Description:
Oil was so plentiful in Indian and later Oklahoma Territory that one didn’t even need to drill for it – it often bubbled up from below and collected in pools on the surface. In those early days, the biggest problem was not how to find oil, but what to do with it. Gasoline-powered engines would not be plentiful until after 1900 and most factories and homes in the east were powered and heated by coal (and steam generated from burning coal). About all a poor farmer could do was use the oil for axle grease and hope to sell the rest to others for the same purpose.
Native Americans found medicinal uses for the oil they discovered. C. B. Glasscock recounts a story that as early 1853, a government Indian agent reported to Washington that oil springs in the Wichita Mountains were thought to have restorative powers and that a number of travelers from Texas and Arkansas came to the area to ease their suffering from rheumatism and other ailments. Traveling medicine shows sold oil all over the twin territories as an Indian cure-all.
That government report was issued six years before Edwin L. Drake drilled the world’s first commercial oil well in Pennsylvania in 1859. Drake had the same problem others had – there was no market for oil. Over the next forty years refined oil became more valuable as a lubricant and as lamp fuel. By the 1890s, exploration was common in the Indian Territory, spurred by an increase in oil prices and the development of engines that ran on gasoline. In 1897, the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company (owned by Frank Phillips and H. V. Foster), struck oil near Bartlesville on land owned by William Johnstone. The well, named #1 Nellie Johnstone, is widely regarded as the first commercial oil well in Oklahoma. There were producing wells before, but none that produced as well as Nellie Johnstone.
The next two decades saw an incredible growth in the petroleum industry. The single greatest development was the introduction of the automobile which sent prices skyrocketing and created flurries of economic activity all over the country. Oklahoma was no exception. In 1905, the Glenn Pool was discovered south of Tulsa and in a few months would become the largest oil field in the world at the time. Tulsa became the “Oil Capital of the World” overnight as it emerged as the center of the financial and commerical activity surrounding oil production. In 1912, the Cushing-Drumright field came in. Then Healdton in 1913. In 1920, the Burbank field came in on Osage lands and made Osage tribe members millionaires many times over. The Seminole field was discovered in 1926. Geologists soon realized that Oklahoma was sitting atop what appeared to be the biggest, deepest oil deposit ever (it would later be called the Mid-Continent Field and spread from north Texas to southern Kansas).
We often hear the term ‘black gold’ applied to the amazing wealth generated by an oil discovery, but the reference to gold is also appropriate because these oil fields which sprang up are strikingly similar to the goldrush towns in the mountain west. Once a well was brought in, wildcatters (independents not drilling for a particular company) would sweep in from around the country, obtain a lease, and start drilling in the same area. There was no law or regulation to prevent this and soon the surrounding countryside resembled a forest of derricks often as far as the eye could see. Oil field workers (oilies) and their families would live in makeshift shacks and go without running water, schools or other basics. The work was also very dangerous; death or the loss of fingers or hands was common and the families were often left with considerable hardship. These were the people getting filthy dirty – not filthy rich. The fields often became evironmental disasters as gushers spewed oil over the countryside or collected in pools around the drilling sites.
Anyone looking at a map of these great oil fields in Oklahoma could see that there was a big hole in the middle which had no drilling activity. It stood to reason that that area would need to be explored as well. That area, of course, was Oklahoma City. As the state capital, Oklahoma City had profited from all the other oil fields through taxes, financing and distribution, but it didn’t experience anything like the overnight growth of Tulsa or Bartlesville (it had already done that in 1889!). It wasn’t for want of trying – geologists and wildcatters had done test wells several times for over twenty years and always came up dry. While other parts of the state had grown and become wealthy on oil, by the late 1920s Oklahoma City had become a medium-sized capital city with a diversified economy.
Things changed very quickly on December 4, 1928 when the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company (ITIO), working with Foster Petroleum, found oil at 6,402 feet. The well was called #1 Oklahoma City and was located in a field near what is today SE 59th and Bryant about four miles from downtown. In the first month alone it brought in 110,496 barrels of oil. People celebrated all over town and many joked that Santa Claus came early that year. The Capitol Hill area (nearest part of the city to the site) particularly rejoiced and business leaders organized a street dance with plenty of food and music. Still a touch bitter over the annexation of Capitol Hill by Oklahoma City in 1910, citizens of Capitol Hill took a dig at their northern neighbors and invited them to the party out of pity because they had no oil well.
Number One Oklahoma City blew in on a Tuesday afternoon and the next day the newspaper reported that residential property values had jumped 25%, the bus station reported a 50% increase in passengers coming in, Western Union workers were up all night processing the hundreds of outgoing messages and by Saturday of that week two new towns sprang up around the well – Bodine City just across the road (later SE 59th) and Emerson City to the southeast. By Sunday, the Daily Oklahoman’s front page story expressed concern about shanty towns springing up all over Oklahoma County.
