THE DRAKE WELL FOUNDATION

THE HISTORY OF THE OIL INDUSTRY

SYMPOSIUM

PROGRAM, ABSTRACTS, & GUIDEBOOK

MARCH 26-29, 2003

SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA
Mary L. Barrett, Editor

PLATINUM SPONSORS ($1000 or more)

Anderson Oil & Gas, Inc., Shreveport, LA

Security Exploration, Inc., Shreveport, LA

GOLD SPONSORS ($500 or more)

Caddo-Pine Island Oil & Historical Society, Oil City, LA

Marlin Exploration, Inc., Shreveport, LA
Summerland Foundation, Los Angeles, CA

ADDITIONAL SPONSORS

History of Geology Division/Geological Society of America

History of Earth Sciences Society
 THE DRAKE WELL FOUNDATION, 2003 SYMPOSIUM

The Drake Well Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to furthering public

awareness of the history of the oil industry. The foundation owes its origin to the
American Petroleum Institute (API) which established it in 1951 to replace its own
involvement in the Drake Well and historical matters. The foundation has met annually
since then. During the past several years its attention has been broadly directed to the
greater panorama of the oil industry and its history on the national and international
scene.

The foundation publishes a journal entitled Oil-Industry History, begun in 2000. The
foundation also conducts symposiums to bring attention and further the study of
petroleum history. In the past, these symposiums have been held in the old oil regions of
Pennsylvania. This year, 2003, the Drake Well Foundation began expanding its
geographic locations for symposiums by coming to the northern Gulf Coast region and
Shreveport, LA.

Drake Well Foundation Officers:

President: Larry D. Woodfork

First Vice-President: William R. Brice
Second Vice-President Daniel J. Leech
Secretary/Treasurer: Richard J. Dowling
President-Emiritus: Samuel T. Pees

2003 Symposium, Shreveport

Meeting Chairman: Mary Barrett

Meeting Assistant: Katie Poole
Word Processing: Bethany Green

Field Trips and Guidebook:

Editor: Mary Barrett

Caddo-Pine Island Field: Pat Allen, Judy Sneed
East Texas Oil Field: Randy Clements, Bob Daigle
Terry Stembridge, Joe White
Smackover Oil Field: Don Lambert

Drake Well Foundation, P.O. Box 233, Titusville, PA 16354

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SYMPOSIUM ON THE HISTORY OF THE OIL INDUSTRY
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Notes: 1) all non-fieldtrip events are at the Downtown Holiday Inn;

2) all field trips load bus and return to the Downtown Holiday Inn;
3) poster sessions will be up through Friday evening

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2003

2:00 – 6:00 PM Arrival, Registration, Poster Presentation Setup

4:00 – 8:30 PM Optional Field Trip, Caddo-Pine Island Field, Louisiana Oil & Gas
State Museum, dinner at museum

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2003

7:00 – 8:00 AM Continental Breakfast, Registration, Poster Setups & Viewing

Poster Presentations:
James M. Parks: Oil Companies and Unintended Consequences
Katie Poole: The Mexican Gulf Oil Collection at Centenary
College
Jeff Spencer and Byron Miller: Jennings Oil Field: the Start of
Louisiana’s Oil Industry

8:00 – 8:05 AM Welcome and Introductions

8:05 – 8:30 AM Susan Fox Hodgson: California Indians, Artisans of Oil

8:30 – 8:55 AM Wolfgang Nachtmann: Austria—A Scenic Country, but also an

Oil Province?

8:55 – 9:20 AM Larry D. Woodfork: From Salt Licks to Stock Tanks—A Brief
Overview of the Early Salt and Oil Industries in West Virginia

9:20 – 9:45 AM John G. Ragsdale: Oil Development in South Arkansas, 1921-

2001

9:45 – 10:00 AM Break

10:00 – 10:25 AM Mary L. Barrett and David J. Carty*: Eight Decades of

Anthropogenic and Natural Landscape Change in Smackover
Field, Arkansas

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10:25 – 10:50 AM Jo Ann Stiles: Giant Under The Hill: Drilling for the Spindletop
Gusher from 1899-1901

10:50 – 11:15 AM C. Lane Sartor: Early History of the Caddo-Pine Island Field,
Caddo Parish, Louisiana

11:15 AM – 12:25 PM Buffet Lunch at the Holiday Inn

12:30 PM Leave on bus for the East Texas Field

4:00 PM Arrive at the East Texas Oil Museum, Kilgore, Texas

5:45 PM Walk across street to Kilgore College faculty club—dinner

7:15 PM Leave for Shreveport

8:30 PM Arrive at hotel

FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2003

7:30 – 8:30 AM Continental Breakfast, Registration, Poster Viewing

8:30 – 8:55 AM L. Mark Larsen: Canoe Pitch to Cornerstone of Canadian Oil

Production: The Athabasca Oil Sands, Alberta, Canada

8:55 – 9:20 AM Jay T. Sperr and James B. Larson: Rangely Oil Field—
Colorado’s Giant Still Going Strong after One Hundred Years

9:20 – 9:45 AM Lawrence H. Skeleton: The Well at Wichita

9:45 – 10:15 AM Break & Poster Session Viewing

10:15 – 10:40 AM Judith L. Sneed: The Lost History of Ohio’s Grand Reservoir Oil
Boom

10:40 – 11:05 AM Alan Grosbard: Treadwell Wharf in the Summerland, California

Oil Field: the First Sea Wells in Petroleum Exploration

11:05 – 11:30 AM William R. Brice: Gilbert D. Harris (1864-1952); Cornell

Professor, Louisiana State Geologist, and Long Distant Oil
Consultant

11:30 AM – 12:45 PM Buffet Lunch at the Holiday Inn

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1:00 – 1:25 PM Allan Pulsipher and Harry Luton: History of the Offshore Oil
and Gas Industry and its Consequences

1:25 – 1:50 PM Don Davis: A Century of Oil in Louisiana

1:50 – 2:15 PM Diane Austin: History and Evolution of the Offshore Oil and Gas
Industry in Southern Louisiana: a Brief Look at Commercial
Diving and the Role of People, Technology, and the Organization
of Work

2:15 – 2:45 PM Break & Poster Session Viewing

2:45 – 3:10 PM Paul N. Spellman: Women and Children of Spindletop

3:10 – 3:35 PM Samuel T. Pees and Richard A. Senges: America’s First

Successful Railway Tank Car, 1865

3:35 – 4:00 PM Ross Coen: Submarines, Blimps, Trains, and Ships: Transportation
Proposals for Prudhoe Bay Crude Oil, 1968-1977

4:00 – 4:25 PM Mary L. Barrett: The Oil Photography Projects of Roy E. Stryker,
1939-1950

6:00 – 6:30 PM Cash Bar

6:30 – 9:00 PM Banquet, Awards Presentations

Guest Speaker: Diana Davids Olien: Will the Well Run Dry?
Petroleum on the Southern Plains

SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2003

7:00 – 8:00 AM Continental Breakfast

8:10 AM Bus leaves for Smackover Field, AR

10:15 AM Arrive in area, visit old earthen tank farms

11:15 – 1:00 PM Visit AR Museum of Natural Resources, eat box lunches

1:00 – 4:00 PM Visit field and town sites

6:15 PM Arrive back in Shreveport at Holiday Inn, End of Meeting

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THE DRAKE WELL FOUNDATION 2003 AWARDEES

Lawrence W. Funkhouser
Colonel Edwin L. Drake Legendary Oilman Award

Larry Funkhouser received his A.B. degree in Geology from Oberlin College in 1943
where he was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. After service with
the U.S. Air Forces in World War II, he received his M.S. degree in Geology from
Stanford University in 1948.

Funkhouser was born in Napoleon, Ohio, on June 9, 1921. He married Jean G. Cooper,
also from the Oberlin Class of 1943, in 1946. Their four children include Donald, 41;
Thomas, 39; David, 35; and Karen, 32.

Funkhouser joined Chevron Corporation, then known as Standard Oil Company of

California, as a geologist in the Gulf Coast Area in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1948. He
was named Division Exploration Superintendent for the California Company, Chevron's
Gulf Coast subsidiary, in 1956 and became Division Exploration Superintendent in
Midland, Texas, for Standard Oil Company of Texas, another Chevron subsidiary, in
1961. In 1963, he was appointed Vice-President, Exploration, for Standard Oil Company
of Texas in Houston.

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In 1966, Funkhouser was appointed Vice-President, Exploration for Western Operations,
Inc., Chevron's West Coast operating subsidiary, in San Francisco. He assumed the
position of Corporate Vice-President, Exploration, in 1968 and was elected a Director of
Standard Oil Company of California in 1973.

Funkhouser was named Director and Vice-President, Exploration and Production, for
Chevron Corporation in 1976. In that position, he guided Chevron's worldwide upstream
activities until his retirement in 1986.

In 1989, Funkhouser was a co-founder of Energy Exploration Management Company, an

independent exploration group, and currently is a director and vice-president of the
company.

During his professional career, Funkhouser was active in a number of professional and
industrial societies and associations. He served as President of the American Association
of Petroleum Geologists in 1987-88 and as a member of the Association's Advisory
Board. He also served as a trustee of the AAPG Foundation from 1989-2001 and as their
Chairman from 1991-2001.

In addition to honorary membership in the AAPG, Funkhouser has been awarded

honorary membership in the Northern California Geological Society and in the Pacific
Section of AAPG. He is a member of the Geological Society of America and has served
as a trustee of the G.S.A. Foundation.

He is an All-American Wildcatter, holds membership in the Society of Exploration

Geophysicists and has served both as a member and as Chairman of the Earth Sciences
Advisory Board at Stanford University. He has been a member of the American
Petroleum Institute and is a past chairman of A.P.I.'s Committee on Exploration. He has
served on the National Research Council's Board on Mineral and Energy Resources and
is currently a member of the N.R.C.'s Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics
and Resources.

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THE DRAKE WELL FOUNDATION 2003 AWARDEES

Frank W. Harrison, Jr.

The Colonel Edwin L. Drake Legendary Oilman Award

Born in Bastrop, Louisiana

Academic Training: Louisiana State University: BS Degree - Petroleum Geology in 1950.

Experience:

1950-54 Union Producing Company - 1950 Draftsman and Geological Scout in

Jackson, Mississippi; 1950-54 Geologist in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1954-56 Seaboard Oil Company - Geologist in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1956-57 Trans-Tex Drilling Company - District Geologist in Lafayette, Louisiana.
1957-59 American Natural Gas Production Company - Head Geologist in Lafayette,
Louisiana.
1959 Independent and Consulting Geologist in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Military Service: 1951-53 Served in United States Army.

Publications:

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A Sub-Regional Report Of The Camerina Zone Of Southwest Louisiana
Geostrategies - Where Have We Been And Where Are We Going?
No. 1 Play In The U.S.A. - South Louisiana Tuscaloosa Trend 1975-1980
South Louisiana Cretaceous Tuscaloosa Trend False River Field
I've Got A New Producer In South Louisiana -- Now What?
The Number One Play In The U.S.A. - Summary Of Activity In The
Tuscaloosa Trend Of South Central Louisiana
Washington, The Geologist, And The Energy Crisis.
The Future Of The Gulf Coast Basin
The Tuscaloosa Rejuvenated; Beaver Dam Creek and Baywood Fields, St. Helena Parish,
Louisiana
We're Giving The Opec Cartel Hell
Louisiana Tuscaloosa versus Southeast Texas Woodbine
The Geology And Development History Of Jennings Salt Dome 1901-1985,
A Clue To The Future Of Gulf Coast Salt Domes
The Camerina And Cibicides hazzardi Stratigraphic Intervals of Southwest Louisiana

Professional Affiliations:

American Association of Petroleum Geologists;

Certified Petroleum Geologist #1010 (Member 1954) President 1981.
American Institute of Professional Geologists; Certified Professional Geologist - State
Vice-President 1978.
Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies--
Executive Committee 1959-60 - Convention Committee 1966 - General
Chairman of 1974 Convention - Vice President 1979 - Best Paper
Award 1962 - President 1980 - Honorary Member 1982.
Independent Petroleum Association of America;
Board of Directors 1971-73; Board of Directors, South Louisiana 1978 and 1989-90.
Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists; Vice-President 1969-70.
Lafayette Geological Society; President 1961-62 - Honorary Member 1970.
American Geological Institute; President 1989-90.
Louisiana Association of Independent Producers and Royalty Owners;
President 1977-78 - Board of Directors 1978-79 and 1989-90.
Geological Society of America
Houston Geological Society
New Orleans Geological Society
Baton Rouge Geological Society

Personals:

Serves on the Board of Directors for Premier BanCorp, Inc.

Serves on the Board of Directors for Gulf States Utilities Company.
Serves on the Board of Directors for American Liberty Financial Corporation.
Serves on the Board of Trustees for the Lafayette General Medical Center.

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THE DRAKE WELL FOUNDATION 2003 AWARDEES

Samuel T. Pees
The Drake Well Foundation Keeper of the Flame Award

Degrees in geology from:

Allegheny College (BS)

Syracuse University (MS)
Advanced geological studies Colorado College and University of Tulsa.

Professional affiliations:

Certified Petroleum Geologist (American Association of Petroleum Geologists, AAPG)

Senior Fellow of Geological Society of America (GSA)
Licensed Professional Geologist, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Professional offices:

Past Chairman GSA History of Geology Division

Past President of Drake Well Foundation

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Past Founding Chairman of the AAPG Standing Committee on The History of Petroleum
Geology

Awards:

Distinguished Alumni Award from Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences
Public Service Awards and the John T. Galey Memorial Award from AAPG
Gold Citation, Allegheny College
Emeritus and John Mather Award from The Colonel Inc. (Drake Well Museum)

Professional Experiences:

Worked as a petroleum geologist in South America, Caribbean, South Pacific, Australia,

S.E. Asia, Indonesia and the United States for oil companies.

Established the firm of Samuel T. Pees and Associates in Meadville, Pennsylvania, for oil
and gas consulting in the Appalachian Basin.

Frequent lecturer. Author of over 70 scientific and historical publications treating on oil
and gas, the latest in 2002.

