The Oil and Gas Boom .

The oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries transformed Northwestern Ohio from a predominantly agricultural area into a leading industrial energy supplier for the nation.  Those days of speculation and excitement have passed but the effects can still be seen today.

The first mention of oil in Wood County came in the Aug. 2, 1883 edition of the Wood County Sentinel..  The newspaper contained an article on the mechanical operation and digging of an oil well in Bradford, PA, and it speculated about the possibility of the existence of oil in Wood County.  Three years later this conjecture was confirmed.  On Dec. 13, 1886, a crew of men under the direction of William Carothers, were drilling for oil on the Dave Fulton Farm, near North Baltimore.  They had been hired by Vandergrift and McDonald, who were local gas prospectors.   By late in the afternoon the drillers were becoming doubtful about the prospects of finding gas or oil.  They had drilled 1,700 feet below the surface into the Trenton rock and as evening approached, they were preparing to put a halt to the operation.

At about 5 p.m., they felt a rumble from deep within the ground.  Quickly the men put out the fire beneath the boiler and withdrew from the field.  The hollow roar steadily increased and then exploded.  Up from the earth shot a powerful jet of thick crude oil which gushed eighty-five feet over the derrick.

Fearing the discovery of oil might cause a rush, the owners wanted to cap it and keep their discovery a secret.  They had planned to purchase all of the surrounding land in order to secure a monopoly on the oil fields, but the oil flow was so continuous that the well was not even approachable for four days, by which time news had spread.  The oil gushed for almost a week drenching everything in sight.  The oil in the pasture was described to be knee deep, and one estimate stated that at least 400 barrels of oil were running on the ground. 

This was the first important well drilled in Wood County, and it was recognized as a 600 barrel well.  A little over two months later, the Henning well came in at  2,000 barrels. Then, five months later, the Slaughterbeck well, flowed 5,000 barrels.  And then in September, 1887, the Ducat, the Potter, and the Foltz wells came in, all gushing more than 10,000 barrels a day.  The headline of a local newspaper read:  “The Oil Boom May Be Here to Stay.” 

Oil fever swept like wildfire throughout the area.  Soon giant oil derricks rose out of the earth all over Wood County.   The area from just south of Haskins all the way through Findlay and down to Lima was found to be one of the biggest oil fields of all time.  Wood County was considered to be the “King Bee,” producing more gushers and oil than any other county in the state; indeed, the nation.  From 1886 to 1900, more than 14,000 wells were drilled in Wood County.  Most of these were in the southern part of the county in Bloom, Portage, Liberty and Henry townships.  Land that had previously been quite affordable suddenly became priceless - almost overnight.

Wood County’s population increased by nearly 20,000 people between 1880 and 1900.  More than half of the oil producers who came to the vicinity were from Pennsylvania.  These were men who had many years of experience working in the Pennsylvania fields.  Many became permanent residents, bringing with them their families, businesses and personal possessions.  The Toledo, Bowling Green and Southern Street Car Line was constantly crammed with people going to the fields.  The line went from Toledo to Lima through Bowling Green, Cygnet, North Baltimore and Findlay, with a spur running to Jerry City, all of which were deep in the heart of oil territory.

The Village of Cygnet was recognized as the leader in the production of Wood County’s oil.  Originally named Pleasant View, it was a very small farm neighborhood consisting of only three or four houses before the boom.  When oil was discovered, the land was quickly bought up by a Toledo real estate firm who changed the name of the town to Cygnet.  The firm then resold the land at a large profit with the onset of the boom.  The village was soon transformed into a bustling town of more than 3,000 people many of whom lived in oil soaked houses that were built in a day for about $100.  The town had a reputation of being “wild,” boasting a total of thirteen saloons.  Local boarding houses were always filled to maximum capacity.  They were called “Hot Beds” by the oilers because, upon returning from a long shift, an oiler would find his bed still warm from his partner who had gone to work on the opposite shift.  They were rather expensive, with meals costing as much as $2.50, a high sum which enabled the innkeeper to share in the oil riches.

Fires were commonplace during the oil days.  If a well exploded, it could easily destroy an entire neighborhood.  Most notable among the oil explosions was one which took place on Sept. 8, 1897, at a derrick in the middle of Cygnet.  The well had just been drilled and people had gathered in expectation of a gusher.  The well did indeed gush, but for some reason, no one had put out the fire under the boiler which powered the rig.  The oil caught fire and spread.  Soon it reached a wagon containing fifty-two quarts of nitroglycerin, which was commonly used to “shoot” or open up wells, and ignited it.  The resulting explosion killed six people, destroyed all the buildings in the town square, and was said to have “shaken the entire county.”

By September, 1896, there was about 5,500 oil wells in operation within the county.  The production of Wood County up to that date was given at 50 million barrels.  Ohio produced about one third of all of the crude oil in the nation in the 1880s, the main source being Northwestern Ohio.  With all of this going for her, Wood County attracted a good deal of business.   The National Transit or Standard Line Co. in the eastern United States saw the need of a pipeline to convey the oil to the refineries, so it created the Buckeye Pipe Line Co., which began construction of the first 30,000-barrel steel tank to hold oil at Lima on May 6, 1887.  Within a week it had already begun to receive oil for storage.

