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!”
BIG MOSES GAS-WELL IN WEST VIRGINIA.
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.