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 ABSTRACTS

HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF THE OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY

IN SOUTHERN LOUISIANA: A BRIEF LOOK AT COMMERCIAL DIVING
AND THE ROLE OF PEOPLE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE ORGANIZATION
OF WORK

Diane Austin, University of Arizona, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology,

Anthropology Building, Rm. 316, Tucson, AZ 85721, 502-626-3879

The offshore oil and gas industry in southern Louisiana has a complex history marked
by environmental, social, and political challenges. The move offshore produced its own
unique contests, perhaps the most obvious of these including the construction drilling rigs
and platforms that can withstand wave action, the development of techniques for cutting
and welding metals underwater, and the transportation of materials and equipment over
vast expanses of open water. A close look reveals that the social challenges are equally
daunting: attracting and maintaining a workforce able and willing to live on a small metal
structure for weeks at a time or to work hundreds and even thousands of feet below the
water's surface; organizing a workforce to take action and achieve results quickly and
efficiently; and establishing a huge and oftentimes uncertain industry amid isolated rural
communities. This paper addresses these technological and social challenges.
The offshore oil and gas industry is perceived to have a specific beginning - the first
successful completion of a well out of sight of land- but the people and technology that
made this industry possible, and the social and political environments within which it
evolved, date back centuries earlier. Both steady modification and sudden breakthroughs
characterize this history. This paper explores this process with a brief overview of some
of the highlights of this evolution and the specific example of diving and underwater
welding to illustrate the complex interplay between human and technical achievements.
Though supported with data from elsewhere, the information in this paper comes from
workers who experienced this history firsthand.

THE OIL PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS OF ROY E. STRYKER, 1939-1950

Mary L. Barrett, Dept. of Geology & Geography, Centenary College of Louisiana,

Shreveport, LA 71134

Roy Stryker, a former economics lecturer at Columbia University, directed some of

the most significant documentary photographic projects in American history even though
he was not a photographer. Two of these assignments—as chief of the Photographic
Division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the New Deal era (1935-
1942) and as director of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey; SONJ) documentary
photographic project (1943-1950)—resulted in an extensive pictorial history of the oil

12
industry as captured by many of America’s leading documentary photographers. The
FSA project at first had a focus of rural poverty documentation, expanding over time and
eventually focusing on the post-Pearl Harbor home front. Two photographers, Russell
Lee and John Vachon, were responsible for most petroleum-related imagery from 1939-
1942. Lee photographed oil field regions of East Texas and Oklahoma; Vachon
photographed panhandle Texas, Gulf Coast refineries, the mid-continent fields, and the
Big Inch pipeline construction from Longview, Texas, to the northeast U.S. The Standard
Oil project as directed by Stryker was “to get together the story of oil in terms of
people—in terms of machinery and equipment with emphasis on people.” SONJ provided
the financial support and freedom to document all aspects of the very broadly-defined
story of petroleum, and photographers under Stryker had extensive interpretive and
aesthetic freedom. When Stryker left in 1950, around 70,000 photographs had been
acquired in the SONJ project. Notable oil-region projects included—Plantation Pipeline,
Oklahoma fields, S. LA geophysics (Harold Corsini); Tomball, TX (Esther Bubley);
south LA refineries, river transportation, WY fields (Edwin and Louise Rosskam);
“swamp shooters”, west TX fields (Russell Lee).

EIGHT DECADES OF ANTHROPOGENIC AND NATURAL LANDSCAPE

CHANGE IN SMACKOVER FIELD, ARKANSAS

Mary L. Barrett1 and David J. Carty2, (1) Department of Geology and Geography,
Centenary College, Shreveport, LA 71134; (2) CPSS, Principal, GreenBridge
EarthWorks, 612 N Flenniken, El Dorado, AR 71730

Discovery and recovery of substantial petroleum in the unregulated Smackover

oilfield (Smackover Field) in 1922 resulted in massive surficial environmental impacts,
and recovery transformations are continuing today. The technically and environmentally
unsophisticated petroleum industry and social infrastructure of the 1920s and following
decades was nonetheless spurred toward ever greater production by a nation eager for oil,
jobs, and rural development. Except for anomalies such as the Great Depression, people
prospered, world wars were fought, and industry surged forward making the United
States a secure world power. During these early decades, intentional and accidental
releases of produced fluids (petroleum hydrocarbons and saltwater) took a toll on the
natural landscape.
Beginning in 1922, the first ten years of production resulted in the release of five to
ten million barrels of oil and over one billion barrels of saltwater to the landscape surface.
The oil losses were due to technical problems dealing with containment security,
recovery economics from oil emulsions, and inadequate earthen storage pit volumes,
whereas the saltwater was intentionally released. In addition to relict pit scars, terrestrial
vegetation and aquatic life in Smackover Creek and the Ouachita River suffered from
decades of excessive salinity and oil spills.
Loss of native pine and hardwood forest vegetation in the uplands exposed topsoil
and subsoil to erosion forces. Suspended by stormwater and released saltwater, upland
soil particulate migrated across toeslope drainageways. Although substantial soil

13
particulate remained sufficiently suspended to be carried to the Gulf of Mexico, much of
it settled out in low gradient lowlands and floodplain areas where water moved slowly.
These sediment accretion areas, called drainageway flats, salt flats, and salt scars also
contain layers of dense and entrained petroleum hydrocarbons.
In 1958 producers were given five years to cease discharging oilfield saltwater into
surface waters. Natural revegetation assisted by ample rainfall and adequate drainage
became increasingly evident in the uplands after this time. Although some progress is
evident, natural revegetation of the drainageways and lowland areas has been much
slower to develop. Fortunately, there has been sufficient interest by public agencies, oil
companies, private landowners, and the community to fund vegetative restoration efforts
in these lowland areas using economically useful salt loving plants. Wildlife aficionados
are especially excited about the increasing number of deer foraging on the halophyte
forages.

GILBERT D. HARRIS (1864-1952); CORNELL PROFESSOR, LOUISIANA

STATE GEOLOGIST, AND LONG DISTANT OIL CONSULTANT

William R. Brice, Geology & Planetary Sciences, University of Pittsburgh at

Johnstown, Johnstown, PA 15904, wbrice@pitt.edu

Gilbert Dennison Harris, a native of Jamestown, New York, was State Geologist for
Louisiana from 1899 until 1909, while on the faculty at Cornell University. He spent
each winter in Louisiana and fall and summer teaching at Cornell; an arrangement which
provided students from Cornell and Louisiana State University the opportunity to gain
work experience. The oil industry in this part of the world was just starting when Harris
began his work with the Louisiana survey, and what he and his survey teams did, not the
least of which was the recognition of dome structures in the state, provided a geological
foundation for later discoveries.
Harris found that he was constantly receiving requests for assistance with various
drilling projects and considered becoming a private consultant. When the Survey lost its
funding in 1909, Harris was free to pursue his role as a private consultant while still
maintaining his faculty position at Cornell. During his time in New York, of course, the
drilling would continue in Louisiana and Harris would do his consulting by telegram and
letter. He would receive letters directly from a well, along with actual well cuttings and
their depths, asking what to do next. After examining the cuttings, Harris would
telegraph or mail his instructions back to the driller. One wonders how much “down
time” there was on the rig while the crew waited for the mail to be delivered. But this
method was successful and he remained a consultant for many years.

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SUBMARINES, BLIMPS, TRAINS, AND SHIPS: TRANSPORTATION
PROPOSALS FOR PRUDHOE BAY CRUDE OIL, 1968-77.

Ross Coen, University of Alaska – Fairbanks, P.O. Box 82718, Fairbanks, AK 99708

Upon discovery in 1968 of the Prudhoe Bay (Alaska) oil field, North America’s
largest at 20 billion barrels, the immediate challenge facing the oil industry was how to
bring these vast reserves to market. Alaska’s North Slope is a notoriously unforgiving
environment with long winters of continual darkness punctuated by temperatures of 65
degrees Fahrenheit below zero. The subsurface of the tundra remains permanently
frozen, even in summer, while the surface layer becomes spongy and fragile from June to
September.
Within months of the strike, the industry began surveying a pipeline route from the
North Slope south toward Fairbanks. Other transportation ideas received consideration,
however, including a fleet of nuclear submarines crossing under the polar ice cap, jumbo
jet tankers and dirigibles, rail cars and tanker trucks, and even an aerial tramway. One
proposal, the use of ice-breaking tankers to ship the crude oil through the Northwest
Passage to the U.S. east coast, merited enough serious consideration that the industry
spent $40 million testing its feasibility. Commissioned by Humble Oil (now Exxon) in
1969-70, the S.S. Manhattan was reconfigured with ice-breaking capabilities and became
the first commercial vessel to complete the Northwest Passage.
The intent of this paper is to detail some of the proposals for bringing Prudhoe Bay
crude oil to market. These transportation ideas – whether meritorious or outlandish – fall
squarely within Alaska’s frontier myth and pioneer spirit where daring and ingenuity in
the face of the natural environment are both encouraged and rewarded.

A CENTURY OF OIL IN LOUISIANA

Don Davis, Center for Coastal Energy and Environmental Resources, Room E302,
Howe-Russell Geoscience Complex, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, 225-578-3481

Louisiana’s first producing oil well was completed in 1901. From this beginning, the
industry expanded throughout Louisiana, with all 64 parishes (counties) being involved.
In 1947 the industry discovered marketable hydrocarbon offshore in Ship Shoal Block
32. This event gave birth to the offshore industry. Although production numbers
declined in the 1980s and early 1990s, the lure of large finds in deepwater off Louisiana's
coast rekindled interest in this hydrocarbon province. Auger, Mars, Mensa, Neptune,
Thunder Horse, Ursa and many other deepwater fields are now part of the country’s oil
and gas inventory.
Recent technological innovations, coupled with new state incentives, have lowered
the costs to find hydrocarbon reserves and improved the probability of discovering these
reserves. As a result, there is renewed interest in Louisiana prospects. In this regard, oil
companies are investing millions in leasing and exploration programs. The state is

15
undergoing a mini oil boom. With little to no fanfare, indeed in relative anonymity, the
industry has been reborn.

TREADWELL WHARF IN THE SUMMERLAND, CALIFORNIA OIL FIELD:

THE FIRST SEA WELLS IN PETROLEUM EXPLORATION

Alan Grosbard, 10100 Santa Monica Boulevard, Suite 950, Los Angeles, California
90067, (310) 277-0505, alan@alangrosbard.com

Literature on the history of petroleum exploration often notes without attribution that
Summerland, California was the location of the world’s first offshore oil wells. Seldom
mentioned is the fact that in the late 1800’s at the identical moment in time another group
of petroleum explorers were pursuing oil reservoirs past the shoreline and into the sea.
In California, exploration was led by H.L. Williams, a land developer who had
purchased 1,050 acres of land in Summerland, south of Santa Barbara, California.
Williams originally intended to profit by selling small lots to fellow members of a small
sect named Spiritualists. Sales proved difficult and few, buyers too demanding. Under
pressure from his mortgage holder and in fear of losing his investment due to dwindling
sales and increasing costs, Williams actively pursued discovery of oil wherever it could
be found, using the potential for oil discovery to sell lots at higher prices to oil
speculators.
In contrast to Williams and his ambitious plans for personal gain and the loose
coalition who followed him, was the highly evolved bureaucracy of the government of
Czar Nicholai II, Emperor of Russia. It intended to exploit oil in the Caspian Sea,
offshore of the Baku field in Azerbaijan. To accomplish its goal, it turned to its principal
contractor, the Nobel Brothers.
In 1898, Williams and his fellow leading citizens approved an application by J.B.
Treadwell, a railroad engineer, to build the Treadwell wharf at Summerland and to
construct on it a series of wells extending out into the Pacific Ocean. There were no
governmental regulations of any kind, local, state or federal, to prevent drilling into the
sea or to charge the driller a tariff on the oil that was extracted, beyond a single $101
payment to Santa Barbara County for the right to construct the pier. Treadwell relied
upon the Darling Brothers’ local machine shop to engineer conduit to prevent these sea
wells from flooding. Treadwell was quickly joined by a rush of individuals and small
firms, many of them antecedents to today’s well known oil companies. In total 412 sea
wells were constructed in four years at Summerland, California. Due to the limited
nature of the reservoir, production quickly peaked, then declined steadily. During its
years of operation, the Summerland field produced an estimated 1.3 million barrels of oil.
By contrast, the Caspian field holds an estimated 2 billion barrel reservoir.
This paper reports the history of the Czarist government’s project to explore the
Caspian Sea at Baku, then reports the unique factors that motivated and made possible
the petroleum exploration of the sea at Summerland and the operation, ownership and
history of its sea wells.

16
CALIFORNIA INDIANS, ARTISANS OF OIL

Susan Fox Hodgson, California Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources, 801
K Street, MS 20-20, Sacramento, CA 95814-3530, shodgson@consrv.ca.gov

“…at a distance of two leagues from this mission [San Luis Obispo] there are as many as
eight springs of bitumen or thick black resin that the natives call chapopote; it is used
chiefly by them for caulking their small watercraft and tarring the vases and pitchers the
women make for holding water.” Pedro Fages, 1775

Natural oil seeps, like those Pedro Fages found with his soldiers in 1775, have been
active in California for thousands of years. Most seeps are in the southern half of the
state—either along the Pacific coastal areas, both onshore and offshore, or in the vast,
central San Joaquin Valley.
Any historical study of the petroleum industry in California must begin with the oil-
related activities of California Indians living around the seeps. Fages and other early
explorers—from the 1500s on—recorded how California Indians refined and used
asphaltum and heavy oils from the seeps. Documentation has continued through the
years, and today many references and objects show us how California Indians—including
the Yokuts, Achomawi, Maidu, and Chumash—used asphaltum and heavy oils for
symbolic, decorative, and practical purposes.
As elsewhere in the world, some of these objects evolved into folk art, becoming
articles that not only satisfied the daily practical needs of those who produced and used
them but also reflected the aesthetic values of the creators themselves, the artisans of oil.
In fact, the astounding variety of Indian uses of petroleum resembles our own.

CANOE PITCH TO CORNERSTONE OF CANADIAN OIL PRODUCTION:

THE ATHABASCA OIL SANDS, ALBERTA, CANADA

L. Mark Larsen, Schlumberger Oilfield Services, 10119 Trailridge Drive,

Shreveport, Louisiana 71106

At some 868 billion barrels of bitumen in place, the Athabasca oil sand deposit is the
world’s second largest known crude oil resource. There is a tremendous difference
between a resource in place and economic production. Bridging that gap took many
decades and numerous failed attempts before the first trickle of economic production was
achieved. This is that story.
Bitumen is heavier than water and is more viscous than molasses. The oil sands are
saturated with water and bitumen trapped in the pore spaces. The sands are exposed along
the banks of the Athabasca River in northeastern Alberta. The native Indians who
traveled the Athabasca river highways knew of this enormous deposit. It was, however, a
local curiosity with practical applications limited to a pitch for caulking canoes and the
like. The first recorded mention of the bitumen deposits was in 1719 when a Cree Indian
brought a sample to a fur trading post on the shores of Hudson Bay.

