Ohio Calls the Turn at Mecca—Macksburg, Marietta, Lima and Findlay Heard From—West Virginia Not Left Out—Volcano’s Early Risers—Sistersville and Parkersburg Drop In—Hoosiers Come Out of Their Shell—Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Texas and California Help Flavor the Petroleum Tureen.

“The world’s mine oyster.”—Shakespeare.

“’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”—Tennyson.

“To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”—Milton.

“Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.”—Holmes.

“The influence of a strong spirit makes itself felt.”—Colmore.

“Nature fits all her children with something to do.”—Lowell.

“An intense hour will do more than dreamy years.”—Beecher.

“If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”—Queen Elizabeth.

“There yet remains one effort to be made.”—Samuel Johnson.

“Do what lieth in thy power and God will assist thy good-will.”—Thomas À Kempis.

Pennsylvania was not to be the solitary oyster in the stew, the one and only winner in the petroleum-game. Although the Keystone State raked in the first jack-pot on Oil Creek with the Drake royal-flush, rival players were billed for an early appearance. Ohio, always ready to furnish presidents and office-holders for the whole nation, was equally willing to gather riches by the oleaginous route and dealt Mecca as its initial trump in the summer of 1860. Years before a farmer near the quiet town in Trumbull county, digging a well for water, found an evil-smelling liquid and promptly filled up the hole. This supplied a cue to J. H. Hoxie, after the news of Drake’s experiment reached him, and he sank a shallow well close to the farmer’s unlucky venture. Piercing a covering of dirt twenty feet and coarse sand-rock ten feet, the tools unlocked a reservoir of dark oil, which responded to the pump with the vehemence of a Venango spouter. Estimates of the daily yield, much of which floated down stream, varied from one-hundred to three-hundred barrels. Probably forty to fifty would be nearer the real figure. The oil, 26° gravity and very dark green in color, was a superior lubricant. This new phase of “the Ohio Idea” brought multitudes of visitors to the scene. Mecca became the mecca of all sorts, sizes and conditions of worshippers at the greasian shrine. To come and see was to desire a chance in the exciting lottery. Hoxie, elated beyond measure over the strike, traveled around the country to magnify the field and his own connection with it. Small leases were gobbled eagerly for a small cash-bonus and a royalty, sometimes half the oil done up in barrels. A three-pole derrick, a spring-pole and light tools hitched to a rope sufficed to “kick down” a well. Depths ranged from thirty feet to one-hundred. Portable engines and boilers followed when hand-power weakened and the wells must be pumped steadily. Rude drilling-outfits and board-shanties went up by hundreds. Needy adventurers might secure an acre of ground and sprout into prosperous oilmen in twenty or thirty days. The tempting bait was snapped at greedily. Rig-builders, carpenters, teamsters, tool-dressers, laborers, shop-keepers, saloonists and speculators crowded the busy spot in quest of jobs, locations or easy victims. Mecca seemed too far off, so a genuine “oil-town,” lacking none of the earmarks of such creations, was established on the James Cowdey farm and labeled Oil Diggings. It soon sported a post-office, which distributed stacks of mail, machine-shops, groceries and boarding-houses galore; nor were groggeries, gambling-dens and the usual incidentals difficult to discover.

The opening months of 1861 swelled the excitement and the population. The bright and the dark sides were not far apart. Many who came with high expectations in January returned disappointed in June. The field had extended south from Power’s Corners, substantial frames enclosed numerous wells and a refinery was erected. Yet the good quality of the oil was scantily appreciated until most of the wells had been about exhausted. Often it went begging vainly for purchasers in Cleveland or Buffalo. Then the price advanced, actually reaching fifty-two dollars a barrel in 1863-4. Adulteration with cheaper oils deteriorated the product and it dropped below a paying rate. Operators realized in the autumn of 1861 that the territory was declining rapidly and the wiser ones departed. Some held on a year or two longer, drilled their wells five-hundred feet in hope of hitting other sands and quit at last. George Moral, a one-eyed veteran of the war, has stuck to the Shaeffer farm, at the southern end of the district, and he is still getting a morsel of oil from a nest of shallow wells. The forest of derricks and engine-houses has disappeared. Oil Diggings is a tradition and “Ichabod” is written over the once stirring district.

Mix & Force were, perhaps, the most successful Mecca operators. It was hard to extract the heavy oil from the rock by ordinary processes. Calvin Adams, of Pittsburg, conceived the idea of sinking a shaft and drifting into the sand, exactly as in gold-mining. He employed four men, pumped the oil and water that seeped in and hoisted lots of rock to the surface, where steam was used to force out the greasy fluid that saturated the sand. This novel method paid while oil was high-priced, but was too expensive when the stuff went zero-wards. The oil-bearing rock, known as Berea grit, lay in flat formations and was somewhat porous. Mr. Rider removed his refinery to Oil Creek in 1862, since which period refining has been a lost art in Trumbull county. Everybody has heard of the resolute pioneer who, bound for Colorado by the overland line of prairie-schooners, inscribed on his Conestoga wagon: “Pike’s Peak or Bust!” He was distanced by a band of petroleum-seekers at Oil Diggings. The jokers built their engine-house and belt-house parallel with the public road and emblazoned in two-foot capitals on the derrick: “Oil, Hell or China!” James A. Garfield, afterwards Chief Magistrate of the United States—he was a pilgrim to Mecca and owned an interest in the “Preachers’ Wells,” among the best in the bundle—once quoted this legend in Congress. Paying his respects pointedly to “Sunset” Cox, who represented an Ohio district in the House and had failed of re-election, Garfield closed with these words:

“My friend found in the late election a decided majority against him. Evidently he is going down, down, down until, in the language of an oil-explorer, he comes to ‘Oil, Hell or China!’”

