By David Dary

For The Transcript

Indians discovered oil in what is now Oklahoma more than half a century before statehood. They noticed outcroppings of green oil at numerous springs and along streams.

One discovery was a New Spring Place north of Tahlequah and another at Boyd Springs northeast of modern Ardmore in the Chickasaw Nation.

A Chickasaw Agency report dated August 29, 1853 notes: “The oil springs in this [Chickasaw] nation are attracting considerable attention, as they are said to be a remedy for all chronic diseases. Rheumatism stands no chance at all, and the worst cases of dropsy yield to its effects. The fact is that it cures anything that has been tried.”

In 1859, Lewis Ross, brother of Cherokee Chief John Ross, sank a deep well for water at his salt works along the Grand River. Ross struck oil that flowed about ten barrels a day for one year before stopping for lack of pressure. Although found accidentally, this was the first oil well in Indian Territory.

There were few national markets for oil until after 1859 when Col. Edwin L. Drake drilled a successful oil well at Oil Creek, later Titusville, Pennsylvania. The find led to the distilling of oil to produce kerosene. Ten years earlier Abraham Gesner, a physician, developed and patented the process a decade earlier.

Until kerosene was developed, people relied on light from candles and lamps fueled by whale oil in their homes and businesses. Kerosene was sometimes called coal oil although true coal oil was cooked out of finely ground coal.

As the petroleum industry developed during the latter half of the 19th century, stories of the discovery of oil in Indian Territory attracted white men in search of what became known as “black gold.”

Oklahoma’s first oil company was the Chickasaw Oil Co. incorporated in 1872 under the laws of the State of Missouri. Because of the demand for coal by the railroads, the company concentrated on mining coal and did not develop oil resources.

In 1884, the General Council of the Choctaw Nation created the Choctaw Oil and Refining Company. Dr. H. W. Faucett, who had been involved in the pioneer oil industry in Pennsylvania, was involved, but delays and financial problems forced the company to close.

After the unassigned lands were opened to white settlement in 1889 the search for oil intensified. On April 15, 1897, the Cudahy Oil Co. brought in the Nellie Johnson No. 1, the first commercial oil in Oklahoma. It was located on the south bank of the Caney River near modern Bartlesville.

In 1896, the Osage Nation made a deal giving the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Co. (ITIO) a ten-year lease beginning to drill for oil over a vast area of Osage land.

Slow to start, H. V. Foster, ITIO president, decided in 1903, three years before the company’s lease expired, to split up the Osage Nation lease and auction hundreds of small subleases.

Under an elm tree heads the founders of soon to be important oil company’s came to bid on lease. Journalists described the auction as taking place under “the million dollar tree” because of what the leases would eventually produce.

As the automobile with its combustion engine came on the scene, the oil strikes made on the Osage lands began the fortunes of Foster, Frank, L. E. and Waite Phillips, J. Paul

Getty, Harry Sinclair, E. W. Marland, Bill Skelly and Josh Conden of Tulsa’s Zarrow family. Even Kansan Alf Landon along with many Osage Indians became wealthy from Osage land oil.

In June 1901, a well struck oil at Red Fork across the Arkansas River southwest of Tulsa. Four years later (1905) Frank Chesley and Robert T. Galbreth were hunting on the property of Ida Glenn, a Creek Indian, several miles south of Tulsa. While chasing their dogs Chesley discovered oil seeping from some rocks.

With a lease in hand. Chesley, Galbreath, Charles F. Colcord and J. O. Mitchell organized the Creek Oil Co. On November 22, 1905 their first well 12 miles south of Tulsa was a gusher. The Glenn Pool field was born.

Almost overnight Tulsa boomed and became the “old capital of the world.”

Seven years later Tom Slick and C. B. Shaffer discovered what became known as the Cushing-Drumright field, and in 1920 E, W, Marland brought in the North Burbank field, which produced more than 300 barrels of oil.

The next discovery was the greater Seminole oil field in 1926 that attracted 20,000 oil field workers. Oil from this field, however, glutted the market and slowed production and more oil discoveries until 1929.

On December 4, 1928, six miles south of Oklahoma City, an exploratory well hit more black gold. The Oklahoma City field became one of the world’s major oil producing fields.

Oil was even drilled from under the state capitol.

Oil revenue added great stability to the economy of Oklahoma City and the state. Oil money made it possible to develop cultural and industrial programs.

When the Mary Sudik No. 1 blew wild in the Oklahoma City field on March 25, 1930 and was not capped for 11 days, it became the most publicized oil well in the world. Oil gave new life to Oklahoma but attracted the attention of the world.









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