17
 Early explorers observed free bitumen in pools at the bottom of the river channel as
well as the saturated outcroppings. Entrepreneurs tried to drill wells through the bitumen
to the pools of oil thought to lie below. Natural gas was discovered but no free oil.
Attention then turned to experiments trying to separate the bitumen from the sand. Pilot
plants were opened through the 1920s-1940s.
The first commercial oil sands mining operation commenced in 1967. Current
production is approximately 485,000 bbls per day of synthetic crude oil.

AUSTRIA – A SCENIC COUNTRY, BUT ALSO AN OIL PROVINCE?

Wolfgang Nachtmann, Rohoel-Aufsuchungs AG, Schwarzenbergplatz 16, P-O- Box

333, A-1015 Vienna, Austria

Some two and a half thousand hand dug pits were the source of an annual oil
production of 5,000 tons in the early 1860s. New and advanced drilling technologies and
diversified use as well as increased demand for oil pushed the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy from a minor oil player in the middle of the 19th to the third largest oil
producer in the world in the early 20th century, just surpassed by the United States and
Russia. Almost all of this oil – with a peak production rate of some 2 million tons in 1909
– came from Galicia – an area that belongs now to southern Poland and the western
Ukraine.
Within its political limits of today Austria is a relative newcomer with respect to a
professional exploration for and production of hydrocarbons.
A systematic exploration of the Vienna Basin, Austria’s most important oil province
and home of Central Europe’s first giant oil field (Matzen, discovered in 1949), started in
the 1920ies and was based upon surface geological investigations as well as on
gravimetric and other (geo)physical measurements conducted by Austrian geologists on
behalf of two companies – the Eurogasco and the Vacuum Oil Company. In 1930 these
and the activities of other companies resulted in the first proof of oil. In 1935 the newly
founded RAG (a joint venture of the Vacuum Oil Company and Shell) was granted
exploration rights across most of the Vienna Basin. Already their second well discovered
a thirty million barrels oil field which has been producing oil since 1937. The Vienna
Basin with numerous reservoirs in several tectonic floors in depths between 500 and 8000
meters has been explored and exploited successfully until today.
Some 200 km west of Vienna, the Molasse Basin – the northern foredeep of the Alps
– provides the second hydrocarbon province in Austria. Here, already in 1900 major parts
of the city of Wels were lightened by natural gas. This was discovered by accident in
1892 when a newly drilled water well in the backyard of a nursery started to eject water
and gas. The discovery of heavy oil at the northern edge of the Molasse Basin in 1906
was more a local attraction than the starting signal for a rising golden age. It took almost
fifty more years to see the first economic oil flow from the Tertiary in the Molasse Basin.
Thermal oil and biogenic gas are (more or less) restricted to individual stratigraphic
horizons. Originally overlooked or just registered as a useless byproduct, in the early
sixties gas became an interesting and more and more important exploration and

18
production target. Meanwhile, natural gas is the dominating and highly profitable
hydrocarbon product from the Molasse Basin with an annual production of some 200
BFC or 12% of the domestic consumption.
During the history, Austria as a mountainous country used to be rich in mineral
resources. But today, the oil and gas production remains as the only profitable “mining”-
branch and is looking forward to some more prosperous years.

OIL COMPANIES AND UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

James M. Parks, 159 Wesley Drive, Wilmore KY 40390, jparx@worldnet.att.net

During World War II, the bulk of the oil fueling the Allied war effort came from the
United States, seriously lowering domestic reserves. To improve exploration
effectiveness, some twenty US oil companies responded by starting exploration research.
They staffed their labs with top new geology PhDs from universities across the country.
This became a pre-NSF post-doctorate experience for many, as fifty or more geologists
left the labs for university teaching, and continued their research started in the labs.
Oil companies commonly get blamed for actions, mainly environmental, that result in
negative publicity. Some actions have unintended consequences with positive results.
Exploration research may—or may not—have been of great benefit to the companies.
The unintended consequence was a significant boost to soft-rock geology. Only published
research had an impact on the science. Fields of soft-rock geology that got jump-started
include: Recent clastics and carbonates, clay mineralogy, carbonate petrography, organic
geochemistry, stratigraphy, paleoecology, palynology, rock mechanics and structural
geology. Several of these were aided by pioneering advances in computer applications.
This project is limited to the “Golden Age”, the third of a century from 1947 to 1980
when budgets were unlimited, researchers chose their own projects, and could publish
some results with little hindrance. Published research tells the obvious story. More
interesting is the “story behind the story”—those human interest aspects not usually
revealed in scientific journals. Personal anecdotes from participants provide the materials
for this work-in-progress.

AMERICA'S FIRST SUCCESSFUL RAILWAY TANK CAR, 1865

Samuel T. Pees1 and Richard A. Senges2, (1) Petroleum Geologist, 628 Arch Street,
Suite A-104, Meadville, PA 16335; (2) C.P.M., 1231 Wellington Drive, Victor, NY
14564

The first practical railway tank cars in America went into service in 1865 following a
successful run in late summer from a terminal at Miller Farm on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania,
to New York. Amos Densmore, an oil producer, and his brother James Densmore of the
Densmore Brothers, an oil buying and shipping firm at Miller Farm, are credited as the

19
inventors, and their names appear on the letters patent. They obtained the use of a flat car
from the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad and mounted two round wooden tanks on
it, each one over the trucks. The tight tanks were built of pine planks and held 40 to 45
barrels of crude oil each. James Densmore saw to the building and procurement of the
tank cars. A partner, Watson & Company, bought oil for shipment and handled loading.
Oil was shipped by the Densmore, Watson & Company to Clint Roudebush & Company
in New York City on a steady basis. Other shippers followed the design and a vast bulk
commerce of crude oil and refined products resulted from this invention.
The Densmore two tank design was patented tardily on April 10, 1866. Many of
those cars were already on the tracks before that date as well as similar cars built by
others. Patents for protection purposes were also obtained on June 26, 1866, for designs
having a single tank, three tanks and square tanks, but the cars with two wooden tanks
remained the most common. The patents stated that light riveted sheet iron could also
serve. However, pine wood, being in plentiful supply, was preferred. The Densmore
cars were gradually replaced by horizontal boiler-type iron tank cars beginning 1868-69.
Some of the wooden tank cars lingered on into the early 1870's.

THE MEXICAN GULF OIL COLLECTION AT CENTENARY COLLEGE

Katie Poole, Department of Geology and Geography, Centenary College of

Louisiana, Shreveport, LA 71134, kpoole@centenary.edu

Published information on foreign oil and gas companies in Mexico typically focuses
on the general geology of the country or political conditions building up to 1938.
However, little is written about the living conditions, transportation, and equipment that
were ever-present in the lives of the men sent to Mexico in search of oil.
The Mexican Gulf Oil Company Collection in the Centenary College Archives is
composed of approximately 13 linear feet filled with maps and reports in both Spanish
and English. The following selections will be on display:
 Mexican Gulf Oil field men manual - goes into great detail on how to survey an area
in Mexico, what should be included in a report, and what style the report should be
written. It also provides geologic age charts, information on the typical formations in
Mexico, and a chart on map symbols.
 The Campeche Hardwood Tract report - provides a verbal picture of an unexploited
Mexico.
 The Hacienda Cocuite report - interesting report on mud mounds. The author goes
into great detail on both natural mud mounds and those made by the Indians. A sketch
of different mounds is provided at the end of the report.
 Hacienda Palo Blanco report - discusses the difficulty of traveling over the Mexican
roads in both fair and foul weather.
 Gravity, lease, and contour maps
 Correspondence – postcards
 Pictures - of men and equipment

20
HISTORY OF THE OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES

Allan Pulsipher1 and Harry Luton2, (1) Center for Energy Studies, Louisiana State
University, Baton Rouge, LA 70806, 225-578-4550; (2) Minerals Management
Service, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, 1201 Elmwood Park Blvd. New Orleans, LA
70123, 504-736-2784

The Minerals Management Service is sponsoring a project involving faculty and

students at Louisiana State University, the University of Arizona, the University of the
Houston, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to study and document the
evolution of the offshore oil and gas industry in Louisiana in an objective and
comprehensive way. The goals of the investigators are to:
 Document the strategies and objectives of the companies or firms involved.
 Ascertain the cumulative effects of offshore development on the coastal
landscape, and community and family relationships.
 Describe how technology and managerial innovations enabled development of
reservoirs in deeper and deeper water depths.
 Study how the policies and regulations of the government agencies with
responsibilities in state and the federal jurisdictions were developed.
 Explore how these aspects of the story were related and affected each other
While the study uses a mix of methodologies, considerable effort will focus on the
collection and analysis of oral histories and life stories. This reflects the study’s goal of
telling the story from the perspective of those who made the industry, who “lived it,” and
who now look back at the trials and accomplishments from a new century's circumstances
and expectations. Collecting and archiving these stories is timely. Many of the
industry’s pioneers are elderly. Their knowledge and experience, sparsely represented in
existing sources, should not go unrecorded. The presentation will describe the project and
its origins in the MMS Environmental Studies Program.

OIL DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH ARKANSAS 1921-2001

John G. Ragsdale, 122 Neel Avenue, El Dorado, Arkansas 71730-5340

We will discuss the historic discovery of oil in south Arkansas in 1921 and the
subsequent production of oil through the year of 2001.
There will be references to the development of oil in the counties where oil
production was established, the relative magnitude of the oil produced in each county.
There will be a map showing the counties which had oil production and there will be a
chart to indicate annual production during the time from discovery in 1921 through the
total oil produced in 2001.

21
EARLY HISTORY OF THE CADDO-PINE ISLAND FIELD, CADDO PARISH,
LOUISIANA

C. Lane Sartor, Sartor-Richardson, Inc., Shreveport, Louisiana 71101

The Caddo-Pine Island Field, located principally in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, was the
first of the very large oil and gas fields discovered in Louisiana. From its discovery in
1905 to the present it has had considerable influence both on the petroleum industry and
the general economy of Northwest Louisiana.
The geologic feature responsible for this petroleum accumulation is a large, low
relief, closed anticlinal structure which occupies the crest of the Sabine Uplift, the
dominant feature between the East Texas Salt Dome Basin on the west and the North
Louisiana Interior Salt Dome Basin on the east.
The majority of the production has been from reservoirs within the Upper Cretaceous
together with those Lower Cretaceous zones which occur unconformably below the
Upper and Lower Cretaceous contact. Other Lower Cretaceous zones have produced, but
in relatively minor total quantities.
Through out the ninety-seven year history of the field total production has risen and
declined only to be revived by deeper drilling, the development of new production
techniques, and field extension drilling.
Now in its latter stages of depletion, most of this historic field's producing wells
are being operated by local independents. Their future is tied to the price of crude oil as
they await new techniques capable of unlocking the millions of barrels of oil still in place
in the Upper Cretaceous Annona Chalk.

THE WELL AT WICHITA

Lawrence H. Skelton, Kansas Geological Survey, 4150 Monroe St., Wichita, Kansas
67209

At the turn of the 20th century, municipalities in eastern Kansas were beginning to
thrive because of large, recently discovered, natural gas reserves. Such discoveries and
commensurate development attracted industries, capital and population from out of state.
Understandably, those cities were envied by towns farther west. The Wichita Daily Eagle
newspaper on March 7, 1896 noted that “If there is any one thing on earth that can
prevent Wichita from becoming a great city, it is a lack of cheap fuel.” Exhibiting
foresight to avoid such failure, in 1894 the Wichita city council authorized a municipal
bond issue of $10,000.00 to drill an exploratory well on city property in search of
economic deposits of coal, gas, salt or oil. Such well was spudded on October 19, 1895 in
what now is downtown Wichita. From then until April 30, 1897, the city struggled with
almost every imaginable problem before giving up the effort. There is a notable lack of
information about this well, as being only published newspaper accounts of the day and a
brief mention in an 1898 issue of Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science.

22
 Problems of urban hazards posed by unreported and forgotten old wells became
apparent in nearby Hutchinson, Kansas early in 2001 when fires and brine geysers
erupted within the city. Thus, a search in old newspapers may prove useful to
environmental geologists in finding pollution sources, potential hazards, etc. in urban
areas.

THE LOST HISTORY OF OHIO’S GRAND RESERVOIR OIL BOOM

Judith L. Sneed, P.O. Box 323, Mooringsport, LA 71060

In 1984, citizens of Caddo Parish Louisiana proudly placed their new historical
marker identifying the location of the “world’s first over water oil well”. The referenced
well was the Ferry Lake #1, completed in 1911. Sources cited in making this claim
included:
Franks, Kenny A. and Lambert, Paul F. Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil: A
Photographic History, 1901 – 1946. College Station, Texas: Texas A & M
University Press, 1982; and Shreveport Times, September 19, 1960.
Once stated, the claim of “world’s first” was perpetuated in later articles and works.
But, is it a valid claim? While certainly a significant achievement, with continuing
commercial production to this day, Caddo Lake oil was not the first. Somewhere, lost in
the archives, is the story of the oil boom in the Grand Reservoir located between Celina
and St. Marys, Ohio. An article in the Celina Ohio Daily Standard of June 3, 1995 tells
of the production from the 17,000 acre artificial lake that began in 1891. This allegation
is substantiated by the 1903 volume of the Geological Survey of Ohio: “By 1890 the
productive territory had been pushed to the eastern border of the Grand reservoir, and a
year later wells were being drilled in that body of water.” By 1908 production had waned
and many of the wells had already been abandoned, but in between, 200 – 300 wells were
drilled in the lake. It is claimed that “hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil” were
produced.
How did we lose this bit of history? Perhaps it was because the oil companies and
operators were small businesses from the local area, and because the venture lasted only a
short time. Possibly it was kept from the public eye because the experiment was viewed
as a failure by locals. Also, oil was just a brief side-bar in the history of this man-made
reservoir that was the “largest man-made lake in the world” at its completion in 1845. It
had been constructed originally to provide water for the Miami – Erie Canal.