Garfield left Oil Diggings when the bubble burst, served term after term in Congress, went to the White House and perished by the bullet of a vile assassin. Cox left Ohio for New York, secured the good-will of Tammany, went back to Congress repeatedly, died years ago and was honored with a statue in Astor Place. Both were political leaders on opposing sides and warm personal friends, both gained world-wide celebrity, both were Ohioans and oil-producers, and both retained to the last that “chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.”

M. E. Hess, for thirty years a respected citizen of Pennsylvania, began his oil-career at Mecca. He came to Oil Creek in the sixties, formed a partnership with Franklin S. Tarbell and operated largely in various sections. He was prominent in the Clarion field and took up his abode at Edenburg. There, as wherever he lived, he has been active in church-work, in building up a religious sentiment and in furthering the best interests of the community. He has served acceptably in the borough-council and is now justice of the peace. Upright in his life and character, sincere in his friendships, kind to the poor and trustworthy everywhere, M. E. Hess deserves the high place he has always held in popular regard. The passing years have touched him lightly, his heart is young, he is “not slothful in business” and he trains with the “men who can hear the Decalogue and feel no self-reproach.”

The south-east border of Ohio next experienced the petroleum-revival. The region about Marietta, where surface-signs of greasiness were noted a century ago, for years enjoyed its full share of satisfactory developments. Three or four counties have been covered satisfactorily, producing from the Big Injun sand. The Benwood pool, in Monroe county, introduced by a big well on the Price farm in August of 1896, has yielded liberally and is still the object of respectful attention. Macksburg, sufficiently important in 1881 to hold the entire oil-trade in mortal suspense for weeks, is on hand with a small output. John Denman, of Bradford, and Thomas Mills were pioneers in the field and did a turn in working the “mystery racket.” Hundreds assembled to watch the torpedoing of their frontier-well, four miles east of Macksburg, kept in abeyance a month for speculative purposes. Natives, with their wives and families, lined the hillside to behold the novel sight. Col. John J. Carter had arranged a system of flag-signals and stationed men to wave the news to Dexter City, five miles away. The swiftest horse in the county was at my service, to bear my message to the nearest telegraph-office for transmission to the New-York Oil-Exchange. George H. Nesbit, L. E. Mallory, Denman and a dozen other Pennsylvania operators stood by. Hours were frittered away, until the exchanges had closed, before the shell was lowered into the hole. The reaction following the explosion came at last. A column of water rose mildly a few feet in the air and—that was all! The much-vaunted well, which throttled the great petroleum-industry three or four weeks, was practically a failure and never rose above the five-barrel grade!

A thousand barrels a day was the average yield of the south-eastern division in 1896. George Rice’s refinery at Marietta treated the bulk of the production at the primitive stage of developments. It was a rice-pudding for Rice, who is a thoroughbred hustler and wastes no love upon anyone who may encroach upon his particular preserve. He has loads of pluck and enterprise and the staying quality that is desirable alike in oilmen and oil-territory, to say nothing of bull-dogs and prize-fighters.

The great Lima field, spreading over a dozen counties in North-western Ohio, was the star performer of the Buckeye galaxy. Centering in Allen, Hancock, Wood and Seneca, it has grasped big slices of the bordering counties, with a strip of Lucas for good measure. Gas-indications in Hancock, which resulted in a large well at Findlay in 1884, set the ball rolling. Others were drilled forthwith, one on the Kramer farm getting five barrels of oil a day. Findlay and Bowling Green had dipped into the Trenton rock profitably, but nobody thought a huge oil-field at all likely to be encountered. The Strawboard Works at Lima, in Allen county, south-west of Hancock, needed more water and the manager decided to drill for water and gas. The hole was punched through the Trenton rock and pronounced a rank failure for gas. The company exploded a torpedo in the barren rock on April twelfth, 1885. To the astonishment of owners and spectators, the well sent out a stream of oil. It was tubed and pumped fifteen barrels a day. Such was the modest beginning of an oil-district destined to cause a greater stir than Grover Cleveland’s boy-baby or Albert Edward’s green necktie.

