvanus F. (Freelove) Bowser, who sold his first pump to a grocery store owner in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Designed to safely dispense kerosene as well as “burning fluid, and the light combustible products of petroleum,” Bowser’s pump included a container holding 42 gallons. The pump used marble valves, a wooden plunger, and a simple, upright faucet.
The 1916 Bowser gas pump included a “clock face” dial to measure pumped gas. Photo courtesy Smithsonian Institution.
Thanks to the pump’s success at Jake Gumper’s grocery store, Bowser formed the S.F. Bowser Company and patented his invention in 1887. Within a decade — as the automobile’s popularity grew — Bowser’s company has added new pump designs. By 1905, the S.F. Bowser “Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump” became known to motorists as a “filling station.”
The Bowser gas pump included a hand-levered suction pump and a hose attachment for dispensing gas. As other pump manufacturers arrived, Fort Wayne became known as the “Gas Pump Capital of the World.”
Learn more in First Gas Pump and Service Station.
An electric well-logging tool was first applied at Pechelbronn, France, after brothers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger modified their surface system to operate vertically in a well.
Conrad Schlumberger, using very basic equipment, in 1912 recorded the first map of equipotential curves near Caen, France.
Conrad Schlumberger had conceived the idea of using electrical measurements to map subsurface rock formations as early as 1912. After developing an electrical four-probe surface approach for mineral exploration, the brothers created the electric downhole well log.
Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger tested their electronic logging tool in 1927, one year after founding the world’s first well-logging company. Photo and image courtesy Schlumberger Ltd.
Lowering their new tool into a well, they recorded a single lateral-resistivity curve at fixed points in the well’s borehole and graphically plotted the results against depth — creating a well log of geologic formations. Changes in subsurface resistance readings showed variations and possible oil and natural gas-producing areas.
The brothers’ technological breakthrough would lead to Schlumberger becoming the world’s first well-logging oilfield service company.
Union Producing Company completed its Woodruff No. 1, the first commercial oil well in Mississippi. Drilled at Tinsley, southwest of Yazoo City, the well produced 235 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 4,560 feet in a sandstone later named the Woodruff Sand. Fieldwork by geologist Frederic Mellen led to the Tinsley oilfield discovery.
Fred Mellen was elected president of the Mississippi Geological Survey in 1946.
While working on a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, Mellen earlier found indications of a salt dome structure similar to the giant Spindletop field of 1901 in Texas. The 28-year-old geologist urged more seismographic testing, and Houston-based Union Producing Company leased about 2,500 acres at Perry Creek.
Mellen’s original WPA project had been a clay and minerals survey, “to locate a suitable clay to mold cereal bowls and other utensils for an underprivileged children’s nursery.” Instead, he launched Mississippi’s oil industry.
Learn more in First Mississippi Oil Wells.
After drilling 20 dry holes, the Tyndall-Wyoming Oil Company completed the No. 1 Hogg well 50 miles south of Houston. Within four months, a second well was producing about 600 barrels a day. The discoveries ended a succession of dry holes dating back to 1901 — when former Texas Governor James “Big Jim” Hogg paid $30,000 for the lease. He also helped launch the Texas Company (Texaco).
Gov. Hogg died 11 years before the Tyndall-Wyoming Oil Company wells found oil in the giant West Columbia oilfield. Fortunately for his family, he stipulated in his will that the mineral rights should not be sold for at least 15 years after his death.
Learn more in Governor Hogg’s Texas Oil Wells.
Maj. Frederick Russell Burnham discovered oil in Dominguez Hills, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, California. His well produced about 1,200 barrels of oil a day from a depth of about 4,000 feet. Maj. Burnham, a decorated soldier in both the U.S. and British armies, was once known as “King of the Scouts.”
The Burnham Exploration Company and partner Union Oil Company of California opened the Dominguez Hills oilfield, “a two-square-mile, two-mile deep stack of eight producing zones.”
Maj. Frederick R. Burnham in his British Army uniform, 1901.
The region was named for a Spanish soldier who in 1784 received a land grant for grazing cattle. “But family fortunes truly took off with discovery of oil in the 1920s, first in the Torrance area and then, most resoundingly, on Dominguez Hill itself,” explained a California State University historian in 2007.
By 1933, Maj. Burnham’s petroleum exploration venture and Union Oil had paid more than $10 million to stockholders.
Learn more California history in First California Oil Wells and Discovering Los Angeles Oilfields.
The modern concept of horizontal drilling may have begun with 19th-century patents by John Smalley Campbell of London. After receiving a British patent for his “useful improvements in flexible driving shafts or cables” in 1889, Campbell received a U.S. patent (no. 459,152) for his drilling method.