With the emergence of Wood County as the leader in the production of oil, it became increasingly apparent that it was in great need of a similar facility.  So shortly thereafter, a similar tank was constructed about ten miles south of Bowling Green on the T & OC Railroad.  By July, 1888, Wood County was also served by a 306-mile pipeline which ran from Cygnet to South Chicago.  The oil in the pipe moved at a rate of about one mile per hour, and when filled, the pipe held 65,000 barrels of oil.  Later, two other lines were laid east to Cleveland, and then on to Olean, New York.

Boom times spawned the creation of several new and important businesses including the Ohio Oil Company.  Originally made up of fourteen small producers in the Trenton-Limestone Fields of Northwest Ohio, the group banded together because, with over-drilling driving the price of oil down to fifteen cents a barrel and the high sulfur content of the oil making it poor in quality to begin with, they were teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.  So, they formed the O.O.C. on Aug. 1, 1887.  Standard Oil, which had previously kept out of the producing end of the oil business, acquired the company in 1889.  During the next twenty-two years, Ohio Oil expanded westward into Indiana and Illinois.  Soon, it became the largest oil producer in the state of Illinois.  In 1906 the company started pipelining, and within two years it operated a line that stretched all the way from the Mississippi River to the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border, making Ohio Oil one of the first long-distance transporters of oil by pipeline.  In 1911 the government dissolved Standard Oil under the Sherman Act, and Ohio Oil became separate and independent again.  From here it went on to become a major oil company in Ohio and in the nation, and later came to control such well-know gasoline lines as Marathon and Speedway.

At the same time oil refineries began showing up on the fields themselves.  Soon Wood County had the world’s largest pumping station located in Cygnet.  At Gallatea, east of North Baltimore, Standard Oil created a secret refinery known as the Manhattan Oil Company.  The refinery itself wasn’t much of a secret as it occupied about sixty acres of land containing dozens of buildings, two large reservoirs, numerous railroad sidings, with its own tank cars – and employed over six hundred workers who lived in a once thriving town.  The only thing secret about it was that Standard owned it and this was hidden through stock owned by by an English syndicate.

The arrival of all of this industry brought much affluence to the region.  By 1903 Bowling Green had its own telephone system, called the Oil Belt Telephone Co.  Its directory boasted 360 listings.  One Wood County official claimed that oil producers increased the value on tax duplicates more than $5 million.  Another local history source stated:  “...the capital invested in the storage and transportation of oil from Wood county is not less than $10 million.”  The prosperity of that time is reflected in the beautiful architecture found in Bowling Green, the county seat.  The buildings along the downtown’s turn-of-the-century main street represent the elite of the Victorian, Romanesque and Italianate structures of the time.  But the most significant and beautiful example is the magnificent county court house.  Erected in 1896 at the cost of $225,746.84, paid almost entirely in oil revenues, it is one of the best examples of Richardsonian Romanesque architectural designs in the country.

But soon after the turn of the century production slowly began to diminish.  The excitement died down in 1901 when the news of about Spindletop reached Ohio – a phenomenal gusher near Beaumont, Texas that came roaring in at 100,000 barrels a day.  The potential of the Texas fields was soon realized and the oilers headed south with the same excitement that previously brought them to northwest Ohio. The number of wells in Wood County decreased, mostly due to lack of maintenance or the fact that many of the wells began to run dry (the age of the wells had a great effect on production since many of the older wells found themselves declining in production).  Additionally, the quality of Trenton crude was just not as good as that of oil produced elsewhere.  During the boom, the quality of Northwestern Ohio oil was second only to that of Pennsylvania.  But by 1917, Ohio had dropped out of the top four oil producers.  In 1936 Ohio was producing only one forty-fifth of the nation’s oil, a far cry from the days when it was the leading producer in the country.

It is interesting to note that during the decade of the 1980s, Ohio ranked fifth among the fifty states in the number of gas and oil wells drilled annually.  About 97% of these wells were classified as “producers.”  Today, most Ohio wells average less than two barrels a day and as such, they are known as “stripper wells.”  The rapid and uncontrolled depletion of the gas and oil destroyed the field’s pressure before all of the oil was taken out.  It is estimated that more than half of it is still down there with no feasible way yet known of how to get it out.

Today, there are about 100 oil wells that continue to be pumped in Wood County.  More recently, there has been much concern about the proper plugging of abandoned wells.  As old well casings deteriorate, oil seeps into adjacent ponds, ditches and ground water.  The proper procedure for plugging abandoned wells often means re-drilling the well and then filling the casing with concrete – a time consuming and expensive process.
At this time, the seriousness of this problem is unknown.  What is known is that northwest Ohio is covered by literally thousands of old oil wells.
 
The Oil Boom contributed greatly to the economic growth of the nation during the 1890s, and it laid the foundations of and significantly contributed to the prosperity and growth of Wood County.   It gave to the area a rich and deep history that provides a common heritage that is still tangible today.  The Wood County Historical Center is keeping that history alive with the creation of a full scale operational Oil Boom Exhibit.  The “Power” Building houses an operational gas engine, (manufactured by the Acme Sucker Rod Co. of Toledo, ca. 1888) and the turntable and gear works were produced by the A-B Company of Findlay.  Shackle rods extend through the building’s walls connecting the pump jacks to the turntable. 

Written by Randy Brown, Curator, Wood County Historical Center.