It was “the old, old story.” The Queen of Sheba doubted the reports of Solomon’s grandeur until she sized up the outfit personally and declared: “The half has not been told.” Outsiders doubted the truth of a paying strike at Lima, and doubted its importance after seeing the well and the contents of the tank. The oil had a sickly tint and an odor that “smelled to heaven.” People sniffed the dreadful aroma and proclaimed the oil good only for fuel. A few Limans thought differently and organized the Citizens’ Gas-Company to help play the game to a finish. Not a cloud of gas, but a forty-barrel pumper, was the result in December. Regardless of tint or odor, outsiders and insiders hastened to get drilling-sites. By May first, 1886, sixteen wells on town-lots were producing nicely. George P. Waldorf and James B. Townsend, residents of Lima, were the first to lease a farm in the neighborhood, at one-eighth royalty. They visited Bradford, returned with David Kirk and Isaac E. Dean, formed the Trenton-Rock Oil-Company, leased many lots and fifty-thousand acres of land, set strings of tools boring and soon piled up a tidy production. The year closed with two-hundred wells doing nine-thousand barrels, which the Buckeye Pipe-Line transported and stored. Operations extended north-east and south-west, until thirty-thousand wells were drilled and a half-million acres of territory opened. Findlay, Lima, Fostoria and Toledo were strictly in the swim. The deluge of grease swelled to mammoth proportions. Iron-tanks stored thirty-million barrels, while iron-pipes bore other millions east and west. Refineries used what they could, Ohio oil netting a smaller percentage of kerosene than Pennsylvania crude, and in 1889 the price crawled down to fifteen cents. Think of it—fifteen cents for forty-two gallons of oil pumped from twelve-hundred feet beneath the earth’s surface!

Developments covered large areas in Hancock and Wood counties, took in a strip of Allen and Auglaize one to three miles wide, and extended south-west to St. Mary’s, thirty miles from Lima. They reached north-east into Sandusky and Ottawa, east into Seneca, north into Lucas and west into Van Wert and across the state-line into Indiana. Wood county stood at the top of the heap, with the rest as offshoots. Its first well, drilled three miles north of North Baltimore by T. J. Vandergrift & Co., cantered off in March, 1888, at four-hundred barrels. The second, put down three miles east a year later by Bowling-Green tenderfeet, rated as a fifteen-hundred barreler. Smith & Zeigler’s, on the adjoining farm, outdid this three to one by bowling out five-thousand barrels per diem. The plot thickened very rapidly. Gushers tumbled into line at a dizzy pace. Cygnet lots boasted clusters of derricks that marked king-pin strikes. Agents of the Standard bought thousands of wells and the cream of the territory. The product fed a myriad furnace-fires in Chicago and the half-mile battery of steam-boilers at the Columbian Exposition. In Sandusky county, whose earliest wells, at Gibsonburg in 1888, were by no means aggressive, T. E. Kirkbride called the turn on a six-thousand-barrel spouter in November, 1894. Altogether the Ohio oil-region, with its eastern pool in Trumbull county, its south-eastern branch in Washington, Monroe and Noble and its vast deposit of gas and petroleum in the north-western section, was a startling revelation. But all the territory was not velvet, as eight-thousand dry-holes attest. No leopard could be more spotted. The present average yield of the wells is under four barrels, with sixty-six cents as the average price last year. Five-sixths of the twenty-four-million barrels Ohio produced in 1896 must be credited to the north-western colossus.

Thomas E. Kirkbride, the man that owned the well that raised the smell that set the pace that led the race that broke the slate that it was fate that Coxey’s state should elevate, hails from Tidioute, where his parents located in 1866. He started in oil young, operated in the Warren and Bradford fields, caught the Ohio fever and landed at Findlay in 1890. His first ventures were around Gibsonburg, four miles west of which, on the Jones farm, he drilled the gusher that smashed the Lima record and fattened his bank-account six figures.

Mr. Kirkbride lives at Toledo, in a handsome home gladdened by a devoted wife and five children. S. M. Jones, the distinguished Mayor of Toledo, also came from the Keystone State. He drilled in the lower oil-districts in 1868, joined the tide for Bradford and located at Duke Centre. Thence he migrated to Toledo, patented a sucker-rod improvement, erected a big factory, dabbled skilfully in municipal affairs, advocated civic reforms and won the mayoralty on the grand platform of “eight hours work a day.” Mr. Jones helped organize the Western Oilmen’s Association, which occupies fine quarters in the heart of the city. There Fred Boden, W. J. McCullagh, Frank Steele, C. A. Lupher and other Keystoners often hang out to welcome old friends from Pennsylvania. W. B. Nolan, who pumped at Oil City in 1864 and operated from Edenburg to Bradford, has drilled five-hundred wells in Ohio for himself or by contract. C. C. Harris, who sold to the Ohio Oil-Company in 1890 for one-hundred-thousand dollars, has put down four-hundred. Truly the Buckeye State is no slouch in petroleum.

A farmer in the Black Swamp of Wood county, half-starved on corn-bread and bad water, leased his forty-acre patch for oil-purposes. The first well, which was sunk a hundred yards from his cabin, flowed two-thousand barrels a day. When the spurt began the old fellow happened to be chopping wood beside his door. He saw the mass of oil climb into the atmosphere, flung down his axe and shouted: “Bet yer life, no more corn-dodgers an’ watered whisky for this chicken!”

