The Beginning of the Oil Boom in Washington County,
Oklahoma
NELLIE JOHNSTONE NUMBER ONE
|
|
|
|
| Jacob Bartles | George B. Keeler | William Johnstone | Nellie Johnstone #1 |
April 1897 marked the beginning of Oklahoma's petroleum industry when the first commercial oil well was drilled in Indian Territory (I.T.). George B. Keeler, who had come to I.T. in 1871 to work at Chouteau's trading post near the Osage Indian Agency, noticed oil seeping from the ground on the south bank of the Caney River near Bartlesville in 1875. After Keeler and William Johnstone opened a trading post on the south bank, they decided to have a well drilled to boost economic conditions in the area. They and another early settler, Frank Overlees, obtained a lease from the Cherokee Nation and hired the Cudahy Oil Company to drill the well.
In 1894 Michael Cudahy obtained a two-hundred-thousand-acre lease in the Creek Nation and drilled several wells. One was a dry hole near Red Fork. In 1896 Cudahy contracted with George Keeler, William Johnstone, Frank M. Overlees, and several other prominent Cherokees to drill on the banks of the Caney River just north of downtown Bartlesville. It was the winter of 1896 97, and the weather was bitterly cold. Nonetheless, Cudahy ordered his drillers, A. P. McBride and C. L. Broom, to haul his Red Fork rig to Bartlesville. The trip took almost three weeks as the oilmen were forced to cut a path through the ice covering the Arkansas River so the wagons could ford the waterway, but by late January 1897 they were ready to start drilling. At 3:00 p.m. on April 15, 1897, Jennie Cass dropped an explosive charge down the well's hole and brought in the state's first commercially successful oil well, the Nellie Johnstone Number One, at fifty barrels per day. Unfortunately, the Nellie Johnstone's output quickly swamped the local market, and there was no available means for shipping the crude to the nearest refinery at Neodesha, Kansas. As a result, the well was capped.
Because the Nellie Johnstone had not been properly sealed, a series of leaks developed. A trickle of oil eventually collected in the sump and then overflowed in a small rivulet into the Caney River. Later, a group of children was ice-skating on the river and built a bonfire to keep warm. Flames ignited the rivulet of oil and spread to the Nellie Johnstone, destroying it. Two years later, in the summer of 1899 the Kansas, Oklahoma Central and Southwestern Railway (later the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway) reached Bartlesville and offered rail service to Neodesha. With the ability to transport the crude to market, oilmen flocked to Bartlesville, turning it into a major oil-boom town overnight and touching off one of the greatest rushes to riches in the American West the Oklahoma oil boom era.
The well produced over 100,000 barrels of crude oil before it was plugged in 1948. The success of the Nellie Johnstone stimulated exploration and drilling on the nearby Osage lands. In addition, brothers Frank and L. E. (Lee Eldas) Phillips, attracted by the oil boom, moved from Iowa to Bartlesville in 1904 and established Phillips Petroleum Company.
Nellie Johnstone Cannon, a descendant of
Delaware Chief Charles Journeycake, was allotted the land
on which the well was
dug. In 1917 she sold the land to
the city of Bartlesville, and a redwood
replica of the
derrick was built in Johnstone Park.