C. D. GREENLEE. B. FORST.
GREENLEE & FORST WELL, McDONALD.
C. D. Greenlee and Barney Forst, who joined forces west of Butler and at Wildwood, in August of 1891 leased James Mevey’s two-hundred-and-fifty acres, a short distance north-east of McDonald. Greenlee and John W. Weeks, a surveyor who had mapped out the district and predicted it would be the “richest field in Pennsylvania,” selected a gentle slope beside a light growth of timber for the first well on the Mevey farm. The rig was hurried up and the tools were hurried down. On Saturday, September twenty-sixth, the fifth sand was cracked and oil gushed at the rate of one-hundred-and-forty barrels an hour. The well was stirred a trifle on Monday, September twenty-eighth, with startling effect. It put fifteen-thousand-six-hundred barrels of oil into the tanks in twenty-four hours! The Armstrong and the Matthews had to surrender their laurels, for Greenlee & Forst owned the largest oil-well ever struck on this continent. On Sunday, October fourth, after slight agitation by the tools, the mammoth poured out seven-hundred-and-fifty-barrels an hour for four hours, a record that may, perhaps, stand until Gabriel’s horn proclaims the wind-up of oil-geysers and all terrestrial things. The well has yielded several-hundred-thousand barrels and is still pumping fifty. Greenlee & Forst’s production for a time exceeded twenty-thousand barrels a day and they could have taken two or three-million dollars for their properties. The partners did not pile on the agony because of their good-luck. They kept their office at Pittsburg and Greenlee continued to live at Butler. He is a typical manager in the field, bubbling over with push and vim. Forst had a clothing-store at Millerstown in its busy days, waltzed around the bull-ring in the Bradford oil-exchange and returned southward to scoop the capital prize in the petroleum-lottery.
Scurrying for territory in the Jumbo-field set in with the vigor of a thousand football-rushes. McDonald tourists, eager to view the wondrous spouters and hungry for any morsel of land that could be picked up, packed the Panhandle trains. Rigs were reared on town-lots, in gardens and yards. Gaslights glared, streams of oil flowed and the liveliest scenes of Oil Creek were revived and emphasized. By November first two-hundred wells were drilling and sixty rigs building. Fifty-four October strikes swelled the daily production at the close of the month to eighty-thousand barrels! What Bradford had taken years to accomplish McDonald achieved in ninety days! Greenlee & Forst had thirty wells drilling and three-hundred-thousand barrels of iron-tankage. Guffey, Galey & Jennings were on deck with fifteen or twenty. The Fisher Oil-Company, owning one-fourth the Oakdale’s big tract and the McMichael farm, had sixteen wells reaching for the jugular, from which the Sturgeon and Baldwin spouters were drawing ten-thousand barrels a day. William Guckert—he started at Foster and was active at Edenburg, Parker, Millerstown, Bradford and Thorn Creek—and John A. Steele had two producing largely and eight going down on the Mevey farm. J. G. Haymaker, a pioneer from Allegany county, N. Y., to Allegheny county, Pa., and Thomas Leggett owned one gusher, nine drilling wells and five-hundred acres of leases. Haymaker began at Pithole, drilled in Venango and Clarion, was prominent in Butler and in 1878 optioned blocks of land on Meek’s Creek that developed good territory and the thriving town of Haymaker, the forerunner of the Allegheny field. He boosted Saxonburg and Legionville and his brother, Obadiah Haymaker, opened the Murraysville gas-field and was shot dead defending his property against an attack by Weston’s minions. Veterans from every quarter flocked in and new faces were to be counted by hundreds at Oakdale, Noblestown and McDonald. The National-Transit Company laid a host of lines to keep the tanks from overflowing and Mellon Brothers operated an independent pipe-line. Handling such an avalanche of oil was not child’s play and it would have been utterly impossible in the era of wagons and flat-boats on Oil Creek.
McDonald territory, if unparalleled in richness, in some respects tallied with portions of Oil Creek and the fourth-sand division of Butler. Occasionally a dry-hole varied the monotony of the reports and ruffled the plumage of disappointed seekers for gushers. Even the Mevey farm trotted out dusters forty rods from Greenlee & Forst’s record-breaker. The “belt” was not continuous from McCurdy and dry-holes shortened it southward and narrowed it westward, but a field so prolific required little room to build up an overwhelming production. An engine may exert the force of a thousand horses and the yield of the Greenlee & Forst or the Matthews in sixty days exceeded that of a hundred average wells in a twelvemonth. The remotest likelihood of running against such a snap was terribly fascinating to operators who had battled in the older sections. They were not the men to let the chance slip and stay away from McDonald. Hence the field was defined quickly and the line of march resumed towards the southward, into Washington county and West-Virginia.
Wrinkles, gray-hairs and sometimes oil-wells come to him who has patience to wait. Just as 1884 was expiring, the discovery of oil in a well on the Gantz lot, a few rods from the Chartiers-Railroad depot, electrified the ancient borough of Washington, midway between Pittsburg and Wheeling. The whole town gathered to see the grease spout above the derrick. Hundreds of oilmen hurried to pick up leases and jerk the tools. For six weeks a veil of mystery shrouded the well, which was then announced to be of small account. Eight others had been started, but the territory was deep, the rock was often hard, and the excited populace had to wait six months for the answer to the drill.