A barren streak in Mercer and Van Wert, on Ohio’s western border, seemed to demonstrate the folly of seeking an extension of the Lima belt in Indiana, despite convincing symptoms of oil at Geneva. To test the matter the Northern-Indiana Oil-Company, composed mainly of Lima operators, leased five-thousand acres along the boundary between Adams and Jay counties and drilled several wells in 1892. Nearly the whole range proved productive, showing that the belt stretched westward. Portions of Wells, Blackford, Grant and Huntingdon joined the procession in due course. Last year an important pool was unearthed near Alexandria, Madison county, twenty-five miles south-west of the original field, which demanded a pipe-line to Montpelier. This newest accession is in the town of Peru, with spurs quite close to Cass county. This has been the stellar attraction of Hoosierdom, fifty-five wells completed in October of 1897 yielding thirty-five-hundred barrels. Roan, New Waverley and Denver have not escaped and the drill has invaded Kokomo, twenty miles south. Peru is the fad of the hour, the pride of the Wabash. Just clear across the state, several wells at Terre Haute have revealed the presence of sand, gas and oil. The average price of Indiana crude in 1896 was sixty-three cents, and five-million barrels were produced.

The Indiana oil-region is a level country, about forty miles long east and west and three to four wide. The oil, dark green in color and thirty-six gravity, is found in the Trenton limestone, at a depth of a thousand feet. Thirty to a hundred feet of driving-pipe and three-hundred feet of casing are needed in each well. The main belt runs in regular pools and may be considered ten-barrel territory. The aggregate production of the field is twelve to fifteen-thousand barrels a day. The largest well started at two-thousand barrels and some have records of five-hundred to eight-hundred. The great gas-field, south of the oil-belt, has boomed manufactures and contributed vastly to the wealth of the Hoosiers.

Last May the Byram Oil-Company of Indianapolis finished the first oil-well, within sight of the village of Dundee, ever drilled by electricity. A fifty-horse dynamo, which runs the small motors at a dozen wells on the tract, supplied the power. Gas is used under the boilers in the power-house, a substantial frame-building, which shelters the central station. The entire plant cost five-thousand dollars and the company votes it a success of the first magnitude.

Hiram Tewksbury, of Montpelier, who pays taxes on six-hundred acres of land in Wells county, is one of the few men whom getting into a lawsuit enriched. When the Indiana field was in its infancy he contracted to purchase the Howard farm for some oilmen, who refused to take it off his hands and were sustained by the Court. He sued Howard to take it back, the Supreme Court decided against him and Tewksbury had to keep the land. It turned out to be the bosom of an oil-pool, the cream of the district. One acre brought Tewksbury eleven-thousand dollars, and for months his royalty exceeded five-hundred dollars a week.

Peru, a natty place of ten-thousand inhabitants, twelve miles east of Logansport, is the Indiana sensation of the year. Last June a bevy of citizens drilled a duster on the Wallace farm, two miles east. This dose of Peruvian bark spurred them to drill on the north-west edge of town in July. The well flowed fifteen barrels a day through the casing, at twenty feet in the Trenton rock, increasing ten-fold when tubed and pumped. At once the oil craze ran riot in the wild rush for leases. Tourists from Ohio and Pennsylvania led the long procession of land-seekers. The Klondyke pool east of Toledo and the Hume south of Lima were forgotten temporarily. Scores of slick wells demolished the theory of a mere “pocket,” which the absence of gas and scarcity of salt-water led would-be scientists to expect at the first blush. The good work has crowded ahead and Peru roosts high on the petroleum-perch in the center of the patch.

Thirteen per cent. of the five-thousand wells drilled in Benjamin Harrison’s state are dry-holes. Montpelier has benefited largely from operations in Wells, Blackford and Jay counties. The Sibley Oil-Company, Isaac N. Patterson, the Rowland-Zeigler Oil-Company and other Pennsylvania firms and individuals have been prominent in the field. Mr. Patterson lives at Franklin, is president of the savings bank and has figured extensively in the chief districts since Petroleum Centre and Pithole first tinctured the horizon a flaming red. James W. Rowland quit mercantile-life in Franklin to conduct a bank at Emlenton and embark in the oil-business. The success he richly merited attended him in banking, producing and refining. He gained a liberal fortune, returned to Franklin and took a leading share in developing the Indiana region. Mr. Rowland is a first-class man of affairs, genial and generous, true to his convictions, loyal in his friendships and always ready to further a good cause. The Rowland-Zeigler Company sold to the Standard recently at a price which hugged a quarter-million dollars closely. H. C. Zeigler, who managed and was president of the company, began his oil-career as owner of an interest in the first two producing wells at Raymilton, drilled in 1869. Operating at Pleasantville a short season, the fourth-sand development attracted him to Petrolia. In 1873 he and J. D. Ritchey and W. T. Jackson procured a charter for the Cleveland Pipe-Line, which was sold to S. D. Karns and merged into the Karns Line. Assisting in the management of the Karns Line until the United Lines absorbed it, he then engaged actively in producing oil. His circuit of operations comprised Bullion, Cogley, Thorn Creek, Cherry Grove, Bradford and Richburg. Moving westward, he participated in the early development of the Ohio and Indiana fields. In company with Jacob S. Smith he established the plant that supplied natural-gas to Chicago. His master-stroke was the organization of the Rowland-Zeigler Company, which alone realized him a competence. Mr. Zeigler is in his prime, hearty and vigorous, quick to relieve distress and prompt to aid the right. None better deserves the compliment George D. Prentice paid Mark M. Pomeroy: “He is a brick.”

