- or,
the more things change, the more they stay the
same...
The next time
you hear the gas drilling industry talk about
its great environmental track record in New York
State, think about an elderly friend of ours who
remembers how the intensive drilling in
Chautauqua County in the western part of the
state literally "stank" and how the water tasted
like gas. Inspired by her recollections,
we went looking for a firsthand account.
This is what we found.
Excerpted
from A River Ramble by Arch Merrill,
a
Rochester newspaperman who took his vacation one
summer during World War II and used it to walk
the Genesee River from the spring at which it
begins in PA to where it ends in Lake Ontario.
Chapter
Three: Land of Liquid Gold
Oil is liquid gold. it is a prize of empire,
the richest stake of war. Because of man's lust
for this buried treasure, bloody wars have been
fought, the destinies of nations and the course
of politics swayed, governments debauched and
princely fortunes won and lost.
Without it, all the wheels of world industry
would cease and all the engines of war on all
the fronts would rust away.
As long as the drills go down into the earth,
seeking out this buried treasure, America still
will have a frontier. For in a land of pumps
and derricks, there is a vividness of life, an
air of daring, of playing for high stakes, a
keen and often ruthless competition - the things
that keep alive the flickering fires of the
pioneering spirit.
This flame burns in the Genesee Country, along
the southern reaches of the river that flows
through Rochester. In that rugged countryside
was discovered the first petroleum in all
America. For 64 years the buckled terrain of
Allegany County has given liberally of its
underground riches that lay untapped for
millions of years. The geologists tell us that
the oil began as organic matter eons ago, deep
down in the shale and seeped up through cracks
into the sands, waiting for the drills of men to
come and harvest it.
There are few acres of southern Allegany soil
that have not been punctured in the quest of oil
and its sister resource, combustible gas. Both
have been found in paying quantities in the
southern row of towns.
Wellsville on the Genesee may be called the
Capital of the Oil Country but Bolivar, the
village named after the South American
liberator, is its production center and little
Richburg was the scene of the region's most
spectacular boom. Allentown and the towns of
Genesee, Independence, Scio, Clarksville, Ward,
Andover and Amity all contribute to the county's
production.
Apparently oil and Genesee water do not mix for
one must wander a few miles from the river to
explore the oil and gas fields.
* * *
In that rugged land, the air reeks with the
pungent odor of the oil. You taste it in the
water you drink. Along the road from the
northern rim of Richburg almost to the corporate
limits of Wellsville, you hear the constant chug
of the engines that power the thousands of
pumps, and the slide of the polished rod. The
thick woods around Allentown often hide the
wells but you can hear the monotonous, ceaseless
chant of the pumps. Looking up into the hills,
you see a swath cut through the woods and you
know in the cleared path is a pipe line, leading
to one of the refineries or one of the huge
storage tanks that dot the landscape.
The talk is all of oil and gas and leases.
There is an undercurrent of excitement, of
things unpredictable, characteristic of all
regions where wealth is taken from the earth.
In Richburg there are oil wells on the front
lawns and even one in a churchyard. The chug of
the engines goes on even during the church
service. Oil is pumped a few feet from the
village cemetery. One oil well is so close to a
house that the resident can almost touch it from
a side window.
Bolivar, a rich, brisk town, has no oil wells in
its dooryards but is surrounded by them. A town
of about 1,500, it has an assessed valuation of
seven millions.
Don't look askance at some roughly clad,
hustling man you see racing from lease to lease
in a dust-smeared car. He may be a millionaire
oil operator who can buy and sell you a thousand
times.
There are mansions on North Main Street in
Wellsville and on the shady, side streets of
Bolivar that tell of fabulous fortunes the pumps
in the hills and valleys have built.
Most of the glamour and the drama of the Oil
Country lie in the past. The days of mad
speculation, akin to a gold rush, are gone
forever. The oil and gas industry is a
stabilized business, in the hands of responsible
operators. Some of the them are independents
and natives of the region. Others are the big
combines. The feverish speculation and wildcat
promotion of the early days are missing.