The boom was on despite efforts by city and county leaders to control it. Wells were sunk on city land at Trosper Park, and other spots on the southeast side of the city. By the end of 1929, there were 53 wells in the area; by March 1930 there were 135 wells completed and 173 more drilling. On March 26, 1930 things changed. Early that morning ITIO’s #1 Mary Sudik well blew in and ran wild. It took twelve days to bring her under control after blowing about 10,000 barrels of oil and 25 million cubic feet of gas into the air every day. Residents remember a fine greasy mist falling on the campus of Oklahoma University in Norman fifteen miles away. Other wells went wild as well. Morgan Petroleum’s #1 Stout well or ‘Stout Feller’ located on East Reno near the river went wild in October, 1930 and sprayed oil all over the city – it even caused an oil slick on the river which caught fire near Harrah.
Exploration had been gradually moving northward and not long after ‘Wild Mary Sudik’ came in derricks had reached the southeastern edge of the city limits. City leaders were divided over what to do, if anything, about drilling in the city (no oil field had ever been this close to a city before) and it was decided that drilling would be banned in the city limits except for a zone on the northeast side and along the southern edge of the city. In those zones, one well would be allowed per city block and royalties split among property owners. As it turned out, drillers went around the rules and sometimes simply ignored them. Derricks popped up in schoolyards, churchyards, city parks, and even in residential backyards. Firemen and health officials were very worried about what would happen if a well were to blow like Mary Sudik or Stout Feller again.
In 1931, with the Depression at its worst, the price of oil dropped to 16 cents a barrel – that’s compared to the $1.56 per barrel price just two years earlier when the #1 Oklahoma City came in. At that time, it was estimated that the Oklahoma City field could produce the oil needs for the entire world. Governor William ‘Alfalfa Bill’ Murray enacted martial law within 50 feet of each well in the entire state and ordered all wells to stop pumping until the price of oil rose back to $1.00 per barrel (which was still cheap). He did not want to pump Oklahoma dry of oil and sell it for nothing. Operators still tried to get around the governor’s orders and quite a bit of ‘hot oil’ was produced in defiance of his orders.
It was an extreme measure on Governor Murray’s part, but it was good for the state. Oklahoma City was saved from a lot of the hardship brought on by the great Depression because 10,000 workers were employed in the oil field and the money coming in to the city was enough to keep the city operating and able to provide relief to other sectors which were hit hard by the downturn. Oklahoma City actually experienced some growth during the Depression and our skyline grew even higher as oil companies built tall skyscrapers downtown to house their operations.
By 1933, Oklahoma City had become the center of the oil industry and the oil field once contained on the southeast had by now begun to encroach on the exclusive neighborhood of Lincoln Terrace and other residential areas on the northeast side of the city. Drilling was still technically restricted to specified zones, but oil companies had begun to use directional (basically slanted or sideways) drilling to take oil from under property outside the zone while the derrick remained inside the zone. This development infuriated property owners who found that not only were their homes virtually without value because of the unsightly derricks, but they were also not entitled to any royalties because the drilling was not on their property even though the oil was. Their plight became a moot point, though, when a hotly contested city election in 1935 removed restrictions on drilling within the city limits.
A few months later, in 1936, the issue of royalties came up again with the State of Oklahoma being the injured party instead of residents. Drilling had begun within earshot of the Governor’s Mansion and to the north of the Capitol and Governor E. W. Marland, a wealthy oilman, feared that oil would be taken from state property without royalties being paid. Like Murray, he declared martial law to halt development of new wells. Marland’s solution was to allow drilling on state property and soon after martial law was lifted, derricks began popping up on Capitol grounds and Oklahoma City gained the distinction of being the only state to have a working oil rig on its ground.
Other small fields would open as part of the large Oklahoma City field in the Belle Isle area and Edmond and Arcadia as well. The Oklahoma City field was a giant and has produced hundreds of millions of barrels of oil to date. It made Oklahoma City famous and saved it from the grip of the Depression of the 1930s and although it has been a blessing and a curse at different times in our development, oil has become an inseparable part of our culture and identity.
FURTHER READING
Franks, Kenny, P.F. Lambert, and C.N. Tyson. Early Oklahoma Oil: A Photographic History, 1859-1936. Texas A&M University Press, 1981.
Glasscock, C. B. Then Came Oil. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938.
Harrison, Walter M. “Oklahoma Chooses Oil Before Beauty”, New York Times 16 February 1936.
Marcosson, Isaac F. The Black Golconda: The Romance of Petroleum. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924.
“Oil Field Discovery Delayed Depression Two Years for Oklahoma City”, Daily Oklahoman 29 November 1936, 4-D.
Rister, Carl Coke. Oil! Titan of the Southwest. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949.
“Shacks Start Moving Into City’s New Oil Field Area”, Daily Oklahoman 9 December 1928, 1.
Stewart, Roy P., Born Grown: An Oklahoma City History. Oklahoma City: Fidelity Bank, 1974.