John and Michael Cudahy, behind whom Philip Armour, the Swifts, Fairbanks and Nelson Morris, the Chicago beef-magnates, are supposed to pose, in 1895 purchased a huge slice of the Indiana field, laid a pipe-line to the Windy City and talked of building a refinery that would outshine the Standard giant at Whiting. The brothers are sons of an Irish resident of Milwaukee, who taught them his own trade of meat-packing. Michael Cudahy went to Chicago to manage a branch for John Plankington, whom the Armours succeeded, and John “came tumbling after.” John piled up millions by plunges in pork and lard that won him the soubriquet of “Daring Jack” Cudahy, while Michael stuck to Armour faithfully. John toppled and lost his wealth, Michael started him afresh, he paid off a million of debts and built up another fortune. Michael, several times a millionaire, has studied the swine as Sir John Lubbock has studied the ant. No part of the hog is wasted under his trained system, but thus far the Cudahys have not been able to hog the Hoosier oil-fields.

C. H. Shattuck had the first well in West Virginia drilled for oil. He came from Michigan in the fall of 1859, secured land in Wirt county and bored one-hundred feet by the tedious spring-pole process. The well was on the bank of the Hughes river, from which the natives skimmed off a greasy fluid to use for rheumatism and bruises. It was dry and Shattuck settled at Parkersburg, his present abode. At Burning Springs a “disagreeable fluid” flooded a salt-well, which the owner quit in disgust. General Samuel Karns, of Pennsylvania, and his nephew, S. D. Karns, rigged it up in 1860 and pumped considerable oil. The shallow territory was operated extensively. Ford & Hanlon bored on Oil-Spring Run, Ritchie county, in 1861-2, finding heavy oil in paying quantities. W. H. Moore started the phenomenal eruption at Volcano in 1863, by drilling the first well, which produced eight-thousand barrels of lubricating oil. Sheafer & Steen’s, the second well, was a good second and the Cornfield pumped seven-thousand barrels of thirty-five-gravity oil in six months. William C. Stiles and the Oil-Run Petroleum Company punched scores of wells. Volcano perched on the lubricating pedestal for years, but it is now extinct. E. L. Gale—he built the railroad freight-houses at Aspinwall and Panama and owned the site of Joliet and half the land on which Milwaukee thrives—in 1854 purchased two-thousand acres of bush twenty-five miles from Parkersburg. In 1866 the celebrated Shaw well, the first of any note on his tract, flowed one-hundred barrels of twenty-six-degree oil. Gale sent samples to the Paris Exposition in 1867 and received the only gold-medal awarded for natural oils. The Shaw well kicked up a fuss, leases brought large bonuses, excitement ran high and the “Gale Oil Field” was king of the hour. Land-grabbers annoyed Gale, who declined a million dollars for his property. He routed the herd and died at an advanced age, leaving his heirs ample means to weather the severest financial gale. The war had driven northern operators from the field and heavy-oil developments cleared the coast for the next act on the program.

Charles B. Traverneir, in the spring of 1883, on Rock Run, put down the first deep well in West Virginia. It encountered a strong flow of oil at twenty-one-hundred feet and yielded for eleven years. Volcano and Parkersburg had retired and light-oil territory was the object of the ambitious wildcatter. At Eureka, situated in a plain contiguous to the Ohio river, Brown & Rose struck the third sand in April, 1886, at thirteen-hundred feet. The well flowed seven-hundred barrels of forty-four-gravity oil, similar to the Macksburg variety and equal to the Pennsylvania article for refining. The derrick burned, with the tools at the bottom of the well, and the yield decreased to three-hundred barrels in May. Oilmen pronounced Eureka the coming oil-town and farmers asked ridiculous prices for their lands. Bradford parties leased numerous tracts and bounced the drill merrily. The third sand in West Virginia was found in what are known as “oil breaks,” at irregular depths and sometimes cropping out upon the surface. Eureka is still a center of activity. The surrounding country resembles the Washington district in appearance and fertility of the soil. In 1891 Thomas Mills, who operated at Tionesta in 1862 and at Macksburg in 1883-4, leased a bundle of lands near Sistersville and sank a well sixteen-hundred feet. A glut of salt-water induced him to sell out cheap. The first important results were obtained on the Ohio side of the Ohio river, where many wells were bored. The Polecat well, drilled in 1890, daily pumped fifty barrels of oil and two-thousand of salt-water, bringing Sistersville forward a peg. Eight wells produced a thousand barrels of green oil per day in May of 1892. Operating was costly and only wealthy individuals or companies could afford to take the risks of opening such a field. Captain J. T. Jones, J. M. Guffey, Murphy & Jennings, the Carter Oil-Company, the Devonian Oil-Company, the Forest Oil-Company and the South-Penn have reduced the business to an exact science and secured a large production. Sistersville, named from the two Welles sisters, who once owned the site of the town, has been a magnet to petroleumites for two years. Gushers worthy of Butler or Allegheny have been let loose in Tyler, Wood, Ritchie, Marion and Doddridge. The Big Moses, on Indian Creek, is a first-class gasser. Morgantown, Mannington and Sistersville are as familiar names as McDonald, Millerstown or Parker. Pipe-lines handle the product and old-timers from Bradford, Warren and Petrolia are seen at every turn. West-Virginia is on top for the moment, with the tendency southward and operators eagerly seeking more petroleum-worlds to conquer in Kentucky and Tennessee.