23
WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF SPINDLETOP

Paul N. Spellman, Professor of History, Wharton Junior College, 911 Boling Hwy.,
Wharton, TX 77488

The stories of the Spindletop oil boom in 1901 revolve around the roughnecks and the
rascals who poured into Beaumont at the same phenomenal rate as the oil poured out of
the ground. The small southeast Texas town swelled to five times its normal population,
and for a period of only about two years the crowds ruled “the Hill.” Crime was rampant,
money spilled out into the city streets, mud and muck and oil covered everything and
everyone. The tales are boisterous and profane, hilarious and tragic, as a piece of the
American Frontier made its way through the Big Thicket and Gulf Coast Plains of Texas.
But not all of the stories told have included the “rest of the crowds” that roamed the
Beaumont streets and the nearby Gladys City rutted paths: the women and the children of
Spindletop. Some were Beaumont born and bred; others came trailing after husbands and
fathers. Babies were born in the crude camps, many of those same infants buried in
occasional cemeteries. Women established homes as best they could. Many of the
transient ones worked side by side with their men.
Their stories make up a poignant, easily overlooked chapter of the history of the oil
boom at the turn into the 20th century. Seen through the eyes of struggling wives and
wide-eyed children, Spindletop becomes a menagerie of sights and sounds and sensations
dramatically different from the perspective of the oil millionaire, the banker, or the
roughneck himself.
This paper looks through the eyes of the women and children of Spindletop, follows
them across the Hill and along the corduroy road to Saratoga and Sour Lake and Batson
Prairie, and presents a unique perspective of the hardships, and the innocent delights, of a
world temporarily gone mad.

JENNINGS OIL FIELD: THE START OF LOUISIANA’S OIL INDUSTRY

Jeff Spencer1 and Byron Miller2, (1) Osprey Petroleum, 15995 N. Barkers Landing,
Ste.350, Houston, TX, 77079-2493; (2) Louisiana Geological Survey, 208 Howe-Russell
Geoscience Complex, Baton Rouge, LA 70803-4101

Louisiana’s oil industry began September 21, 1901, with the discovery of oil at Jennings
Field. The Jules Clement No.1 Well was completed as a spectacular gusher, spraying a
fountain of oil into the air at a rate estimated to be 7000 barrels of oil per day. Just 9 months
earlier, oil had been discovered near Beaumont, Texas, at Spindletop Field. Together, the
Spindletop and Jennings discoveries ignited an “oil rush” of exploration and development
activity throughout Texas and Louisiana.
Jennings Field has been a prolific producer, with total production of 124 million barrels of
oil and 52 billion cubic feet of gas since 1901. Through 1920, the production from Jennings
Field alone accounted for 67% of the total oil and gas production for the entire state of
Louisiana. Jennings Field continues to produce oil and gas today and is still an area of drilling

24
and development activity. Total production in 2001 amounted to 183 thousand barrels of oil
and 148 thousand cubic feet of gas.

RANGELY OIL FIELD – COLORADO’S GIANT STILL GOING STRONG

AFTER ONE HUNDRED YEARS

Jay T. Sperr and James B. Larson, Equity Oil Company, Denver, Colorado

The Rangely Oil Field had a modest beginning in 1902 when Poole drilled a 750 foot
test which produced 7 BOPD from a fractured, upper Cretaceous aged Mancos shale.
Few would have imagined that this discovery would result in an oilfield that will
ultimately produce nearly a billion barrels of oil and would an area of over 31 square
miles.
The early development of the field was slow. Production rates were modest and this
portion of northwestern Colorado was 225 miles from the nearest market for oil, Salt
Lake City. In 1918, the Raven Oil Company constructed a small refinery with a daily
capacity of 250 barrels. Refinery equipment was carried by wagon over the rough roads
from a railhead at Dragon, Utah. Gasoline, kerosene and other products were marketed
locally in Colorado and nearby parts of Wyoming and Utah. By 1924, fractured Mancos
shale wells were producing between 1500 and 2000 barrels per month. Ultimately, the
fractured Mancos would yield over 14 million barrels of 41 gravity crude at depths less
than 3500 feet.
Deeper pool production in Rangely was not to some for another 30 years after the
discovery. In 1907, the Colorado Pacific Development Company, a division of the
Southern Pacific Railroad, purchased a 8640 acre block on the crest of the anticline. The
first well drilled below the Mancos, by Colorado Pacific, found gas in the Dakota Sand,
which was worthless so far from any market. In 1917, A.C. McLaughlin bought this
block and resold 5000 acres of it to Standard of California for $200,000. Standard drilled
fourteen discouraging Mancos wells in a year’s time; their entire production for the year
1919 was only 2100 barrels.
But in 1933, Standard of California’s #A-1 Raven well discovered oil in the
Pennsylvanian Weber sand and was completed for a modest initial potential of 229
barrels of day. With no pipeline in the area and the nearest railroad 130 miles away, it
was to be another ten years until Weber exploitation began. With the national push for
oil during World War Two, development of the Weber sand started with three wells in
1944. By the end of 1948, Rangely had been delineated on a forty acre pattern with 473
wells. Today there are about 900 wells at Rangely. Maximum production occurred in
1956 at a rate of 82,000 barrels per day with 45 to 50 million cubic feet of gas being
flared.
In September 1945, Utah Oil Refining completed a 10 inch pipeline to Wamsutter,
Wyoming, where it joined a major east-west trunkline, and in 1948 another 10 inch line
was completed to Salt Lake City. The field was unitized in 1957, with Chevron the
designated operator, allowing a successful peripheral water flood with gas reinjection. In
February 1986, the 125 mile Raven Ridge Pipeline was completed from Rangely to Rock

25
Springs, Wyoming, and carbon dioxide injection began. Today Rangely produces about
16,000 BOPD from 348 producing wells

GIANT UNDER THE HILL: DRILLING FOR THE SPINDLETOP GUSHER

FROM 1899-1901

Jo Ann Stiles, Lamar University History Dept., 4150 Crow Road #3, Beaumont,
Texas 77706, 409-899-3281, stilesjk@hal.lamar.edu

When the Civil War ended, the search for Texas oil began in earnest. The unusual
mounds and sour springs of Southeast Texas drew attention early, and by 1892 the
Gladys City Oil, Gas, & Manufacturing Company was formed to focus the search on
Sour Springs Mound several miles from Beaumont with its 9,000 residents. After three
early dry holes in the middle of a national depression, investment capital dried up, and it
took a mining engineer working on the salt domes of Louisiana and a one-armed
reprobate, turned religious, from Beaumont to revive interest, drill one dry hole, and then
finally bring the stunning Lucas Gusher into this world -- roaring, rock-laden, fouling the
bayous and prairies, and leaving the world with the opportunities and problems that
emerged from its discovery.
The men and one particular woman who were involved in the fifth and successful
well are the focus of this presentation. Interesting individuals, they teamed up to solve
the problems of drilling on the hill that had defied earlier attempts. They invented tools
and processes that would lighten the load of others who drilled on these salt dome
formations, and when they succeeded, they scattered around the world to continue the
search for that all-consuming oil.
The Spindletop oil that erupted into the cold air in Beaumont, Texas, on January 10,
1901, dramatically changed the industry that fostered its discovery. One of the drillers
predicted a flow of fifty barrels a day when they hit an oil sand at 900 feet. No one could
conceive of the 70,000 to 100,000 barrels per day this one well would produce over the
first ten days. The industry would have to change or be overwhelmed by the sheer size of
this discovery, so Texas led the way into the oil-based 20th century economy.

FROM SALT LICKS TO STOCK TANKS – A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE

EARLY SALT AND OIL INDUSTRIES IN WEST VIRGINIA

Larry D. Woodfork, Consulting Geologist and State Geologist of West Virginia

(Retired), Morgantown, WV

In many places throughout the world, saline springs, oil and gas seeps, and related
phenomena have proven to be surface indications of associated hydrocarbon
accumulations at greater depths. That has certainly been the case in West Virginia. From
salt licks visited by buffalo, deer, and other animals in prehistoric times, to the utilization

26
of saline springs for salt by Indians and early white settlers, through the salt brine drillers
in the early 1800’s who encountered oil as a nuisance (but utilized gas to fire their
boilers), to the drilling of the first successful well drilled specifically for oil in 1860, the
saga of salt licks, saline springs, gas seeps, burning springs, and their commercial
implications and consequences are an interesting and important intertwined vignette in
the tapestry of West Virginia’s industrial and economic development.

27
 FIELD TRIP GUIDEBOOK

HISTORY OF THE OIL INDUSTRY SYMPOSIUM

MARCH 26-29, 2003
SHREVEPORT, LA
Mary L. Barrett, Editor

FIELD TRIP 1. MARCH 26TH, CADDO-PINE ISLAND FIELD

Assisted by Pat Allen, Judy Sneed

FIELD TRIP 2. MARCH 27TH, EAST TEXAS OIL FIELD

Assisted by Randy Clements, Bob Daigle, Terry Stembridge,
Joe White

FIELD TRIP 3. MARCH 29TH, SMACKOVER OIL FIELD

Assisted by Don Lambert

Large Petroleum Fields of the Region

28
 Field Trip 1. March 26, 2003

SUMMARY OF THE CADDO-PINE ISLAND FIELD

The Caddo-Pine Island Field was discovered in 1905. Almost the entire modern field is situated in
northwestern Louisiana with its western edge near the Louisiana-Texas state line. Production is from
Cretaceous-age formations. The extension of the field underneath Caddo Lake was primarily developed by
the Gulf Oil Corporation in 1911. Massive spillage of produced saline water and associated salt lakes were
common. Much of the field development was in the floodplain lowlands of the Red River, and this land
was still marsh-like in the early twentieth century due to the slow water drainage of this region after
destruction of major log jams on the Red River by 1877. Floodplain land had been under water in the
1800s, and the water bodies were termed “raft lakes”. Very slow drainage of the region into the 1900s
resulted in much of the surface development of the Caddo-Pine Island Field actually occurring in swamps
or what would now be called wetlands.

The early years of Caddo-Pine Island Field production were dominated by low oil amounts and high-
pressure shallow methane gas; significant oil discoveries occurred in 1908 and onward. Spectacular gas
and salt-water blowouts dominated the first decade of development; gas wastage was approximated at
seventy-million cubic feet per day in 1908. Such loss in the Caddo-Pine Island Field prompted state
officials to enact Louisiana’s first conservation laws in 1910. Most early oil production came from the
Woodbine Formation at an average subsurface depth of 2250 feet. Prior to 1918, the oil types were fairly
uniform in the Woodbine, with the two variations of average gravity values at 38 and 42 (“light” oil); the
Nacatoch produced minor “heavy” oil of an average gravity of 20°.

Field production declined from an annual high of ten million barrels of oil in 1913 to six million barrels in
1917. Just as interest was slowing down in northwest Louisiana a new region of field production, the Pine
Island district, was discovered in late 1917. The district was actively producing in the spring of 1918 with
heavy oil in the Woodbine and light oil in the Annona Chalk. The 1918 development in the Pine Island
district raised total annual field output to a high of eleven million barrels. Most oil from the new Pine
Island district was a heavy crude; by the end of 1918, the Caddo-Pine Island Field production was
dominated by heavy oil with an average daily production of 28,000 barrels of heavy oil and 10,000 barrels
of light oil.

Production declined steadily after the high of 1918. Continued development of pay zones kept the Caddo-
Pine Island Field alive, and the field underwent several revivals as new technology increased production.
The Annona Chalk had another boom around 1937 with the advent of acidizing techniques, and then
another boom in 1953 with hydraulic fracturing. By 1963, there were about 7400 wells producing over
18,000 bpd with a total annual production of over 264 million bbl. Lastly, the crude oil price increases of
the late 1970s and early 1980s provided yet another boom to the region. By early 1997, the Caddo-Pine
Island Field had produced 369 million barrels of oil.

29
Figure A1. The distribution of the raft lakes around 1839, as mapped from old surveys by A. C. Veatch in
1899. Ferry Lake is Caddo Lake. These lakes existed for most of the 19th century until the final destruction
of Red River log jams in the 1870s (G. Harris and A. C. Veatch, LA Geol. Survey Report no. 4).

Figure A2. Oxen were important for field development (LA St. O & G Museum).

30
Figure A3. Map illustrating the lake and field region.

Figure A4. Much of the field underlies the Red River floodplain or Caddo Lake.

31
Figure A5. Early regional geology map from Matson, 1916, USGS Bull. 619.

Figure A6. Early cross-section of the Caddo-Pine Island Field from Fletcher, 1929, in Structure of Typical
American Oil Fields, vol. 2, AAPG.

32
 FIELD TRIP 1. CADDO-PINE ISLAND FIELD
MILEAGE NOTES

0.0 Leave the Holiday Inn Downtown, head north on Highway 1

The modern Shreveport-Bossier City area contrasts sharply with the Shreveport
prior to regional petroleum discovery. In 1903, the city had a population of
about 18,500. Shreveport was an agricultural center and an early river-port site.
Beginning with the discovery of the Caddo-Pine Island Field, the Shreveport
metroplex became a major petroleum center. All the major oil companies and
large independents had offices here through the 1950s and into the early 1960s.
As drilling decreased in the region, most of the majors left, and the city became
dominated by independents. The active role of independents developing the
petroleum reserves of the Ark-La-Tex region continues today.

The first natural gas deposits of the region were discovered near Shreveport in
1870. Near the present downtown, on Market St. (Highway 1) as we cross Cross
Bayou, the Shreveport Ice Manufacturing Company began drilling a water well.
After drilling 961 ft down, the drilling stopped for the night. A night watchman
noted strange winds coming from the well vicinity, and decided to light a match
to get a better view. There was an instant explosion and flames, and the
terrorized watchman fled. The well was extinguished, and the gas was used to
light area businesses and homes for several years. The nearby gas resources of
Caddo Field and later deposits resulted in plentiful supplies of natural gas early
on—by April, 1906, the town had its first major gas pipeline from Oil City.

Cross Caddo Lake

20.3 STOP 1. BLOWOUT POND AND CADDO LAKE

Dub Allen’s Pond. This placid pond, on the residence of the Allen Family, marks the spot where a drama
unfolded early in the history of the Caddo Field. Early wildcatters were in for a rude surprise when they
attempted to drill wells in the area. The early shallow wells were troubled by high gas pressures and
produced little oil. Abnormally high gas pressures were encountered in the shallow (~850 ft) Nacatoch
Formation. Several nearby drill sites blew out when pockets of gas were encountered. Explosions were
heard miles away. Flames and smoke filled the air. Entire drilling rigs, and sometimes the men working on
them, were swallowed up in the craters formed by escaping gas. In some cases the wells blew wild for
years. Little could be done to stop the venting of gas. Also, wells were sometimes allowed to blow on
purpose to relieve the gas pressure as gas was of little value and oil might follow the gas surge.

At this site, the blowout resulted in the loss of the derrick, pumps, steam engines, and pipe, as well as a
wagon and mule team. Fortunately, none of the field hands was killed.
About four years ago, the resulting funnel-shaped crater was investigated by a school group and found to be
59 ft deep. This, and other craters in the vicinity, provides silent testimonials to the early and difficult days
of the local oil industry.