The monthly drilling report for July showed 81
wells are being sunk in the Allegany field. In
my ignorance I looked for a sea of derricks
along the roads. Derricks are used nowadays
only in drilling new wells. Prior to the
adoption of "flooding" in 1920, the tall
derricks with their huge timbers stood
throughout the period of production.
The Allegany field began producing in 1879. The
peak production of the early days was in 1882 -
24,000 barrels a day. Later the field showed
signs of exhaustion but "flooding" brought a
marked revival.
All New York State oil sands produce some gas
along with the oil. This gas escaped faster
than oil was produced. Thus the gas pressure
which encouraged the flow of oil out of the
pores of the sand, was largely lost after a
period of production. this gas pressure was
restored by flooding exhausted fields. By this
process, the large amount of oil still left in
the sands is driven from one well to another by
the introduction of water to create hydrostatic
pressure.
Under this system, rows of water wells are first
drilled in straight lines. After at least six
months, sometimes longer, oil wells are put down
in a line from a point midway between two lines
of water wells which push the oil at right
angles to the travel of the water.
The principle of flooding was known - and was
used surreptitiously - prior to its legalization
in 1920. This process proved a blessing in
preserving the life of the Allegany fields.
"Black gold" is a misnomer when applied to
Allegany County oil, which is of a greenish,
gold cast. Genesee Country oil is listed in the
trade under the heading of "Pennsylvania oil"
and is of as fine quality as a lubricant as any
produced in America.
Throughout the section many wells produce both
oil and commercial gas. In early days gas had
no great recovery value and farmers used the
surplus for huge outdoor lights that burned all
night in the barnyards. Since then, the value
of natural gas has been greatly enhanced.
Allegany County is the state's most reliable
source of that elusive and fickle resource.
The gas fields are chiefly on the fringe of the
oil pools, surrounding Wellsville. Deep well
testing began in 1927 and one well in the town
of Wirt holds a record for drilling depth -
6,500 feet without paying gas. The shallow
wells throughout the area have a more consistent
history.
In Wellsville alone, some 2,300 people are
employed in some phase of the oil industry, with
600 on the payrolls of the big Sinclair Refinery
alone. Prior to the introduction of "flooding,"
the oil production for the Allegany field was
around 100 barrels a day. Now the average will
reach 10,000 to 11,000 barrels daily.
Which reminds me of a story the still tell in
the Oil Country. A Boston lady, who had never
seen an oil well, paid a visit to the fields.
She was told a certain well produced 100 barrels
a day.
"But," she said, "how do they get the barrels
down in the wells?"
In Rochester ever since gas rationing began,
there have been persistent report of such a
surplus of oil in hte Southern Tier that it was
being pumped back into the ground. Every person
in the oil business with whom I talked ridiculed
this story. On the contrary, they said, concern
is felt over dwindling production because of
government quotas, labor shortage and material
priorities.
Just the same, people who live in a countryside
studded with oil wells, are not too keen about
having their automobile gasoline rationed - or
their driving policed.
Everybody in the Oil Country remembers the great
fire which five years ago swept the refinery in
Wellsville. And they recall, too,the gas
"gusher" which ran wild from a deep well south
of Wellsville in 1940. It was a tremendous
sight. At first the liquid shot straight in the
air, later fanned out. The loss was enormous
and the hazard from fire was grave. The
operators had never dreamed of such a flow and
were unprepared for the "runaway." To stem the
flow and to prevent fire, a crew of specialists
was imported from Texas. They used weighted
mud, which had to be heavier than the gas
pressure, to tame the mad "gusher."
* * *
In the Genesee Country, but some miles west of
the river, is the spring from which bubbled the
first known petroleum in America. It is in the
town of Cuba and for three centuries has been
known as the Seneca Oil Spring.