She was a radiant Sistersville girl. She descended the stairs quietly and laid her hand on the knob of the door, hoping to steal out stealthily in the gray dawn. Her father stood in the porch and she was discovered. “My daughter,” said the white-haired old gentleman, “what is that—what are those you have on?” She hung her head and turned the door-knob uneasily back and forth between her fingers, but did not answer. “Did you not promise me,” the old man went on, “that if I bought you a bicycle you would not wear—that is, you would ride in skirts?” She stepped impulsively toward him and paused. “Yes, father,” she said, “I did and I meant it. But I didn’t know these then. The more I saw of them the better I liked them. They improve on acquaintance, father. They grow on one——” “My daughter,” he interrupted, “Eve’s garments grew on her!” And so it has been with the West-Virginia oil-field—it grows on one and the more he sees of it the better he likes it.

Long after the Ruffners’ time Tyler county, the heart of the West-Virginia region, was a backwoods district, two generations behind the age and traveling at an ice-wagon gait, until it caught “the glow of the light to come.” Its beginning was small, but men who sneer at little things merely show that they have sat on a tack and been worsted in the fray. It has taken grit and perseverance to bring a hundred-thousand barrels of oil a day from the bowels of the earth in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West-Virginia and Indiana. The man who has not a liberal stock of these qualities should steep himself in brine before engaging in oil-operations. He will only hit the nail on the thumb and be as badly fooled as the chump who deems he has a cinch on heaven because he never stole sheep. Petroleum is all right and a long way from its ninth inning. The alarmist who thinks it is playing out would have awakened Noah with the cry of “Fire!”

Edward H. Jennings is among the most enterprising and fortunate operators in West Virginia. His Kanawha Oil Company has a legion of tip-top wells and miles of approved territory. Like his deceased father, a pioneer in Armstrong and Butler, he decides promptly and acts vigorously. With James M. Guffey, John H. Galey and one or two others he owned the phenomenal Matthews well and the richest territory at McDonald. The same gentlemen now own the famous Trade-Dollar Mine in Idaho, the greatest silver-mine on earth to-day, and gold-mines in California, Colorado and Nova Scotia that yield bountiful returns. Mr. Jennings is president of the Columbia Bank and lives in the beautiful East End of Pittsburg. He ranks high in business and finance. Brainy, cultured, energetic and courageous, Mr. Jennings scored his mark through well-directed effort and systematic industry

Womanly intuition is a hummer that discounts science, philosophy and red-tape. Mrs. Katherine E. Reed died at Sistersville in June of 1896. Her foresight secured fortunes for herself and many other in Tyler county. Left a widow five years ago, with eight children and a farm that would starve goats to death, she leased the land for oil-purposes. The test-well proving dry, Mrs. Reed implored the men to try again at a spot she had proposed for the first venture. The drillers were hard up, but consented to make a second trial when the good woman agreed to board them for nothing in case no oil was found. The well was the biggest gusher in the bundle. To-day it is producing largely and is known oil over West Virginia as “The Big Kate.” Mrs. Reed cleared two-hundred-thousand dollars from the sterile tract, which would sell for as much more yet, and her children and neighbors are independent for life.

Do any of the Pioneers on Kanawha remember “Dick” Timms’s Half-way House? The weather-beaten sign bore the legend, in faded letters: “Rest for the Weary. R. Timms.” The exterior was rough and unpainted, but inside was cheery and homelike in its snugness. When travelers rode up to the door “Uncle Dick,” in full uniform of shirt and pantaloons, barefooted and hatless, rough and uncouth in speech and appearance, but with a heart so big that it made his fat body bulge and his whole face light up with a cheerful smile, stood ready with his welcome salutation of “Howdy, howdy? ’Light; come in.”

Colorado counts confidently upon a production sufficient to give the Centennial State a solid lodgment in the petroleum-column. Its earliest development was a small well on the Lobach ranch, near Florence, in 1882. Other wells yielded enough crude to warrant the erection of a refinery in 1885, by the Arkansas-Valley Oil-Company, to which the United Oil-Company has succeeded. The United pumps ten or twelve-hundred barrels a day from forty wells, refining the product into illuminating oils, gasoline and lubricants of superior quality. The Florence Oil-Company pumps a dozen wells, owns a little refinery and holds large blocks of leased lands. The Rocky-Mountain Oil-Company, organized in 1890, has drilled forty-five wells south of the town of Florence, twenty-four of which yield three-hundred barrels a day. The Eureka Company is also operating briskly. The production of the Colorado region is nearly two-thousand barrels a day, derived from wells that average twenty-five hundred feet in depth, too expensive for persons of slender means to tamper with.