Some of the nearby blowouts of 1905, the Producers Oil Company no. 2 and 3, were visited by the
Governor Blanchard of Louisiana and Major Frank M. Kerr, chief of the Louisiana state engineers. His
report described the scene of these geysers:

“On the day of this visit, (the) well presented a scene of magnificent energy and surprising
spectacular effect. A basin or bowl of water some 250 feet in diameter had resulted from the action
of the escaping gas, and the roll of waves from the mouth of the orifice toward the rim of the
basin, like waves on a sea beach in stormy weather, from the center of which leaped a flame some

33
 thirty feet in diameter and equally high. This, with the monster upheaval of water and leaping of
spray, presented a spectacle which might readily have been likened to the display of a prismatic
fountain of unusual magnitude and superb effects.”
(Oil Investor’s Journal, Dec. 18, 1905, p.11)

Caddo Lake. Note Caddo Lake and the over-water wells at this overview. Gulf Oil Company leased about
8000 acres of the lake bed in 1910, and drilling was underway by 1911. By 1917, 58 wells had been
completed, and only 2 of the wells were dry. Initial capacity varied from 25 to 4000 barrels per day, with
most oil from the Woodbine Formation at a depth of about 2250 ft and a gravity of about 44°. Gulf Oil
maintained a fleet of 3 tug boats, 10 barges, a floating pile driver, and 36 small boats. Derricks were
mounted on wooden (cypress) pilings, and the rigs were carried out on barges. Slush pits were built of 50-
barrel tanks mounted on posts. The wells cost an average of $15,000 (Forbes, 1946, A History of Caddo
Oil and Gas Field, The Louisiana Historical Quarterly, p. 3-72).

0.0 Return to Highway 1, continue northward

2.2 In Oil City

Prior to oil discovery, the railroad had a railroad stop in this vicinity. An important
attraction for some was the Jeems Bayou Fishing and Hunting Club, founded in the late
1890s, and still in existence today. The railroad station’s name was originally called
“Jeems Bayou Station”, but the stop was later changed to “Ananias” (after the famous
biblical liar) as a result of the numerous fish tales from traveling fishermen. This name
remained until oil was discovered, and the railroad stop became “Oil City.”

7.1 Left on Highway 2

10.9 Left onto oil field road and Trees

STOP 2. TREES CITY, LOUISIANA

Trees City was an oil company town, possibly one of the first anywhere to be built by an oil company.
Developed by wildcatters Mike Benedum and Joe Trees, it provided a safe haven, removed from wild Oil
City. The boomtown had become a warren of tents and shacks, lit by the flames of burning gas and the
craters of past wild wells. Oilfield hands slept in tents or in one of the fleabag hotels that sprang up on
almost every corner. Bawdy-houses and honky-tonks were everywhere. Workers spent or lost their wages
gambling and drinking, or had them stolen, then had nothing left to support their families. Assaults and
homicides were a regular occurrence. There was no place for a working man to get away from the
lawlessness. Company men could never rely on getting their crews back after a day or two off. There were
times when they had to bail men out of jail to have enough hands to operate. Morale was low--no sane man
would bring his family into such conditions. The situation was desperate.

The solution was Trees City, begun in 1908. This town, removed from the hubbub of oil operations, was
designed for families. Decent homes, churches and schools, a bank and post office were provided. Social
life was encouraged. Trees City became a model for other boomtown operations, and went a long way
toward taming the lawless oilfield towns.Not much remains of the town today – a grid work of streets, a
few old homes, and several derricks. But for many years Trees City was the answer to a tough problem.

Joe Trees, the man for whom the town was named, was quite an engineer. After several of his wells blew
out he proposed a remedy – pump cement into the bottom of the pipe, then drill through it. That should
seal the base of the pipe and stop the gas from going around the casing. Joe’s innovation made it possible
to develop the Caddo Field and many other oilfields where high-pressure gas was encountered (Mallison,
1953, The Great Wildcatter); (Judy Sneed).

Continue on lease road

34
 STOP 3. THE STILES LEASE

We are visiting the Stiles no. 58 well, recently acquired by W. C. Allen and Sons, and one of the greatest
oil wells in the field. At this time the well does not produce, but the Allen brothers will be working the well
over to re-establish production.

The partners of Mike Benedum and Joe Trees decided to get involved in the newly-discovered Caddo Field
and became the major player with the leasing of almost 130,000 acres. Their first lease was taken in late
1907 from W. P. Stiles, a well-to-do farmer who owned 3254 acres. Their first few wells were not
successful, but the Stiles no. 1, their fourth well, was a major discovery. Much of the Stiles property was
treacherous and difficult to develop due to the marsh-like conditions, but develop they did! The Benedum-
Trees Oil Company (the Trees Oil Company operated the Louisiana leases) controlled much of the rich
acreage in the new field. In 1909, Benedum and Trees sold their oil leases to Standard Oil for $6 million,
but kept the gas production. A gas company, the Arkansas Natural Gas Company, was born, and Benedum
and Trees were the corporate officers and the largest stock holders (Mallison, 1953, The Great Wildcatter).

Needless to say, Standard’s purchase was very profitable. Production from just one well, this Stiles no. 58,
paid for over half of what Standard had given to Benedum and Trees. The original Benedum and Trees
leases produced over a billion dollars worth of oil and natural gas.

Note the old corner blocks right beside the Stiles no. 58. The Stiles well was such a prolific producer, even
as a pumper, that another well was drilled right by it to pump even more oil. The second site never
produced oil in economic quantities.

0.0 Return to Hwy 2, take right

3.8 Take right onto Hwy 1, return to Oil City

8.8 Left into the downtown area

The early boomtown was typical of most early 20th-century towns associated with rapid
growth and wealth from oil fields—gambling, saloons, prostitutes, and crime were
rampant. However, by the early 1920s the town was attracting more families rather than
the oil-field workers alone due to the sustained nature of the field. Early buildings of Oil
City were closely-spaced and constructed of wood. The town burned to the ground on at
least three separate occasions, but was always rapidly rebuilt. Today, there are no old
wood buildings remaining from the earlier era.

9.9 Go to new museum building on Lake St.

STOP 4. THE LOUISIANA OIL AND GAS MUSEUM

In 1969, local citizens started the Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Society to promote the preservation
and history of the region. A museum was started in the early 1980s in the old Kansas City Southern
railroad depot. The society also began planning and raising funds for a new museum in the 1980s. The
original groundbreaking of this new museum complex occurred in 1987; over $600,000 was donated by
local citizens and oil companies to construct a building for a museum. In 1998, the museum was acquired
by the State of Louisiana and placed under the Secretary of State’s office. The CPI Oil and Historical
Society continues as an important part of the museum by continuing to raise funds, promote the region’s
history, and actively participate in the interior design of the new museum. In 2001, the state renamed the
museum to the Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum and began designing the interior and new exhibits at
that time. Currently, you are seeing the construction of the first phase of the designs which cover the early
northwest Louisiana history.

35
The next design and construction phase will be the petroleum history of the region and of Louisiana. The
museum has also acquired more land around the grounds to continue to build outdoor exhibits. The
museum and society have preserved both the old bank building and the post office from Trees City.

The Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Society has donated their time and the dinner for tonight’s event.

36
Figure A7. This photograph, circa 1905, illustrates a blowout crater around Oil City (LA State Oil and Gas
Museum).

Figure A8. This is a modern remnant crater on the Allen property. Caddo Lake is in background.

37
Figure A9. This photograph, around 1919, illustrates the Gulf Oil development in the open portion of
Caddo Lake (LA State Oil and Gas Museum).

Figure A10. This photograph illustrates the nature of the offshore rig in Caddo Lake. Note the Gulf Oil
boat in the foreground (LA State Oil and Gas Museum).

38
Figure A11. Downtown Oil City, circa 1922. Both wooden and brick buildings are present (LA State Oil
and Gas Museum).

Figure A12. Modern view of downtown Oil City.

39
Figure A13. The trip to Trees City along Highway 2 reveals many old metal derricks still standing.

Figure A14. Photograph of Trees City, date unknown (LA State Oil and Gas Museum).

40
Figure A15. Wooden derricks and tent buildings at Stacy’s Landing, Caddo Lake, circa 1915 (LA State Oil
and Gas Museum).

Figure A16. The new museum building to the right, with the large Trees bank building to the left.

41
 Field Trip 2. March 27, 2003

SUMMARY OF THE EAST TEXAS FIELD

The discoverer of the East Texas Field was Columbus M. (“Dad”) Joiner, a wildcatter from Ardmore, OK.
Joiner played his hunches, although professionals had thought the area did not have much oil potential.
Joiner found the money to buy leases in Rusk County, between Henderson and Overton. Joiner began
working with the geologist A.D. (“Doc”) Lloyd, in 1927. Lloyd picked the most likely spot for oil on Mrs.
Daisy Bradford’s farm. To raise the cash for drilling, Joiner peddled shares for his project throughout the
region and state. Always underfinanced, the crew never had adequate equipment. The head driller was Ed
C. Laster. The first well was abandoned in February 1928. The crew began another well but still found
nothing. Joiner, broke and in ill-health at 73, sold more stock in the venture and raised the money to drill
the third well, the Daisy Bradford #3. This was the discovery well for the East Texas Field. A month later,
Joiner sold his 4000 acres of leases for $1.25 million to H. L. Hunt, who had already grown rich in the oil
business in southern Arkansas. The field is also very famous in petroleum history for the 1930s legal battles
over proration, the control of illegally produced “hot oil”, and the field-wide management of the large
volumes of saltwater.

Facts about the East Texas Oil Field (East Texas Oil Museum, 2000, brochure)

1. The giant East Texas Oil Field was discovered on October 3, 1930. The discovery well was the
Daisy Bradford #3 well.
2. The Lou Della Crim #1 discovery well for the Kilgore area came in on December 28, 1930, testing
22,000 barrels per day.
3. The Lathrop #1 well, 27 miles north of the Joiner discovery well, was brought in with a test of
18,000 barrels per day.
4. Wells were drilled turn-key for approximately $32,000 in an average of 25 days.
5. More than 32,000 wells were drilled in the field, with fewer than 500 dry holes. Today, seventy
years later, there are fewer than 4400 wells still producing, with a daily production of 45,000
barrels of oil.
6. The posted price for crude oil was $1.10 per barrel when the Daisy Bradford blew in. However,
the East Texas Field developed rapidly and was soon making a million barrels per day, and the
price dropped to 10 cents per barrel.
7. The East Texas Oil Field produces from a sandstone formation called the Woodbine, located at
3650 feet below the surface. It is a water drive reservoir with an underground ocean of saltwater
moving from west to east.
8. The East Texas Oil Field was the largest oil field in the world at the time of its discovery. The six
largest known fields in the world at that time would fit within the perimeter of the East Texas
Field.
9. The East Texas Oil Field is seventy years old (2000). It has produced 6 billion barrels of oil, with
an estimated one billion barrels to be produced. When the field has been depleted, some 86% of
the oil in place will have been captured, an exceptionally high rate of recovery.
10. The East Texas Oil Field is 42 miles long and 6 to 14 miles in width. It covers 140,000 acres in
parts of five counties—Rusk, Gregg, Smith, Upshur and Cherokee.
11. During World War II, the Roosevelt Administration at the suggestion of Secretary of Interior
Harold Ickes, authorized the construction of a large diameter pipe line (24”) from East Texas to
the refining centers of the northeast. Built and operated by a consortium of U.S. oil companies,
the line transported millions of barrels of East Texas crude to Pennsylvania, New York and New
Jersey.
12. The East Texas Oil Field produced more oil during World War II than the Axis Powers combined.

The East Texas Field Petroleum System

The East Texas Oil Field is a classic stratigraphic trap with the pinchout of the Upper Cretaceous
Woodbine Formation on the west flank of the Sabine Uplift. The lower Dexter sandstones are

42
unconformably overlain by the Austin Chalk and locally by the Eagle Ford Shale. The original thickness of
the oil sand averaged 38 feet, ranging from 0 to 115 feet. The producing sandstones are deltaic in origin,
deposited as strike-oriented sands in a highly-destructive deltaic setting. Permeability is highest in the
northern portion of the field. Post depositional elevation of the Woodbine over the Sabine Uplift with
associated erosion resulted in a westward-dipping and –thickening sandstone wedge with net sandstone
thickness increasing to the west. The average field properties are as follows: 25% porosity; 1300
millidarcies permeability; water saturation 14 %; 38° API gravity; initial gas:oil ratio 353; average well
spacing 4.5 acres, except in town sites like Kilgore, where it is 1.7 acres per well.

The field has a strong water drive. However, the primary recovery and early withdrawals of 1 million
barrels per day resulted in a reservoir pressure decline from 1620 psi in 1930 to 1062 psi by 1940. Both
early proration plus the reinjection of saltwater beginning in 1938 reduced the declining pressure and
associated physical damage to the reservoir. The average reservoir pressure has remained stable since
1940. The field is a classic example of near-perfect areal and vertical sweep efficiency; this productivity is
a function of the strong water drive (from Galloway, W.E., and others, 1983, East Texas Woodbine
Sandstone, in Atlas of Major Texas Oil Reservoirs, Bureau of Economic Geology, Univ. of Texas at
Austin, p. 54-56).

43
Figure 1B. Map provided by the East Texas Oil Museum.

Figure 2B. East Texas field production is from the Woodbine Formation; the unit pinches out over the
Sabine Uplift (after Minor and Hanna, 1941, in Stratigraphic Type Oil Fields, AAPG)

44
 FIELD TRIP 2. EAST TEXAS OIL FIELD
MILEAGE NOTES

0.0 Leave Downtown Holiday Inn, travel west on I-20

Enter Texas

61 In Longview, take exit #596, Highway 259, stay on service road

Intersection with Martin Luther King Blvd., take right at stop sign

62 STOP 1. BIG INCH PIPELINE (stay on bus)

Stop 1 marks the beginning of the Big Inch Pipeline. The 1990 Texas Historical Commission marker reads
as follows:

“Before the United States entry into WWII following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in
December of 1941, 95 % of the crude oil delivered to east coast refineries was
transported by tanker ships. Ninety percent of that oil originated from Texas oil fields.
Beginning in February 1942, many U.S. oil tankers en route from the Gulf of Mexico to
the east coast were sunk by German submarines. Recognizing the need to transport oil
under safer circumstances, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes developed a plan for a
massive overland oil pipeline. Under the auspices of the War Emergency Pipelines, Inc.,
construction began on the largest pipeline in history up to that time. Measuring twenty-
four inches in diameter, the Big Inch Pipeline extended from Longview to Norris City,
Illinois, and eventually to refineries in the east. The Big Inch Pipeline’s impact on the
war effort was tremendous, enabling the safe and timely transport of oil products vital to
the Allies. During the height of wartime service, over 300,000 barrels of oil were
delivered each day over the 1,476-mile line. When the war ended, the Big Inch continued
in service after conversion to a natural gas pipeline.”