It was first made known to white men in 1627,
when Father D'Allion, a Franciscan friar, wrote
of it. The Iroquois tribes carried word of its
great medicinal qualities to far places In 1700
Lord Belmont directed an agent to find "the
spring that blazes when a hot coal is applied
and which lies eight miles southwest of the
furthest Seneca castle (Caneadea)."
According to Seneca tradition, a very fat squaw
fell into the pool and disappeared forever.
Ever since then, oil has arisen out of its
depths. The Indians gathered the seepage by
spreading blankets over the surface of the
spring. These absorbed the oil which was wrung
out and put up in vials as the famed Seneca
mineral oil.
Oil was never produced in paying quantities at
the spring although an 1857 "duster" drilled
there makes it, according to some accounts, the
state's first oil well. The Seneca Spring is a
shrine of the industry, however, and bears a
historical marker.
Ever since Col. Edwin L. Drake made his epochal
oil "strike" at Titusville in 1857, the first
producing oil well in America, and the
consequent development of the Pennsylvania
field, oil operators had cast their eyes over
the state line into Allegany and Cattaraugus
Counties.
In 1866 a well was drilled near Whitesville but
it was not a profitable venture. But pioneers
kept on drilling in Southern Allegany. One of
the most persistent and energetic of these
pioneers was Orville P. Taylor, who has been
called "The Colonel Drake of the Allegany
fields."
In June, 1979, after he had sunk several dry
wells, Taylor brought in the famous Triangle
No.1 well, four miles southwest of Wellsville.
This was the discovery well, the first
productive well in the Allegany field.
Immediately the excitement began. What had been
a barren field became a mushroom town,
christened "Triangle City." For years this
staunch pioneer well produced consistently.
And recently the memory of O.P. Taylor, the man
who would not give up, was honored by the the
government when a Liberty ship was launched
bearing his name.
But Richburg was the Eldorado, the hell-roaring
boom town of the Allegany fields. This village
was named after a settler and without any
prophetic allusion to its future wealth. For
years it had slept, a hamlet of some 25
buildings and less than 200 souls, on the shady
road that ld over the hills to Friendship, 11
miles away. Farmers plowed the fields, little
dreaming of the wealth that lay beneath their
furrows. The arrival of the stage with the mail
and an occasional passenger was the big event of
the day in Richburg.
But in 1881, the pioneers were drilling for oil
in the countryside.
On the morning of April 27, 1881, a gusher came
in one mile west of the village - and Richburg
was no longer a crossroads hamlet. For a little
over a year it was the wildest, wickedest boom
town in America.
Oil scouts rode on horseback tot he railroad
towns and the wires carried news of the gusher
to newspapers in all parts of the country.
Thousands read the news and the next day the
invasion was on. Oil men came pouring across
the border, from Bradford, from Pittsburgh, from
Oil City, from all points of the compass, along
with the unsavory army of camp followers that in
those days followed the discovery of new oil
fields.
There was a wild scramble for leases. In a week
Richburg grew from a hamlet of 200 to a
veritable city of 8,000.
On my way down to Wellsville, I talked with
Charles Ricker at Fillmore. Ever since he left
his Black Creek home, a boy of 16, Ricker has
been interested in oil. When the gusher came in
at Richburg, he opened a hardware store in the
boom town.
From this man, now over 80, with leonine head
and the bearing of a senator, from written
reminiscences and oral accounts of other
pioneers, a picture of Richburg's lurid past can
be pieced together.
In less than a week after the discovery of oil,
four stage lines were in operation over into
Pennsylvania. Big old-fashioned stage coaches,
drawn by four horses, came lumbering into
Richburg, laden with oil-crazed passengers.
Flimsy houses, stores with false fronts, saloons
and gambling halls sprang up.