The Salt-Creek oil-field, the first worked in Wyoming, is in the northern part of Natrona and the southern part of Johnson county, fifty miles north of Caspar, the terminus of the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri-Valley Railroad. As known to-day the field is eighteen by thirty miles. It lies along Salt Creek and its tributaries, which drain northward and empty into Powder River, and is a rough country, cut by deep gulches, beneath which there are table-lands of small extent. Vegetation is scanty and timber is found only on the highest bluffs. In 1889 the Pennsylvania Oil-Company, composed of Pennsylvanians and under the management of George B. McCalmont, located on Salt Creek and drilled a well which, early in the spring of 1890, struck oil. Obstacles of no small magnitude were met with. The oil had to be freighted fifty miles by wagon; railroad-freights were controlled by eastern oil producers, rates that would justify shipments seemed almost impossible, and the oil had to be proved before it could be placed upon the market in competition with well-known brands. In the face of these difficulties the company continued work, and in the spring of 1894 succeeded in making arrangements to ship crude-oil. Storage-tanks were erected at the wells and at the railroad, and a refinery is now in operation at Caspar. The wells vary in depth from nine-hundred to fifteen-hundred feet and three companies are operating. The oil is a valuable lubricant. The transportation of the oil to the railroad is effected by freight-wagons of the ordinary sort. Behind them is a fourth wagon, or the freighter’s home, which has wide boards projecting from the sides of the wagon-box over the wheels, making a box of unusual width covered with heavy canvas over the ordinary wagon-bows and provided with a window in the back, a door in front, a bed, cook-stove, table, cupboard and the necessary equipment for keeping house. In this house on wheels the freighter passes the night, and in breaking camp he is not bothered with his camp-outfit. This novelty has been recently introduced by Mr. Johnson, the leading freighter for the Pennsylvania Company. With sixteen mules he draws his four wagons with nine tons of oil, over a very sandy road.

Wyoming oil sells high at Caspar, which is becoming a place of some consequence and may soon figure as the state-metropolis. It was a fort in the days of wild beasts and wilder Indians. Soft rock, with a provoking tendency to cave-in, and artesian water, impregnated with sulphur and found just above the oil-sand, rendered drilling a difficult task. The best well in the bunch produces from a rock five-hundred feet down, while the deepest is sixteen-hundred feet and the sand is fifty feet thick. Oil-basins on Caspar Creek, Powder River, Salt Creek and Poison Spider indicate the existence of petroleum over a wide section of the state. Wells on Salt Creek resemble those in Russia. True-blue Wyomingites proudly anticipate the day when their gilt-edged basin will hit the Baku mastodons a Fitzsimmons sock-dolager in the solar-plexus.

William M. Mills, boring for gas in 1892 near the east side of Neodesha, Wilson county, Kansas, found sand with oil in two wells and plugged the holes. John H. Galey, ever awake to the importance of prospective territory, heard the news and proceeded to investigate. He examined the sand and the oil—almost black in color and of heavy gravity—thought favorably of the country, enlisted Mills for the campaign, leased sixty-thousand acres for himself and James M. Guffey, located a number of wells and prepared for extensive developments. Guffey & Galey’s first well was rather slim. Their second, at Thayer, fourteen miles north-east, was also small. Their third, twenty-five miles farther north-east, at Humbolt, Allen county, had sand and gas and a feeble show of oil. Similar results forty miles south-west of Neodesha confirmed their opinion of plenty spotted territory to be worth testing to a finish. They drilled twenty wells in the vicinity of Neodesha, the majority of them fair. Several out of eighteen put down around Thayer, in the winter of 1893-4, rated in the medium class. The principal production of the Kansas field to-day—about five-hundred barrels derived from a hundred or more wells—is at these two points. In all Guffey & Galey drilled one-hundred-and-forty wells, averaging eight-hundred feet deep and half of them dry, and sold to the Forest Oil-Company in 1895.

E. E. Crocker, son of the Bradford pioneer, superintended the drilling of numerous wells for the Forest in 1896-7. Scattered over Bourbon, Crawford, Allen, Neosho, Woodson, Elk, Wilson and Montgomery counties, two-thirds of these ventures were dusters. Three at Humboldt are the farthest north that produce any oil. The farthest south are near Sedan and Peru, Chautauqua county. This embraces about seventy-five miles north-east and south-west. The whole district is as uncertain as the age of the oldest Betsey Bobbet in the pack. Dry-holes may surround a fair strike. The sand runs from eight to twenty feet. The oil is extremely dark, twenty to thirty-five gravity, with asphalt base, no paraffine and no sulphur. From the company’s refinery at Neodesha, which has a capacity of one-thousand barrels, the first shipment of kerosene was made last June. The refinery is designed to supply Kansas and portions of Nebraska and Missouri. Most of the crude is produced so near the refinery that pipe-lines have not been laid to transport it.

Gas is struck ninety to a hundred feet below the oil-sand, sometimes in large quantity and occasionally at about four-hundred feet from the surface. Low pressure and water prevent piping gas in the shallow wells long distances. It was a Fourth of July when the vapor illuminant was first lighted at Neodesha. Enthusiasm and patriotism drew thousands to the celebration. Jerry Simpson’s candidacy and Peffer’s whiskers were side-tracked and forgotten. Darkness gathered and the impatient throng waited for the torch to be applied to the tall stand-pipes. Their cheers might be heard in Oklahoma when masses of flame lit up the sky and bathed the town in a lurid glare.