Traveling over Washington county in 1880, Frederick Crocker noticed its strong geological resemblance to the upper oil-fields, which he knew intimately. The locality was directly on a line from the northern districts to points south that had produced oil. He organized the Niagara Oil-Company and sent agents to secure leases. Remembering the collapse of Washington companies in 1860-1, when wells on Dunkard Creek attracted folks to Greene county, farmers held back their lands until public-meetings and a house-to-house canvass satisfied them the Niagara meant business. Blocks were leased in the northern tier of townships and in 1882 a test well was drilled on the McGuigan farm. An immense flow of gas was encountered at twenty-two-hundred feet and not a drop of oil. Not disheartened, the company went west three miles and sank a well on the Buchanan farm, forty-two-hundred feet. Possibly the hole contained oil, but it was plugged and the drillers proceeded to bore thirty-six-hundred feet on the Rush farm, four miles south. Jumping eleven miles north-east, they obtained gas, salt-water and feeble spurts of oil from a well on the Scott farm. About this stage of the proceedings the People’s Light and Heat Company was organized to supply Washington with natural-gas. From three wells plenty of gas for the purpose was derived. A rival company drilled a well on the Gantz lot, adjacent to the town, which at twenty-one-hundred feet struck the vein of oil that threw the county-seat into spasms on the last day of 1884.
The fever broke out afresh in July of 1885, by a report that the Thayer well, on the Farley farm, a mile south-west in advance of developments, had “come in.” This well, located in an oatfield in a deep ravine, was worked as a mystery. Armed guards constantly kept watch and scouts reclining on the hill-top contented themselves with an unsatisfactory peep through a field-glass. One night a shock of oats approached within sixty feet of the derrick. The guard fired and the propelling power immediately took to its heels and ran. Another night, while a crowd of disinterested parties jangled with the guards, scouts gained entrance to the derrick from the rear, but discovered no oil. Previous to this a scout had paid a midnight visit to the well, eluded the guards, boldly climbed to the top of the derrick and with chalk marked the crown-pulley. With the aid of their glasses the vigilant watchers on the hill-top counted the revolutions and calculated the length of cable needed to reach the bottom of the well. A bolder move was to crawl under the floor of the derrick. This was successfully accomplished by several daring fellows, one of whom was caught in the act. He weighed two-hundred-and-forty pounds and his frantic struggles for a comfortable resting-place led to his discovery. A handful of cigars and a long pull at his pocket flask purchased his freedom. The well was a failure. R. H. Thayer drilled four more good ones, one a gusher that netted him three-thousand dollars a day for months. Other operators crowded in and were rewarded with dusters of the most approved type.
The despondency following the failure of Thayer’s No. 1 was dispelled on August twenty-second. The People’s Light and Heat Company’s well, on the Gordon farm, pierced a new sand two-hundred-and-sixty feet below the Gantz formation, and oil commenced to scale the derrick. Again the petroleum-fever raged. An owner of the well, at church on Sunday morning, suddenly awakened from his slumbers and horrified pastor and congregation by yelling: “By George! There she spouts!” The day previous he had seen the well flow and religious thoughts had been temporarily replaced by dreams of a fortune. This well’s best day’s record was one-hundred-and-sixty barrels. Test wells for the new Gordon sand were sunk in all directions and the Washington field had made a substantial beginning. The effect on the inhabitants was marked. The price of wool no longer formed the staple of conversation, the new industry entirely superseding it. Real-estate values shot skyward and the borough population strode from five-thousand to seventy-five-hundred. The sturdy Scotch-Presbyterians would not tolerate dance-houses, gambling-hells and dens of vice in a town that for twenty years had not permitted the sale of liquor. Time works wonders. Washington county, which fomented the Whisky Insurrection, was transformed into a prohibition stronghold. The festive citizen intent upon a lark had to journey to Pittsburg or Wheeling for his jag.
Col. E. H. Dyer, whom the Gantz well allured to the new district, leased the Calvin Smith farm, three miles north-east, and started the drill. He had twenty years’ experience and very little cash. His funds giving out, he offered the well and lease for five-hundred dollars. Willets & Young agreed to finish the well for two-thirds interest. They pounded the rock, drilled through the fifth sand and hit “the fifty-foot” nearer China. In January of 1886 the well-Dyer No. 1—flowed four-hundred barrels a day. Expecting gas or a dry-hole, from the absence of oil in the customary sand, the owners had not erected tanks and the stream wasted for several days. Dyer sold his remaining one-third to Joseph W. Craig, a well-known operator in the Oil-City and Pittsburg oil-exchanges, for seventy-five-thousand dollars. He organized the Mascot Oil-Company, located the McGahey in another section of the field and pocketed two-hundred-thousand dollars for his year’s work in Washington county. The Smith proved to be the creamiest farm in the field, returning Willets, Young and Craig six-hundred-thousand dollars. Calvin Smith was a hired man in 1876, working by the month on the farm he bought in 1883, paying a small amount and arranging to string out the balance in fifteen annual instalments. His one-eighth royalty fattened his bank-account in eighteen months to six figures, an achievement creditable to the scion of the multitudinous[multitudinous] Smith-family.