While Campbell described the patent as ideal for dental engines, “the patent also carefully covered use of his flexible shafts at much larger and heavier physical scales,” reported oil historian Stephen Testa in a 2015 article for Pacific Petroleum Geology. “The modern concept of non-straight line, relatively short-radius drilling dates back at least to September 8, 1891.”
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Recommended Reading: The fire in the rock: A history of the oil and gas industry in Kansas, 1855-1976
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an annual AOGHS supporter today. Help us maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
After years of growth thanks to discoveries at Spindletop and Sour Lake, the Texas Corporation incorporated in Delaware, acquiring the outstanding stock of the Texas Company (Texas), which was dissolved by the next year. (more…)
“The Standard Oil Company has decided to drive the cow and the dairyman out of business,” declared the Stanstead Journal of Quebec, reporting from Jersey City, New Jersey. “Its skilled chemists have discovered a process whereby they can make gilt-edge butter as a byproduct of crude petroleum.”
Journalists found humor in the approaching breakup of the Standard Oil Trust.
The journal fancifully proclaimed, “The chemists, in the steps leading up to the petroleum butter discovery, also have perfected a cheap process by which they can convert the kerosene into sweet milk.”
The first and only commercial oil well in the state of Washington was drilled by the Sunshine Mining Company. The Medina No. 1 well flowed 223 barrels a day from a depth of 4,135 feet near Ocean City in Grays Harbor County. The well produced 12,500 barrels before being capped in 1961.
Surrounded by unsuccessful attempts, Washington’s only commercial oil well (red) was capped in 1961.
By 2010, about 600 oil and natural gas wells had been drilled in Washington, but large-scale commercial production never occurred. The state’s most recent production — from the Ocean City field — ceased in 1962, according to the Washington Commissioner of Public Lands. No oil or gas has been produced since.
Preserving the 1880s history of the world’s first billion dollar oilfield, the Bradford, Pennsylvania, Penn-Brad Oil Museum opened in nearby Custer City. At the end of the 19th century, the region produced high-quality oil from the upper Devonian Bradford Sands — accounting for more than 80 percent of U.S. production.
“A light golden amber to a deep moss-green in color, the ‘miracle molecule ‘ from the Bradford field is high in paraffin and considered one of the highest grade natural lubricant crude oils in the world,” explains the museum.
The Penn-Brad Museum and Historical Oil Well Park of Bradford, Pennsylvania, celebrates its 53rd birthday on August 20. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Outdoor exhibits include a replica 72-foot standard cable-tool derrick and engine house, and guided tours by oil country veterans educate visitors about “yellow dogs and barkers, headache posts, hurry-up sticks and sucker rods.”
Learn more Bradford oilfield history in Mrs. Alford’s Nitro Factory.
American automotive pioneer Ransom Eli Olds (1864–1950) founded the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in Lansing, Michigan. Renamed Olds Motor Works in 1899, the company became the first auto manufacturer established in Detroit.
By 1901 Olds had built 11 prototype vehicles, including at least one powered by steam, electricity, and gasoline, according to historian George May. “He was the only American automotive pioneer to produce and sell at least one of each mode of automobile.”
Powered by a single-cylinder, five-horsepower gasoline engine, the 1901 Oldsmobile Curved Dash was the first mass-produced U.S. automobile.
The modern assembly line concept also began with Olds, who used a stationary assembly line (Henry Ford would be the first to use a moving assembly line). Olds Motor Works sold the first mass-produced automobile in 1901, one year after the first U.S. Auto Show.
When the last Oldsmobile rolled off an assembly line in Lansing in 2004, it was the end of America’s oldest automotive brand.
Family members rededicated the original 1865 monument to Henry R. Rouse at his estate near Youngsville, Pennsylvania. Rouse — a respected leader of the early oil industry — died on April 17, 1861, when his highly pressurized well exploded in flames at Rouseville (see Rouseville 1861 Oil Well Fire).
The 1865 monument to Henry Rouse was rededicated in 1993 during the annual family Picnic in Warren County, Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy the Rouse Estate.
The marble monument stands at the entrance to the Rouse Home, which has served the poor of the county as Mr. Rouse intended, according to the Rouse Estate, “a testimony to his philanthropy, and a reminder of the important role played by Rouse in serving the needs of the Warren County community.”
Patillo Higgins, who would become known as the “Prophet of Spindletop,” founded the Gladys City Oil, Gas & Manufacturing Company and leased 2,700 acres near Beaumont, Texas. Higgins believed oil-bearing sands could be found four miles south of town. Most earth science experts said he was wrong.
A self-taught geologist, Higgins had noticed oil and natural gas seeps at Spindletop Hill while taking his Sunday school class on picnics. He later supervised the planning of Gladys City, which he named for his favorite student.
Patillo Higgins was no longer with the company he had founded when it discovered oil at Spindletop Hill in January 1901.