0.0 Leave Stop 1, heading into downtown Longview

Longview was born when the railroad came through in 1870 and Mr.
O. L. Methvin donated 100 acres in what is now downtown Longview
to the Southern Pacific Railroad (later the Texas and Pacific Railroad).
The International and Great Northern Railroad came in 1872, thus
Longview became one of the few east Texas towns with two depots,
one system running north-south and the other system running east-west.
When the surveyors began laying out the city, they started from atop
the hill, thus the name “Longview” was born. The early economy was
based on timber, cotton and family farming. Cotton was a primary
crop—in 1876 18,000 bales were shipped from Longview, and by 1890
there were about 660 farms in Gregg County growing cotton. Each year
farmers would have a cotton parade down “Cotton Street” (Joe White).

2.6 Intersection with Cotton St., take left

Intersection with Green St., take right

Intersection of Green and Methvin streets

0.0 Pick up guide

At this intersection is Heritage Park, now a park with memorial

plaques, but formerly the site of Conrad Hilton’s second hotel. He said
of it, in his book Be My Guest:

45
 “It was somehow always special for me. After the desert of the
Depression, this hotel stood as my symbol that American business was
ready to grow again”.

At the opposite corner is the Weaver Building, originally the Southwest

Life Insurance Building, started in 1936 and completed in 1939.

Continue down Green Street

0.5 Intersect Marshall Street, take a left. This is Highway 80.

U.S. Highway 80 parallels I-20, going through Longview on the north

side of town. From Savannah, Georgia to San Diego, California, it is a
highway of history for Martin Luther King, Bonnie and Clyde, Van
Cliburn, John F. Kennedy, Billy the Kid, Geronimo and Cochise.
Highway 80 is sometimes called the Tululla Bankhead highway—her
father was the U.S. senator that voted to fund construction and paving
of Highway 80 (Joe White).

2.0 Intersection with Bill Owens Highway

North of this area, near the intersection of Fredonia and Tyler streets, is
the site of the Lathrop/Skipper well #1, located 25 miles of the original
discovery well of the East Texas Field. With the discoveries of the
Daisy Bradford #3 and the Lou Della Crim #1, wildcatters believed
they had found two important oil fields with opportunities for more.
Concerned that no oil had been found to the north in Gregg County, the
Longview Chamber of Commerce sought to raise $10,000 to be offered
for the first successful oil well within 12 miles of the courthouse.
Barney Skipper had blocked up a lease area and offered it for free to
several major oil companies who respectively declined the offer to drill.
The Lathrop/Skipper #1 was completed on January 26, 1931, at a depth
of 3587 feet and capable of flowing 18,000 barrels per day. This well,
the northern-most discovery well, indicated an almost-impossible
concept—the existence of a single giant oil field (Joe White; Historical
Marker at site).

4.1 Intersection with Standard Road (FM 1845); in Greggton

During the 1930s, this 12-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 80 between

Longview and Gladewater was known as the “Main Street of Texas.”
In the mid-1930s, the East Texas Chamber of Commerce claimed that
more traffic traveled on this paved oilfield highway than over any other
road of similar length in the United States. The Texas Highway
Department divided it into “blocks” of one-quarter mile in length for
consecutive numbering, as approximately 50,000 people lived along
this highway stretch. “From Gladewater to Longview it is a solid
stretch of business houses, trim cottages, shacks, filling stations,
restaurants, churches, honkytonks, beauty shops, beer saloons, supply
houses, barber shops, brothels, fine homes, tent houses and tourist
camps” (“The Main Street of Texas”, East Texas, official publication of
the East Texas Chamber of Commerce, v. 9, no. 12, p. 5, 30; Sept.
1935).

7.4 Intersection with Highway 42, in White Oak, turn left onto Highway 42

46
 We are in the northern part of the East Texas Oil Field driving south.
Remember that the East Texas Oil Field is 42 miles long from north to
south. Note the wells and tank farms. The field averages 10 miles in
width, resulting in a field area of about 400 mi2.

9.0 On left, note golf course (Longview Country Club) with pump jacks

10.1 Sabine River highway crossing; take right immediately after bridge
onto River Road, stop bus

STOP 2. WELLS ON THE SABINE RIVER

Under Texas law, all navigable rivers belong to the State of Texas; the same applies to the right of
way along this and other state roads and highways. When the oil field developed, someone
realized that they could lease this property to drill wells, and pay the state a 1/8 override in each
well. Thus, we see many wells drilled on the edge of the river banks up and down the river and
also along the edge of state highways throughout the East Texas Field. Note two rows of wells,
one set along the river bank and one set on the edge of the river. Both sets of wells are producing
from the Woodbine Formation. The wells over the river are state leases; they are on downhole
pumps due to the difficulty of placing pump-jacks here. Note that on land most metal derricks are
gone, but not so for the active river wells. The derricks are left here for support when the operators
need to conduct any workover operations (Bob Daigle and Joe White).

0.0 Continue south on Highway 42 towards Kilgore

2.8 Take right onto FM 1252 at light

We are in the East Texas woods! An article published in The Oil

Weekly (Nov. 14, 1932, p.24, 25, 66, 68) basically summed up in its
title what these areas might have been like during the regulatory
strife—“East Texas Landowners Buy Buckshot as Legislators Meet.”
A widely attended meeting of about 1500 landowners in Tyler in
October 1932 had this as their final paragraph of a body of resolutions
in support of production controls:

“Be it resolved—That if the worst comes and it develops that

we have no laws in this country which will protect the oil
property rights of the people of East Texas from selfish and
greedy exploitation and consequent speedy destruction, and
that we can not get any relief from state or federal
governments—that as a last measure of self-preservation this
body automatically resolve itself into a vigilance committee
and act accordingly.”

After passage of the above resolution, merchants in Tyler and

Longview reportedly sold unusually high amounts of buckshot and
other ammunition.

6.0 Take right onto FM 2207

9.4 Take right onto S. Cole Bottom Rd (no road sign, note stop sign with
pink marker tape)

9.6 Take right at stop sign onto N. Cole Bottom Rd.

Go to saltwater disposal site

47
 STOP 3. EAST TEXAS SALT WATER DISPOSAL
COMPANY SITE

At this stop, we are visiting a typical saltwater injection system of the 1940s, including the
original redwood tanks commonly used.

The following summary history of the ETSWD is taken from its write-up published in the Kilgore
News Herald, page 8E, July 28, 2002, except where noted.

The East Texas Salt Water Disposal Company (ETSWD) provides the service of disposing the
saltwater produced in the East Texas Field. The company disposes of over 800,000 barrels of
saltwater daily. The ETSWD currently serves 1178 leases and operates 90 disposal wells, over 100
collection points and has over 700 miles of active pipelines located in the 200 mi2 of the original
field limits. The company is one of the oldest and most successful environmental protection
companies in existence.

Saltwater production from the East Texas field was inevitable after its discovery in 1930.
Saltwater production increased rapidly and by April 1941 had exceeded 300,000 barrels per day.
Initially, the saltwater was simply released onto the land and into streams. Often, pits were used as
holding tanks and emptied during high stream flow to dilute the water salinity. An additional
problem related to excessive fluid production was the alarming decrease in bottom hole pressure
of the oil reservoir, which if allowed to continue, would reduce the ultimate oil recovery by
millions of barrels. At that time, it was believed that the East Texas field would then be depleted
by the late 1950s.

Several methods were considered, such as--evaporation in open pits; evaporation by aid of
artificial heat; continuous discharge into streams; storage of saltwater and release during high
stream flow; transportation of saltwater to the Gulf of Mexico by pipeline; injection of saltwater to
subsurface formations (Payne, B.W., President, ETSWD, “Production and disposal of salt water in
the East Texas Oil Field” presented before the East Texas Chapter of the API, 5/12/42).
Reinjection into the Woodbine Formation was selected, as this would address both primary
concerns of stopping saltwater pollution and maintaining the bottom hole pressure. Field operators
and members of the Railroad Commission of Texas worked cooperatively on the issue and
consequently, the ETSWD was organized and received its charter from the state of Texas in
January 1942. The company serves all operators without discrimination, and today over 80% of
their customers are not stockholders in the company.

Leave stop, return to FM 2207

0.0 Left on FM 2207

3.3 Left on FM 1252

Right onto Highway 42

6.9 Cross Interstate 20

9.1 Cross Highway 31, entering Kilgore

The city of Kilgore was founded in 1872 as a railroad stop. In 1930,

when the oil boom began, Kilgore was a township of only 373 people.
The economy was tied to the railroad and was based on cotton and
timber. Cotton gins and lumber mills were the main employers. When
the oil boom hit in 1930-1931, the Kilgore population exploded to over
10,000 people. The old Kilgore disappeared with the discovery of the

48
 Lou Della Crim #1 five miles south of Kilgore on December 28, 1930.
At the time, the town was unincorporated, there were no paved streets,
no city government and few amenities.

Malcolm Crim was the first mayor of Kilgore. He was instrumental in

getting the well drilled on his mother’s farm (Lou Della Crim). Back in
the 1920s while visiting Mineral Wells (west of Ft. Worth), Malcolm
visited a palm reader where he was told that there was oil on his
family’s farm. He blocked up acreage several times but could not
persuade the major oil companies to drill. Malcolm got a former
newspaper writer, Ed Bateman of Ft. Worth, to drill. The Lou Crim #1
came in on a Sunday morning at 22,000 barrels per day, and had paid
for itself before church services that evening (Joe White).

At Kilgore. Note metal derricks throughout city, especially to the right

in downtown Kilgore.

10.0 Take right onto Kilgore Street (no street sign, but after bridge)

Pass Crim Theater on left; it was built in 1939, and was the only air-
conditioned theater between New Orleans and Dallas

Take right on Danville Street

10.6 Take right onto Commerce Street; note numerous oil warehouses to the
left on Commerce Street

10.8 Park at the old railroad depot

STOP 4. THE WORLD’S RICHEST ACRE

At one time there were more than 1100 oil wells in the city of Kilgore alone (there were more than
32,000 wells drilled in the field). Beginning in the early 1960s, the skyline of oil derricks began to
disappear; by the 1970s there was only one derrick left. In the 1980s, civic organizations made an
effort to recreate this oil derrick skyline. The Kilgore Improvement and Beautification Association
created a miniature replica of the World’s Richest Acre; the Kilgore Historical Preservation
Foundation formed in 1986 with the mission of putting the real derricks back up. Today, there are
over 60 metal derricks gracing the skyline of Kilgore. The Kilgore Historical Preservation
Foundation has just published a book entitled Echoes from Forgotten Streets: Memories of
Kilgore, Texas, Oil Capital of the World, by Caleb Pirtle and Terry Stembridge. Proceeds from
this book go to the foundation to continue their work in preserving Kilgore’s past.

From the historical marker entitled “World’s Richest Acre”:

“Part of fabulous East Texas Oil Field discovered in 1930, this 1195-acre tract
had first production on June 17, 1937, when the Mrs. Bess Johnson-Adams &
Hale no. 1 well was brought in. Developed before well-spacing rules, this block
is the most densely drilled tract in the world, with 24 wells on 10 lots owned by
6 different operators. This acre has produced over two and a half million barrels
of crude oil, selling at $1.10 to $3.25 a barrel. It has brought more than five and
a half million dollars. A forest of steel derricks for many years stood over the
more than 1000 wells in downtown Kilgore, marking the greatest concentration
of oil wells in the history of the world. Dozens of these derricks still dot the
city’s internationally-famous skyline. Since 1930, the East Texas Field has
produced nearly four billion barrels of oil. It now has more than 17,000
producing wells, and geologists predict a future of at least 45 years for this

49
 “Granddaddy of Oil Fields”. Its development has attracted to the area many
diversified industries and a progressive citizenship with a high degree of civic
pride” (1966 marker).

0.0 Leave downtown Kilgore, return to Highway 42 (pass by Lou Della

Crim home if time allows: recall that Mrs. Crim owned the land upon
which the first discovery well in the central portion of the East Texas
field was drilled. She later leased her own house lot for drilling, and
you can see the three wells in the front yard and one well in the back
yard).

0.8 Right on Highway 42 (no street marker, but note Hwy 259 sign to
right)

1.2 Junction with Highway 259. Kilgore is also known as the home of the
famed pianist Van Cliburn and the Kilgore Rangerettes, a precision
dance drill team (and the first of its kind) at Kilgore Junior College.

1.6 At Kilgore College. This well-known junior college (about 4200

students) was literally a child of the oil boom. The historical marker at
the administration building reads:

“In response to the East Texas Oil Boom, yet in the midst of the Great
Depression, Kilgore residents voted to support the establishment of a
junior college in 1935. Classes were held in the Kilgore High School
until this (administration) building was completed in 1936 with
financial aid from the Public Works Administration. Designed by the
San Antonio firm of Phelps & Dewees, the Kilgore College
Administration Building remains a good example of art moderne
architecture” (1990 marker).

1.7 STOP 5. THE EAST TEXAS OIL MUSEUM

Turn right off of Highway 259 onto road beside museum. The museum is on the Kilgore College
campus. Hunt Oil provided much of the funding to build this museum.

STOP 6. 5:45 PM. DINNER

Dinner is served across the small street, at Kilgore College Institutional Advancement Building.
Go into the door entrance to the right, nearest the highway. Walk past the small hallway, then turn
left and go up the stairs to the second floor faculty lounge.

LOAD BUS ABOUT 7:15 PM, RETURN TO SHREVEPORT

50
Figure 3B. FSA photograph by John Vachon (Oct. 1942) of the Big Inch pipeline under construction in
northeast Texas. Note the train with oil-fill tank cars in background.

Figure 4B. FSA photograph by John Vachon (Feb. 1942) of the Big Inch pipeline under construction in
Pennsylvania.

51
Figure 5B. A crowd gathers on Daisy Bradford’s farm on Sept. 5, 1930, to witness the discovery of the
East Texas field (East Texas Oil Museum).

Figure 6B. FSA photograph by Russell Lee (April, 1939) of roughnecks unloosening sections of pipe on
well in Kilgore. Note the close proximity of wells in the background.

52
Figure 7B. The field has a water drive from the west. This is a field map from the late 1960s showing how
much of the field remained productive. Most of the East Texas oil will have been produced by the first
decade of the 21st century.

Figure 8B. FSA photograph by John Vachon (April, 1943) of the oil wells in downtown Kilgore, Texas.

53
Figure 9B. FSA photograph by Russell Lee (April, 1939) of an oil well supply company near downtown
Kilgore. Many of these buildings still remain, some used, others abandoned.