The Guiper Oil-Company, managed by William Guiper of Oil City, the Palmer Oil-Company and James Amm & Co. have drilled many wells that did not bear the market a little bit. Across the Kansas border, at Eufala, Indian Territory, the Enterprise Oil-Company bored twenty-eight-hundred feet without finding the stuff. Two wells in Creek county had white-sand and a trifle of amber-oil at seven-hundred and a thousand feet. The Cherokee Oil-Company drilled ten wells that produced a moderate amount of heavy-oil from two slates. Wisconsin parties, making deep tests on the Cherokee border, indulge in fond hopes that “Bleeding Kansas” and the country south may shortly bleed petroleum from a half-score rich arteries.

Five wells near Litchfield, Illinois, pump fifty gallons of lubricating-oil a day. Two in Bates county, Missouri, dribble enough to grease wagon-axles and farm-implements. A New-York syndicate has obtained large concessions of land from the government and is drilling at Jalapa, Mexico, where oil was found in shallow wells a few years ago. In Kentucky a host of small or dry wells have gone down since 1894. The Bobs-Bar well, the only one producing in Tennessee, drilled in 1896, flowed fifty barrels an hour, caught fire the first night and afterwards pumped sixty barrels a day for a season.

Believing an artesian-well would supply the community with abundant pure water, a local company at Corsicana, Navarro county, Texas, three years ago started the tools to pierce the “joint clay” in the south-west end of town. Sixteen years before a well drilled nine-hundred feet failed to accomplish this purpose and was filled up. Geologists gravely announced that water—unfit to use at that—could not be had within thirty-five-hundred feet. The company kept right along. At ten-hundred feet the clay ceased and twenty feet of sandy shale, soft and bluish, followed. Oil, real petroleum, hardly inferior to the best in Pennsylvania, flowed strongly. Doubting Thomases felt sure this unexpected glut of oil settled the water-question in the negative and advised tubing the well. The company cased off the oil, resumed drilling, pierced five-hundred feet more of “joint clay,” four-hundred feet of “Dallas chalk” and another immense layer of clay. At twenty-five hundred feet a crystal current of water gushed forth to the rhythm of fifteen-thousand gallons an hour. The water-problem was solved happily, the company was amply vindicated and the Corsicanans were correspondingly jubilant. The geological freaks were confounded. Of course, they knew more about the creation than Moses and could upset Genesis in one round, but a six-inch hole on their own ground put them floundering in the soup.

John H. Galey read a brief report of the water-well and visited Corsicana “on the quiet.” He had cart-loads of experience in oil-matters and a faculty for opening new fields. He drilled on Oil Creek in the sixties, had a hand in the Pithole pie, broadened the Pleasantville limit, set the Parker district going, went to the front in Butler and let no patch of creamy territory escape his vigilant eye. In Kansas he had located and drilled the first wells—at Neodesha and Thayer—that brought into play the only pools that have paid their way. He spent a year in Texas picking up lands and putting down wells. As in Kansas, his first and second wells were ten or twelve miles apart and both touched the jugular. He sold his entire interest, four companies entered the field and thirty wells are doing a thousand barrels a day. The first car of Corsicana oil was shipped last July, amid the huzzas of a crowd of cheering citizens. Senator Roger Q. Mills, the Democratic statesman, is the lucky owner of a thousand acres of land on the outskirts of town. The property has been leased and it bids fair to make the Senator a millionaire. Petroleum may yet be the brightest star in the constellation of the Lone-Star State.

California is not content to have gold-mines, overgrown trees and tropical fruits and leave petroleum out in the cold. For years developments have been carried on, centering finally at Los Angeles. City-lots are punctured with holes and three-hundred wells have been drilled on two-hundred acres. Samuel M. Jones, formerly of the Pennsylvania oil-region and now president of the Acme Sucker-Rod-Company of Toledo, leveled his kodak at the Los-Angeles wells in 1895, securing the view printed in the cut. Hon. W. L. Hardison, who operated in the Clarion and Bradford fields and served a couple of terms in the Legislature, and Lyman Stewart, of Titusville, have been largely interested in the California field for ten years. Los-Angeles wells are seven to nine-hundred feet deep, yield six barrels to seventy-five at the start and employ six-hundred men. The oil is used for fuel and lubrication, produces superior asphaltum and a distillate for stove-burners and gasoline-engines. It cannot be refined profitably for illuminating. The Los-Angeles field, about one mile long and six-hundred feet wide, had a small beginning. The first wells, near the Second-Street Park, were small, only to the first sand—four-hundred feet—and yielded poorly. The operators lacked knowledge and bunched the holes as closely as sardines in a box. Deeper drilling revealed richer strata, from which four-hundred wells are producing eighteen-hundred barrels a day. Railways, electric lines and manufacturing establishments consume the bulk of the output—equivalent to seven-hundred tons of coal daily—for fuel. The best wells have been pumping twenty months to two years, a few starting at three-hundred barrels for a week. Twenty-five-hundred dollars is the average cost of a California well and the total yield of the district approximates two-million barrels up to date.

OIL-WELLS AT LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.