Although Higgins left the Gladys City venture in 1895, Capt. Anthony Lucas drilled the “Lucas Gusher” for the company in January 1901 and forever changed the petroleum industry (the oilfield produced more oil in one day than the rest of the world’s fields combined). Gulf Oil, Texaco, Mobile, and Sun Oil companies got their start thanks to Patillo Higgins’ confidence in the “Big Hill.”
Learn more in Prophet of Spindletop.
The University of Texas received the first oil royalty payment ($516.53) three months after the Santa Rita No. 1 well discovered an oilfield on university-owned land in the Permian Basin. After 21 months of difficult drilling, the Texon Oil and Land Company’s well had revealed the 4.5-square-mile Big Lake field.
Drilling and production equipment from the Santa Rita No. 1 well is preserved at the University of Texas. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Within three years of the Big Lake discovery, petroleum royalties endowed the university with $4 million. In 1958, the university moved the Santa Rita well’s walking beam and other equipment to the Austin campus. A student newspaper described the historic well as “one that made the difference between pine-shack classrooms and modern buildings.”
No one had expected it, not even the Niagara Oil Company that drilled it, notes the Bradford Landmark Society about a 1937 gusher near Bradford, Pennsylvania, in McKean County. For the first time since the great Bradford field discovery 70 years earlier, an exploratory well on Music Mountain revealed a new oilfield.
The producing formation was beneath the older, highly prolific Bradford sands. The region’s high-paraffin oil is still considered among the best natural lubricants in the world. A refinery (today’s American Refining Group) has been processing McKean County oil since 1881.
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Recommended Reading: R.E. Olds: Auto Industry Pioneer
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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.
Thirty-nine-year-old Bertha Benz made history when she became the first person to make a long-distance trip by automobile. Her adventure also included, “the first road repairs, the first automotive marketing stunt, the first case of a wife borrowing her husband’s car without asking, and the first violation of intercity highway laws in a motor vehicle,” noted a 2012 article in Wired.
Bertha Benz became the world’s first female automotive pioneer in 1888. Image courtesy Mercedes-Benz Museum.
Bertha drove away in the “Patent Motorwagen” (after leaving a note to her husband) and took their two young sons to visit her mother in Pforzheim. Their route from Mannheim was about 60 miles. The drive, which took about 15 hours, helped popularize Karl Benz’s latest invention.
By the end of the century, Mercedes-Benz was the largest car company in the world. The first road trip can today be retraced by following signs of the Bertha Benz Memorial Route. She was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2016 as the first female automotive pioneer.
Learn more in First Car, First Road Trip.
Eastern Kentucky independent producers joined the Western Kentucky Oil Men’s Association to create a state-wide organization in Frankfort — today’s Kentucky Oil and Gas Association (KOGA). A 1919 oil discovery in Hancock County had launched the petroleum industry in western Kentucky, where commercial amounts of oil had been found as early as 1829 near Burkesville while drilling for brine with a spring-pole (also see Kentucky’s Great American Well).
The Oil and Gas Journal promoted itself with an illustration from artist Norman Rockwell in an ad captioned, “Where Oil Men Invest Their Valuable Reading Time.” Rockwell’s renditions of American life brought him popularity through magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, Boy’s Life, and Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.
A Norman Rockwell illustration advertised a leading industry trade magazine.
In addition to the illustrations for the Oil and Gas Journal, in 1959 Rockwell provided artwork to the American Petroleum Institute (API), which sponsored a U.S. Postal Service “first day of issue” commemorating the 1959 centennial of the birth of the U.S. oil industry (see Centennial Oil Stamp Issue).
The illustration included the slogan “Oil’s First Century 1859-1959, Born in Freedom Working for Progress.”
Norman Rockwell’s art commemorated the 1959 centennial of the birth of the nation’s oil industry.
Rockwell’s drawing depicted “the men of science, the rugged extraction of the crude oil, and ending with your friendly service station attendant,” according to a collector.
Learn about another petroleum-related illustrator in Seuss I am, an Oilman.
The original headquarters of the Union Oil Company in Santa Paula, California — constructed in 1890 and an oil museum since 1950 — was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Today, the California Oil Museum on 1001 East Main Street includes renovated Union Oil offices on the second floor, above the former Santa Paula Hardware Company and Post Office. Union Oil moved its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1901.
The Union Oil Company headquarters building, built in 1890, is home of the California Oil Museum.
Also designated a Ventura County Cultural Heritage Landmark, the California Oil Museum exhibits working oilfield models, a 19th century cable-tool drilling rig, Union Oil gas station memorabilia, and an Energy Education Lab with STEM activities for students.
One day after President Harry Truman announced World War II was over, gasoline rationing ended in America. Food rationing had begun in early 1942 with rubber and gasoline added in December by the Office of Price Administration. Most civilian drivers received a windshield sticker with ration coupons for gasoline limiting them to four gallons a week. A ration book “B” sticker allowed business owners up to eight gallons a week.