Figure 10B. FSA photograph by Russell Lee (April, 1939) of derricks in a residential section of Kilgore.
Notice the church to the right.

54
Figure 11B. World’s Richest Acre, present-day downtown Kilgore.

Figure 12B. The East Texas Oil Museum, on the campus of Kilgore College.

55
 Field Trip 3. March 29, 2003

SUMMARY OF THE SMACKOVER OIL FIELD

Road to Discovery

On January 21, 1921, Arkansas’ first producing oil well blew in with a roar, and the El Dorado Oil Field
was discovered. Overnight, El Dorado was a boomtown and things were never the same. Leasing and
drilling leap-frogged in all directions but the primary goal pointed north – towards the small hamlet called
Smackover and the Ouachita River fault line.

Sid Umsted was like a prophet of impending salvation. The sawmiller fervently believed that oil lay
beneath the surface south of the river and went quietly about buying land and leasing what wasn’t for sale.
Sid was in a gambling mood and surrounded himself with an investment group and drilled his first well
near the Snow Hill Baptist Church cemetery, which was only a quarter of a mile south of the river. By late
July 1922, a depth of 2,066 feet had been reached and the bailer was coming out of the hole. Suddenly, a
thick black column of oil burst from the confining restraint of the earth’s’ strata and spurted high above the
derrick’s’ crown block. It was a gusher! (Don Lambert).

A Gusher Field

It was pandemonium, pay day, and let the good times roll all punched into a single ticket as a laughing gas
atmosphere abounded. The Richardson well, the third well in the field and not among the largest in the
field, was the first oil discovery well. Its initial production was estimated at 600 barrels per day, which
paled in comparison to other to come. Soon hundreds of wells were being drilled with equal success.
Within three months the small hamlet of 93 people had grown to a seam splitting 25,000 people and its
uncommon name would quickly attain national acclaim. Smackover would claim a permanent place in the
annals of American petroleum history.

By 1925, the Smackover field had expanded dramatically and had produced over sixty-nine million barrels.
The flow was so great in many instances that a one thousand-barrel tank would be filled in less than twenty
minutes. Huge earthen pits dotted the landscape. Smackover’s petroleum statistics ranked third among the
nation’s oil producing sections, ranking first for a brief five-month period in 1925.

Development of the field was as chaotic as a Saturday night in Death Valley. There were no state
conservation laws in place. It is estimated that the field contained 800 million barrels of oil, a rich field.
Natural gas was allowed to escape with the notion that oil would surely follow. A thousand gas flares
indicated the field’s funeral pyre. No one cared, it seemed. This mood created the waste that ultimately
destroyed the field. The sleeping giant’s energy was sapped, never to be replenished. Its landscape was
scarred by countless instances of allowing oil and salt water to run freely over the surface and down its
streams.

The present-day Smackover field can be compared to an aerosol can that has lost pressure. If it had been
discovered today, natural gas would have been protected. The sleeping giant would be awake with flexing
muscles ready for a bright future.

Despite the millions of barrels of oil extracted from the field, the irony is that over fifty percent of the oil
remains beneath the surface. Even if some way is found to free this petroleum, a boom such as
Smackover’s is doubtful to ever appear again in South Arkansas (Don Lambert).

56
Early Production and Development

The field is divided into the western Louann district, primarily light oil production (23 to 28 API) and the
eastern Norphlet district, primarily heavy oil production (18 to 23 API). The districts reflect the
prominent structural features of the Norphlet dome to the east, the Louann terrace to the west, a narrow
syncline between the districts, and a bounding east-west fault on the north. The main producing zones are
Upper Cretaceous. Initial discovery production was from the Nacotoch Sand in the Norphlet district at a
depth of about 2000 ft. Blowouts dissipated much of an original gas cap and created coning of oil and water
towards the blowing wells. Four months later the light-oil Louann district was discovered, first in the
Nacotoch followed by the Meakin Sand at depths of 2230 to 2345 ft. This first boom which ended in 1923
resulted in a cumulative production of about 30 million barrels of heavy oil from the Norphlet district and 5
million barrels of light oil from the Louann district.

The next major production zone, the Graves Sand, was discovered in the Norphlet district in January 1925
at a depth of 2500 ft. Other shallow zones below the Graves were also discovered in this year, and peak
production was reached in 1925 with an annual production of 59.5 million barrels of heavy oil and 9.5
million barrels of light oil. The most densely drilled field region was the Norphlet district due to the prolific
production of heavy oil. Jurassic production was established in 1936 with the discovery of oil in the
Smackover Formation. The cumulative production in the field by 1999 was about 578 million barrels of oil
(Mary Barrett).

In 1939, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission was created. Its purpose was to prevent waste of natural
resources, to affect environmental control, to conserve crude oil and natural gas, and to protect the rights of
the landowner.

Oil companies are diligently working to remediate environmentally-damages locations. Current efforts are
in rebuilding the soil, planting grass and trees, developing a mulch cover over barren ground, and
developing programs that work in harmony with nature to assist in revegetating damaged areas. At various
points along the tour route, one can see the various remediation efforts (AR Museum of Natural
Resources).

57
Figure 1C. Downtown Smackover, circa 1920s (AR Museum of Natural Resources).

Figure 2C. Spectacular night-time fire at the Smackover discovery well, the Murphy no. 1. A
hugh crater formed as the gas pressure created an uncontrollable situation (AR Museum of
Natural Resources).

58
Figure 3C. Typical earthen pit used for lease storage (AR Museum of Natural Resources).

Figure 4C. Map of the Smackover Field illustrating the two principal production regions, the
light-oil Louann district, and the prolific heavy-oil Norphlet district. The Graves and the
Nacotoch are important Upper Cretaceous reservoirs.

59
Figure 5C. Map of the Norphlet district outlining where the high-pressure gas cap was located.
This region experienced tremendous gas blowouts and craters. The well distribution is from 1933
(Mary Barrett).

Figure 6C. Graph of Smackover field production and amounts of oil stored in earthen storage
during the prolific production years (Mary Barrett).

60
 FIELD TRIP 3. SMACKOVER FIELD, ARKANSAS
MILEAGE NOTES

0.0 Leave the Holiday Inn Downtown, head east on Interstate 20

25.1 Note intersection with Highway 371 to Cotton Valley

The Cotton Valley field was discovered in 1922; the first few wells were large
dry gas wells. Early oil-producing wells were under high pressure (1120 psi),
and flow boxes were used to separate the oil from the gas. The flow boxes were
built in the center of earthen reservoirs, typically measured 16’ x 32’ x 8’, and
contained thick baffles which impinged the oil and gas flow. By 1924, most of
the gas was lost and almost all wells ceased to flow under reservoir pressure.
Most gusher oil wells were located on the edge of the field and produced 1000-
10,000 bbls/day. Peak production was reached in 1925 with a yearly production
of 3.3 million bbls of oil (Ross, 1931, Engineering Report of Cotton Valley
Field, Webster Parish, LA; Bureau of Mines TP 504).

30.4 Intersection with Highway 531 (exit 49), take exit, turn left

33.8 Intersection with Highway 79 N; take right

Had we continued eastward on I-20, we would have passed through Monroe,

LA, about 220 miles east of Shreveport. This area is famous in petroleum
history for the Monroe Gas field, whose production in the first half of the 20th
century placed Louisiana among the leading gas-producing states. The discovery
well was drilled in 1916. Initially, the field was developed with the assistance of
geology. The field covers an area of about 425 mi2, and produces primarily from
Upper Cretaceous rocks. At the time of the field’s discovery, there was not
much of a market for natural gas. But with continued drilling, the field was
recognized as a major gas reserve. Carbon-black operators became interested,
resulting in a phenomenal growth of the carbon-black industry here. This
industry declined somewhat in the 1930s due to cheaper carbon-black industries
elsewhere plus state conservation and taxation on the industry (Fergus, 1935,
Geology of Natural Gas, AAPG).

50.9 Enter downtown Homer, LA, bear right, then left around courthouse, take right,
following Highway 79 N.

The Homer oil field was discovered in 1919; like most field discoveries at the
time, the development was fast and costly. This development occurred during
WW I, and supplies were hard to get. Interesting, the caterpillar tractor were first
introduced to the oil industry during the Homer field development. W. H.
Rowe, a Shreveport operator, brought in the first big well in the field and started
the boom. In 1920, the field reached its peak production with 22 million bbls of
oil, about 2/3 of the state’s total output (Oil and Gas J., Oct. 28, 1926, p. 75;
Rister, 1949, Oil! Titan of the Southwest).

67.2 Note intersection with Alt. Hwy 2 to Haynesville, LA

The Haynesville oil field, also in Claiborne Parish, was northwest Louisiana’s
third big boom field (after Caddo and Homer). Its first well was drilled in 1921.
Although the discovery was followed by wild leasing and drilling, the efforts of

61
 the Louisiana Conservation Department resulted in the operators agreeing to not
drill closer than 330 feet from property/lease lines. The field reached its peak
production in 1922 with about 20 million bbls, and declined rapidly after that
(Rister, 1949, Oil! Titan of the Southwest).

77.7 Enter Junction City; intersection with Hwy 167, take left (north).

In the downtown area, enter into Union County, Arkansas. Junction City was
founded in 1894 at the junction of two states, one county, 2 parishes and 3
congressional districts (from historical marker).

92.5 Enter El Dorado, Arkansas

The town of El Dorado was a quiet rural town prior to discovery of Arkansas’
first oil field in 1921, the El Dorado oil field. Then, the Smackover field was
discovered in 1922. Needless to say, the town of El Dorado became a major
boom town and oil center for the regional oil industry. Murphy Oil continues to
have its headquarters centered here. The city has taken great pride in preserving
the brick downtown of the 1920s and 1930s era.

96.9 Junction with Highway 7, stay on Hwy 7 north to Smackover

Turn left onto side road

Enter the property of the Dodds, whose grandfather purchased this land from the
Standard Oil Company of Louisiana in the late 1930s. The Dodds have given us
special permission to visit one of the best tank sites that exist in the country; this
is on private land and must never be entered without their consent.

STOP 1. EARTHEN TANK FARM OF STANDARD OIL

Standard Oil Company of Louisiana was the main purchaser of crude in Smackover Field and built most of
the earthen tank farms of Smackover. Standard eventually built five large tank farms named the Murphy A,
B, H, I, and L which held 16.6 million barrels of Smackover crude. We are visiting one of Standard Oil’s
Murphy tank farms.

Earthen Tank Farm Usage. Storage of crude oil in earthen storage, both covered and open, was an
important means of crude oil management in the first few decades of the 20th century. Its usage became
prominent after the discovery and subsequent production of large crude oil volumes in the Gulf Coast
region, California, and the Mid-continent. Earthen storage varied in construction methods, oil types stored,
and the crude oil source. Produced oil might be from a lease, or gathered from a local field, or collected as
part of a regional gathering system from several fields. The earthen storage was used as a short-term
storage solution during large well flowage when other types of storage were not available and also as long-
term storage in large tank farms. Storage of heavy oil through the 1930s was the most important, as this
type of oil did not evaporate as much and was worth less. The largest U. S. storage areas were Texas
(primarily southeast Texas), Arkansas (Smackover Field), and California (primarily the San Joaquin
valley).

The location, number and construction style of earthen storage depended on how it was to be used. Usage
types divide into two large categories: lease storage and tank farms. Lease storage was constructed on the
lease close to the producing well(s) to manage crude oil short-term (weeks to months) prior to selling.
Tank farm storage was built to gather and hold large amounts (hundreds of thousands of barrels or more) of
crude oil on a longer-term (months to years) basis.

Tank Farm Construction. The tank was first staked out by the company, and the contractor built the
approximate measurements. Mule teams and slips were used, even after mechanical equipment was

62
available, as the mules packed the earth. The more permeable shallow soil was first removed and later used
at the back of the levee walls. The mules and slips moved the clay-rich earth into levee walls, layer by
layer, compacting the soil as water was continually sprayed on the levees. The tank was excavated to
depths of six to eight feet with levee walls constructed to a height of six to eight feet. The levees were the
weakest part of the earthen tank and the main source of leakage.

The tank floor was built with a slight slope; a swing pipe was located at the lowest point on the tank for
fluid removal. The excavated dirt was used to build the levee walls. The tank walls and levees had sloping
sides. A common inside slope was 1.5 or 2 to 1, while on the outside the slope was commonly 2.5 or 3 to
1. Sometimes ditches, canals and embankments were placed around earthen storage levees so as to capture
leaking oil and pump it back into the storage.

Tanks were filled to about 1 to 2 feet from the levee surface, unless weak levees prevented full storage at
capacity. When the earthen tanks were built, often no accurate measurement of the true tank capacity was
conducted so only estimates were used. One to two feet of water was kept on the tank bottoms to deter
downward oil, but following spectacular California tank fires in the mid-1920s this practice was less
favored. The water resulted in a boilover of the crude oil, increasing the damage by spreading the fire.

Smackover Tank Farms. Most tanks at Smackover were built in the silty and sandy soils common to lower
elevations, although some of the large tank farms on the field edge encountered more clay-rich soils. While
generally clay-rich soil was preferable for such storage, some at Smackover actually preferred the silty and
sandy soil as the latter would absorb the first oil placed in storage and seal better. The earthen storage cost
about 1 to 5 cents per barrel capacity to build, depending on the landscape. Some farms built tanks close
together with tanks often sharing walls, but the better-built tank farms separated many individual tanks.
Separation of tanks was practiced as a fire safety precaution.

Most heavy oil was stored at tank farms away from the leases. Unlike most of the tank farms of southeast
Texas and central California, the Smackover earthen tank farms were never covered with wooden roofs.
This was probably due to the envisioned limited use of these storage areas, unlike other U.S. locations
which gathered oil long-term from a number of area fields. By May 1925, the total oil in storage at
Smackover was 25.3 million barrels with about 20 million barrels of that in earthen storage. Storage
amounts peaked in late December 1925, with 30 million barrels in storage and 23 million barrels of that in
earthen storage including tank farms and lease storage.

Soon after the production peak, pipeline and production companies began treating the oil in earthen storage
as rapidly as possible, especially during the warmer and drier months. Stable emulsified oils had to be dealt
with as more oil was moved out of long-term storage. The emulsion percentage increased downward in the
oil tanks, ranging as high as 40% to 80%. The stable emulsions resulted in low recovery amounts of
pipeline oil, about 30% of the total amount of fluid. Most of the oil remaining in storage by 1927, about 8
million barrels, was in Standard’s Murphy tank farms. Treatment was difficult, as over 3 million barrels of
the oil tested over 45 % emulsions. From summer of 1931 to summer of 1933, Standard treated remaining
earthen storage oil using cooking vats and steam coils (Mary Barrett).