There were few sleeping accommodations. It was
nothing strange to see 20 men crawl out of a hay
mow at daybreak. Sometimes as many as 200 slept
under the maples of the little park by the
village schoolhouse. Others paid $1 a night for
the privilege of sleeping on a billiard table.
One saloon keeper did not wait for the
carpenters. He placed two whisky barrels on
end, used a plank for a bar and set up business
in the street. The village grist mill became a
bagnio. Ricker said at one time there were 135
women plying the oldest profession in the world
in the oil town. There were gambling hells in
barns, over stores. Money flowed like water.
There were murders and stabbings and gang
fights. No mining camp in the Rockies was
wilder than Richburg in the heyday of the oil
boom.
Narrow gauge railroads were hastily built over
the hills. A fine opera house arose in Main
Street. There stars of the spoken stage
appeared, among them Fay Templeton. Richburg
became part of the Oil Country Circuit which
included Pittsburgh, Bradford and Oil City, and
John L. Sullivan came there on one of his
barnstorming tours. Ricker recalled that an oil
gang foreman named McGarvey put on the gloves
with the champ and gave a good account of
himself.
The men of the Oil Country were husky fellows,
athletic, fleet of foot. The Ackerman Hose
Company of Richburg once made a world's record
in a hose race at a tournament at Bradford.
A parasitic breed known as the "oil dipper"
flourished for a time in those lush days, when
the overflow of oil formed veritable lakes in
low places. Two men built a dam on the flats,
an ingenious contrivance, that would skim the
oil off the water. At one time they were
storing 700 barrels of oil.
Another man set up a tank near a creek that was
full of floating oil. By the simple law of
gravity, the oil-laden water just flowed into
his tank. The law of the state finally halted
his enterprise.
A horde of men, and boys and even women, spent
their days dipping the oil off the waters in the
lowlands with every sort of receptacle. In the
woods a big "dippers' oil dam" held an
accumulation of driftwood and debris, as well as
liquid gold. One night it caught fire, how no
one knows. Hundreds fought the blaze that
raced for a mile along the creek and lit up the
heavens. That was the end of the chiselers "oil
dam."
In the van of the prospectors who came to
Richburg were the Irish, who loved the adventure
and the gamble of the oil rush. Some of them
stayed to flavor the stern New England strain of
the countryside.
Farmers on whose lands oil was struck became
rich overnight. Men who had never seen more
than $50 at one time in their lives, counted
their wealth in the thousands.
One man who did not trust banks, took out his
lease money, a considerable sum, in gold, shoved
it into grain sacks and sat up all night beside
it, with a rifle. Another went in for gaudy
harness trimmings. When the country was being
scoured for old gold in the 1930s, much precious
metal came out of hiding in Richburg, a hangover
from the boom days. Relatives sold the two
heavy gold watches that one long dead,
get-rich-quick farmer had purchased - and
carried - just because he did not know what else
to do with his newly found wealth.
But Richburg's day of glory was shortlived. In
the summer of 1882 word spread of a rich new
gusher at Cherry Grove, Pa. Almost as quickly
as they came, the fickle army that followed the
oil fields deserted Richburg. Besides the field
was showing signs of exhaustion.
Slowly Richburg went back to sleep. The opera
house was converted into a cheese factory and
later burned. Some of the buildings fell into
ruin. Some were moved away bodily. Bolivar
became the center of production. In 1895
Richburg was called a "ghost town."
Wellsville had its hectic boom period, too. In
1884 there were 55 saloons and 12 houses of ill
fame in the village and a Law and Order League
formed to protect the peace.
With the advent of "flooding," the Allegany
fields received a mighty shot in the arm.
Richburg rallied from its eclipse and the fields
around the village became steady producers
again.
The wild days and wilder nights of the rush of
'81 today live only in the memories of the old
men in the Oil Country.
----------------------------------
Why learn
everything the hard way - all over again?
Talk to the people you know who are in their 70s
and 80s and ask them what they remember about
booms and busts in the hydrocarbon industry.