World War II gasoline ration stamps and mileage card, Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Image courtesy Henry Ford Museum.
According to the National World War Two Museum, a “C” sticker was for people with professional occupations, an “M” sticker for motorcycles, and a “T” sticker for truck drivers. A 35 mph speed limit was established for the duration of the war. By the end of 1945, sugar remained the only commodity still being rationed.
What would become the world’s oldest continuously producing oil well was completed near Oil Creek at Oil City, Pennsylvania. The McClintock No. 1 well initially produced 50 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 620 feet. The well was completed 14 miles from Titusville, home of the first U.S. commercial oil discovery two years earlier.
The McClintock well is the oldest well in the world that is still producing oil at its original depth, according to the Oil Region Alliance.
Drilled in 1861, the McClintock well is pumped a few times a year to supply oil for souvenir bottles sold at the Drake Well Museum and Park in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Donated by Quaker State in 1995, the well has been pumped monthly to produce up to 10 barrels of oil. A nearby historic marker identifies the well, but thousands of people pass by each year without knowing it’s there. Souvenir bottles of the oil are on sale in the gift shop of the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.
With a crowd of 50,000 cheering them on, eight monoplanes took off from an airfield in Oakland, California, in an air race over the Pacific. Dole Pineapple Company offered a $25,000 prize to the first plane to reach Honolulu, 2,400 miles away. Three months earlier, Charles Lindbergh had made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight of 1,500-miles.
Several competitors disappeared over the Pacific during the 1927 Dole air race. The winning aircraft today is on display at the Woolaroc Ranch near Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
A new aviation fuel developed by Phillips Petroleum — Nu-Aviation Gasoline — powered the winning “Woolaroc” monoplane for the deadly air race (two of the fuel-heavy planes crashed on takeoff, others were lost in flight). Woolaroc was named for Frank Phillips’ Bartlesville ranch and nature preserve.
Learn more in Flight of the Woolaroc.
Two years after the end of the Revolutionary War, oil was reported floating on a creek in northwestern Pennsylvania. “Oil Creek has taken its name from an oil or bituminous matter being found floating on its surface,” noted a report by Gen. William Irvine.
“Many cures are attributed to this oil by the natives, and lately by some of the whites, particularly rheumatic pains and old ulcers,” Gen. Irvine wrote. He confirmed an earlier Army survey reporting Oil Creek, “empties itself into the Allegheny River, issuing from a spring, on the top of which floats an oil, similar to what is called Barbados Tar, and from which may be collected by one man several gallons in a day.”
Charles Kettering of Dayton, Ohio, patented an “engine-starting device,” the first practical electric starter for automobiles. Working as an engineer for Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO), Kettering earlier had devised an electric motor to replace hand cranks on cash registers.
“The present invention is particularly applicable to automobiles, wherein an engine of the combustion or explosion type is employed, as a means of propulsion,” Kettering noted in his patent. Cadillac was the first manufacturer to add electric starters to its models; the Ford Model T used a hand crank until 1919.
In addition to his engine-starting patent, in 1921 Kettering and fellow General Motors chemist Thomas Midgely Jr. discovered the gasoline additive tetraethyl lead (see Ethyl Anti-Knock Gas).
President George H.W. Bush signed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which was passed by the 101st Congress to strengthen the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prevent and respond to catastrophic oil spills. Signed into law 17 months after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, the act required vessels and oil storage facilities to submit to the federal government plans detailing how they would respond to large spills.
Ames, Oklahoma, celebrated the opening of its Astrobleme (meteor crater) Museum, designed to educate visitors about a meteor impact that led to a major oilfield discovery 450 million years later. Located about 20 miles southwest of Enid, the Ames meteor crater was buried by about 9,000 feet of sediment, making it barely visible on the surface. Most geologists believed impact craters unlikely locations for petroleum.
A meteorite hit Oklahoma 450 million years ago, producing a crater thousands of feet deep and eight miles wide. It proved to be one of six oil-producing U.S. impact craters.
Although wells were drilled nearby, no one had attempted to reach deep into the hidden, eight-mile-wide Ames crater in Major County. In 1991, Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm decided to drill to a depth of about 10,000 feet, deeper than usual for the area, and found an oilfield. His Ames crater discovery well uncovered what became the most prolific of the six oil-producing craters found in the United States.
Oklahoma’s Ames Astrobleme Museum, which opened in 2007, requires no staff to educate visitors. Photo by Bruce Wells.
“The Ames Astrobleme is one of the most remarkable and studied geological features in the world because of its economic significance,” explained independent producer Lew Ward in 2007. The potential of drilling in impact craters got the attention of oil companies worldwide.
Learn more in Ames Astrobleme Museum.
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Recommended Reading: Bertha Takes a Drive: How the Benz Automobile Changed the World
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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. © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