0.0 Return to Highway 7; take a left (going north)

3.5 Turn right into museum parking lot

STOP 2. ARKANSAS MUSEUM OF NATURAL RESOURCES

At this stop, we will eat lunch and visit the museum. The box lunches will be set up in the outdoor covered
area behind the museum. The museum visit is self-directed; be sure to visit both the inside exhibits and the
old equipment in their outdoor areas.

Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources. Located on a twenty-acre campus two miles south of
Smackover, the museum is dedicated to the pioneers of south Arkansas’ petroleum industry. The museum

63
complex contains a 25,000 SF Exhibition Center; a 9,000 SF Collection Management Facility; a 3,500 SF
Education Center and a six-acre Outdoor Oil Field Exhibit Park.

Outdoor exhibits include six working examples of various oil production methods used in the Smackover
oil field during the past 72 years. Indoor exhibit includes twelve galleries that have been installed over the
past eight years at a cost of $3.8 million. The final two galleries are presently in the planning stage with an
anticipated completion date of December 2003.

The Museum’s outdoor exhibits were opened to the public in 1986 and the Exhibition Center was
completed in 1990. Plans are underway to enlarge the Museum’s present complex with the addition of a
12,000 SF Forestry and Timber exhibit gallery.

During its relatively brief existence, the Museum has been designated as the State of Arkansas’ Museum of
the Year in both, 1998 and 2002. The Museum’s Oral History Program has received national acclaim and
includes over 600 oral and filmed interviews with boom-era pioneers. Information from this collection is
used extensively throughout the Museum’s exhibits.

E-mail - amnr@cei.net Web site- www.cei.net/~amnr/

Leave museum, head towards the town of Smackover

STOP 3. THE TOWN OF SMACKOVER

Smackover’s Death Valley—Modern Day Broadway Street. French hunters and trappers originally settled
the area along the Ouachita River in South Arkansas. They left numerous land and stream designations.
Among these is “Smackover.” A bayou coursed through the area and the French named it “Chemin
Couvert” (covered stream). The area was overgrown with dense forest and Sumac plant growth. The area
surrounding the bayou was designated as “Sumac Couvert.” The Chemin Couvert/Sumac Couvert
designations first appeared in a letter dated April 5, 1789, written by the commandant of Fort Miro (today’s
Monroe, Louisiana) to Territorial French Governor Estevan Miro.

When American settlers arrived in the early 1820s armed with land grants to claim the plentiful territorial
opportunities created by the Louisiana Purchase, they called the area variously as, “Smac-Covert – Smack-
kover and Smackover.” By mid-1880, a railroad was constructed connecting Camden, Arkansas with
Alexandria, Louisiana. The sleepy hamlet called Smackover was designated as a water stop. Economic
progress had finally arrived!

World War I had come and gone, raising no more than a slight ripple upon the serene pool of the town life.
Unknown to the citizens of that day an economic blockbuster would forever alter the history and the
outlook of the town and its citizens.

Today, Smackover’s Broadway Street is equally divided by railroad tracks. The wide Avenue with its
tasteful plantings of trees and flowers offers little indication of how things once were – back in the early
twenties. As if by design the south side of the tracks contained the main business district and a semblance
of order was maintained. Boardwalks ran the length of the street and “crossing boards” interspersed across
a sea of mud providing access to either side of the street.

The low area north of the tracks was called Death Valley. It was the lawless district
where guns were carried openly and a Wild West attitude prevailed. Although law enforcement was
severely tested in “The Valley,” it was the outlying boom hamlets across Smackover Creek which were
more notorious and uncontrolled. The life and times of boomtown Smackover is well documented through
hundreds of “Boom-era participant” oral and video interviews compiled by the Arkansas Museum of
Natural Resources.

64
Today, Smackover’s Broadway Street contains numerous examples of oilboom Architecture. In early
1923, a fire destroyed all of the original wooden structure on the street. All were rebuilt in brick and, of the
original thirty-three buildings constructed in 1924-1925, twenty-three of these still exist and most are
occupied (Don Lambert).

Leave downtown Smackover

STOP 4. THE STANDARD-UMSTEAD SCHOOL

Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and Standard Oil Company of Louisiana along with Roxanna,
Simms, Gulf, Phillips, Crosby, and Texaco combined to develop the area immediately north of Smackover.
Oil camps were virtually everywhere but the single Standard Oil complex contained over a hundred
families.

This area was called Standard-Umsted (Sid Umsted owned all of the land throughout this area). A school
was built in early 1923 and contained twelve grades. From 1923 through 1927, the Standard-Umsted
School District was considered the richest district in the state. The school struggled to exist through the
Great Depression years and eventually consolidated with the Smackover School System in 1946.

The building served as district field offices for Phillips Petroleum Company from 1947 through 1996.
Today, it contains the offices of the ArkLaTex Operating Company, Inc., a major lease operator in the
field. The Standard school is an excellent example of 1920s school architecture (Don Lambert).

Leave school grounds

STOP 5. THE NORPHLET CRATER

The Crater—The Murphy Trust No. 1. (The Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources has collected over
600 oral history interviews from men and women who experienced the Arkansas oil boom. Many of their
comments will be included in this writeup.)

The nearby El Dorado oil field, discovered in January 1921, had become a beehive of activity. In the
winter of 1921, drilling began on the Oil Operator’s Trust Murphy No. 1 four miles southeast of Smackover
and within a mile of Norphlet. On April 22nd, the bit reached a depth of 2,100 feet. A slight indication of
natural gas surfaced and drilling was halted awaiting developments. At six p.m. no change was indicated,
and the crew took off for supper.

Before their food sacks were opened, the well (later called “Old Faithful”) blew wild “with one hellava'
roar!” The silent rig, unattended in the twilight, sat atop a screaming volcano of untamed fury. Within
seconds, billions of cubit feet of pent-up gas burst its bonds and screamed towards the earth’s surface. The
rig was obliterated and blown to smithereens. The gas escaped as if “a thousand devils were at work”, and
huge balls of red clay shot high into the air with a roar that deafened neighboring drilling crews miles away
with its shattering sound.

Within an hour the derrick, equipment and boilers, the surrounding forest, everything within the area had
vanished. The morning light revealed a giant, yawning crater. It was all that remained of the Murphy No.
1. Fortunately, no lives were lost. When the initial frenzy subsided, people came from throughout the
countryside to view “the devil’s work.” At the bottom of the chasm, estimated at 400 feet in depth, was a
giant bubbling mixture of oil and water – “a witch’s cauldron.” An intermittent flame lasted several
months.

The well emitted an estimated 30 million cubic feet of gas per day with a pressure of 950 pounds per square
inch. The gas came from the Nacatoch sand and had been drilled into what geologists now call “The
Norphlet Dome.” The drill bit happened to enter at the heart of the dome’s cap. Other blowouts followed
although not as large. Within four months, the great Norphlet Dome was permanently dissipated.

65
The crater was used as a garbage dump during the following eighty years. In 2001, Union County,
Arkansas, and the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources jointly obtained a federal environmental grant,
and the site was cleaned and restored at a cost of $120,000.00. Fortunately, “The Crater” can be revisited
and appreciated after eighty-two years of neglect. This site certainly qualifies as one of the most unusual,
natural setting museum exhibits one ever sees (Don Lambert).

Return to Highway 7, take left (south)

Return to Shreveport

Arrive in Shreveport, Downtown Holiday Inn

This concludes the end of the Symposium of the Oil Industry! Thank you for attending; have a safe trip
home.

66
Figure 7C. A wooden derrick blowing oil, nearby fire to left, and oil stored in lease pit at the forefront,
1920s Smackover field (AR Museum of Natural Resources).

Figure 8C. An aerial photograph from 1936 of the lease pits scattered across the field (Mary Barrett).

67
Figure 9C. Modern creek in Smackover field. Note the remnant cypress stumps (many with fire scars) and
the layers of asphaltic material.

Figure 10C. Old aerial photograph from 1936 illustrating several tank farm areas. Note the ones in the
upper right are built together, where the other tanks have separation—the latter was the best design for fire
safety. By this time, all heavy oil had been removed from the storage areas (Mary Barrett).

68
Figure 11C. Modern interior of a Standard Oil tank. The base has a hard layer of asphaltic material, and
pine trees are locally growing within the tank.

Figure 12C. An old drainage pipe still remaining at the deep end of the tank.

69
Figure 13C. The Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources, Smackover.

Figure 14C. Outdoor exhibits at the museum.

70
Figure 15C. Downtown Smackover in the 1920s, Broadway St. (AR Museum of Natural Resouces).

Figure 16C. The modern downtown Smackover, Broadway St. (AR Museum of Natural Resources).

71
Figure 17C. Map showing the distribution of oil camps throughout the field. Note most camps were in the
Norphlet district, to the east of Smackover (AR Museum of Natural Resouces exhibit).

Figure 18C. The former Standard Umstead School as headquarters of the Phillips Petroleum Company.

72
Figure 19C. This is the crater that formed from the blowout of the discovery well, the Murphy Trust no. 1
(see Figure 2C); (AR Museum of Natural Resources).

73
 REGISTERED ATTENDEES (3/15/03)
SYMPOSIUM ON THE HISTORY OF THE OIL INDUSTRY
MARCH 26-29, 2003 SHREVEPORT, LA

William G. Anderson, Anderson Exploration Energy Company LLC, 333 Texas Street, Suite 2020,
Shreveport, LA 71101

Cole Anderson, Anderson Exploration Energy Company LLC, 333 Texas Street, Suite 2020,
Shreveport, LA 71101

Diane Austin, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona, P.O. Box
210030, Tucson AZ 85721-0030

Mary Barrett, Centenary College, Dept. of Geology, 2911 Centenary Blvd., Shreveport LA 71134

Karen Bobo, Summerland Foundation, 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 950, Los Angeles CA
90067

Ron E. Bounds Jr., Anderson Oil & Gas Inc., 333 Texas Street, Suite 2020, Shreveport LA 71101

William R. Brice, Geology and Planetary Science, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown,

Johnstown PA 15904

David Carty, Green Bridge Earth Works, 612 N. Flenniken, El Dorado AR 71730

Ross Coen, University of Alaska at Fairbanks, P.O. Box 82718, Fairbanks AK 99708

Donald W. Davis, LA Applied & Educational Oil Spill R&D Program, 258A Military Science Bldg.,
Baton Rouge LA 70810

Gerald M. Friedman, City University of New York, P.O. Box 746, Troy NY 12181-0746

Sue Friedman, P.O. Box 746, Troy NY 12181-0746

th
Gene Gibson, 2244 West 28 Ave., Eugene OR 97405
th
Kitty Gibson, 2244 West 28 Ave., Eugene OR 97405

Alan Grosbard, Summerland Foundation, 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 950, Los Angeles CA
90067

Frank Harrison Jr., Optimistic Oil Company, P.O. Box 51943, Lafayette LA 70505

Pat Harrison, Optimistic Oil Company, P.O. Box 51943, Lafayette LA 70505

Susan F. Hodgson, CA Division of Oil, Gas, & Geothermal Resources, P.O. Box 644, Davis CA
95617

George A. Khoury, Exxon (retired), P.O. Box 5664, Shreveport LA 71135

74
Christopher M. Kinsey, Kinsey Interests Inc., 401 Edwards Street, Suite 1805, Shreveport LA
71101-3160
th
Don Lambert, Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources (retired), 113 West 12 , Smackover AR
71762

Mark Larsen, Schlumberger Oilfield Services, 330 Marshall Street, Suite 610, Shreveport LA
71101

Glen Ledingham, independent geologist, P.O. Box 1842, Fort Worth TX 76101

Daniel J. Leech, 518 Shadow Oaks Drive, Meadville PA 16335

Maureen Leech, 518 Shadow Oaks Drive, Meadville PA 16335

Harry Luton, Minerals Management Service, 1201 Elmwood Park Blvd., New Orleans LA 70123-
2394

William R. Meaney, Anderson Oil & Gas Inc., 333 Texas Street, Suite 2020, Shreveport LA 71101

Byron Miller, Louisiana Geological Survey, LSU – 208 Howe-Russell Geoscience Complex, Baton
Rouge LA 70803

Wolfgang Nachtmann, Rohoel-Aufsuchungs AG, Schwarzenbergplatz 16, P.O. Box 333, A-1015,
Vienna Austria

Diana Davids Olien, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, 2508 Stanolind, Midland TX 79705

James M. “Jim” Parks, retired, 159 Wesley Drive, Wilmore KY 40390

Samuel T. Pees, Samuel T. Pees & Associates, 628 Arch Street, Suite A-104, Meadville PA
16335

Gavin Perdue, Summerland Foundation, 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 950, Los Angeles CA
90067

Katie Poole, Centenary College, 4940 Oak Point Drive, Shreveport LA 71107

Samuel F. Pratt Jr., Force Petroleum LLC, P.O. Box 430640, Houston TX 77243

Allan Pulsipher, Center for Energy Studies, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA 70806

John G. Ragsdale, 122 Neel Avenue, El Dorado AR 71730-5340

Ralph Richardson, Sartor-Richardson LLC, 800 Spring Street, Suite 100, Shreveport LA 71101

C. Lane Sartor, Sartor-Richardson LLC, 800 Spring Street, Suite 100, Shreveport LA 71101

Michael H. Shelby, 5307 E. Mockingbird Lane #906, Dallas TX 75206

th
Matthew R. Silverman, Consulting Petroleum Geologist, 3195 11 Street, Boulder CO 80304

Lawrence H. Skelton, Kansas Geological Survey, 4150 Monroe Street, Wichita KS 67209

Mary P. Skelton, 4150 Monroe Street, Wichita KS 67209

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Judith L. Sneed, Walter Jacobs Nature Park, Shreveport LA 71107

Ray Sorenson, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, P.O. Box 1330, Houston TX 77251-1330

Paul Spellman, Wharton College, History, 911 Boling Highway, Wharton TX 77488

Jeff Spencer, Osprey Petroleum, 15995 N. Barker’s Landing, Suite 350, Houston TX 77418
th
Jay T. (Tom) Sperr, Equity Oil, 600 17 Street, Suite 2110 S., Denver CO 80202

Jo Ann Stiles, Lamar University History Dept., 4150 Crow Road #3, Beaumont TX 77706

Charles Weiner, Texas Crude Inc., P.O. Box 56586, Houston TX 77256-6586

Joe R. White Jr., Marlin Exploration, Shreveport LA 71101

Larry D. Woodfork, Consulting Geologist & State Geologist of WV (retired), Morgantown WV

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