As demand for petroleum grew during World War I, the earth science for finding oil and natural gas reserves remained obscure until a small group of geologists in 1917 organized what became the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).

AAPG began as the Southwestern Association of Petroleum Geologists in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after about 90 geologists gathered at Henry Kendall College, now Tulsa University. They formed their professional association on February 10, 1917, “to which only reputable and recognized petroleum geologists are admitted.”

AAPG began by establishing a professional business code for its members.

Rapidly multiplying mechanized technologies of the “Great War” brought desperation to finding and producing vast supplies of oil. The United States entered World War I two months after AAPG’s founding.

An October 1917 giant oilfield discovery at Ranger, Texas, inspired a British War Cabinet member to declare, “The Allied cause floated to victory upon a wave of oil.”

Rock Hounds

In January 1918, the AAPG convention of in Oklahoma City reported 167 active members and 17 associate members. After adopting its present name one year after organizing at Henry Kendall College, the group issued its first technical bulletin, using papers and presentations delivered at the 1917 Tulsa meeting.

The professional “rock hounds” produced a mission statement that included promoting the science of geology, especially relating to oil and natural gas. The geologists also committed to encouraging “technology improvements in the methods of exploring for and exploiting these substances.”

AAPG was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at Henry Kendall College — today’s Tulsa University.

AAPG also began publishing a bimonthly journal that remains among the most respected in the industry. The peer-reviewed Bulletin included papers written by leading geologists of the day.

With a subscription price of five dollars, the journal was distributed to members, university libraries, and other industry professionals.

Finding Faults and Anticlines

By 1920, one petroleum trade magazine — after complaining of the industry’s lack of skilled geologists — noted the “Association Grows in Membership and Influence; Combats the Fakers.”

The article praised AAPG professionalism and warned of “the large number of unscrupulous and inadequately prepared men who are attempting to do geological work.”

Similarly, the Oil Trade Journal praised AAPG for its commitment “to censor the great mass of inadequately prepared and sometimes unscrupulous reports on geological problems, which are wholly misleading to the industry.”

Perhaps the best known such fabrication is related to the men behind the 1930 East Texas oilfield discovery — a report entitled “Geological, Topographical And Petroliferous Survey, Portion of Rusk County, Texas, Made for C.M. Joiner by A.D. Lloyd, Geologist And Petroleum Engineer.”

Using very scientific terminology, A.D. Lloyd’s document described Rusk County geology — its anticlines, faults, and a salt dome — all features associated with substantial oil deposits…and all completely fictitious. 

The fabrications nevertheless attracted investors, allowing Joiner and “Doc” Lloyd to drill a well that uncovered a massive oil field, still the largest conventional oil reservoir in the lower 48 states.

AAPG’s peer-reviewed journal first appeared in 1918, one year after the association’s first meeting in Tulsa.

Equally imaginative science came from Lloyd’s earlier descriptions of the “Yegua and Cook Mountain” formations and the thousands of seismographic registrations he ostensibly recorded. Lloyd, a former patent medicine salesman, and other self-proclaimed geologists were the antithesis of the AAPG professional ethic.

In 1945, AAPG formed a “Committee on Boy Scout Literature” to assist the Boy Scouts of America in updating requirements for the “mining” badge, which had been awarded since 1911 (learn more in Merit Badge for Geology).

By 1953, AAPG membership had grown to more than 10,000, and a permanent headquarters building opened in Tulsa. The association’s 2022 membership included about 40,000 members in 129 countries in the upstream energy industry, “who collaborate — and compete — to provide the means for humankind to thrive.”

The world’s largest professional geological society, a nonprofit organization, maintains a membership code that assures integrity, business ethics, personal honor, and professional conduct. Since 1917, AAPG has helped advance the science of geology, “especially as it relates to petroleum, natural gas, other subsurface fluids, and mineral resources.”

Petroleum Historians

Longtime AAPG member Ray Sorenson, a Tulsa-based consulting geologist, has made numerous presentations about the history of petroleum. After publishing papers in leading academic journals, he adapted many of his contributions for the association’s 2007 Discovery Series, “First Impressions: Petroleum Geology at the Dawn of the North American Oil Industry.”  

Further, Sorenson continued to research and collect a vast amount of material documenting the earliest signs of oil — worldwide references to hydrocarbons earlier than the 1859 first U.S. oil well drilled by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania.

Drake expert and geologist and historian William Brice, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, in 2009 published Myth, Legend, Reality – Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry. His 661-page epic was researched and written as part of the U.S. petroleum industry’s 150th anniversary (learn more in Edwin Drake and his Oil Well),

As part of AAPG’s 2017 centennial events, geologist Robbie Rice Gries published Anomalies: Pioneering Women in Petroleum Geology 1917-2017. Researched with help from AAPG volunteers, her 405-page book includes contributors’ personal stories, written correspondence, and photographs dating back to the early 1900s.

The stories in Gries’ book should be read by every petroleum geologist, geophysicist, and petroleum engineer, according to independent producer Marlan Downey, founder of Roxanna Oil Company. “Partly for the pleasure of the sprightly told adventures, partly for a sense of history, and, significantly, because it engenders a proper respect towards all women professionals, forging their unique way in a ‘man’s world.’”  

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Recommended Reading: Anomalies: Pioneering Women in Petroleum Geology 1917-2017 (2017); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Myth, Legend, Reality – Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991); The Birth of the Oil Industry (1936). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an annual supporter to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, this week in oil and gas history, and expand historical research. Please contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “AAPG – Geology Pros since 1917.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL:https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/aapg-geology-pros-since-1917. Last Updated: February 7, 2026. Original Published Date: April 29, 2014.

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Travelers on I-20 in West Texas should not miss the petroleum museum at Monahans southwest of Odessa and Midland. Not just a collection of Permian Basin artifacts, the Million Barrel Museum’s biggest attraction is a former experimental oil tank the size of three football fields.

The Permian Basin once was called a “petroleum graveyard” — until a series of oilfield discoveries beginning in 1920 brought exploration companies to the vast, arid region. Completed near Big Lake in 1923, the Santa Rita No. 1 well alone would endow the University of Texas with millions of dollars.

However, as the giant basin’s oilfield discoveries grew, the lack of infrastructure for storing and transporting growing volumes of oil proved to be an equally big problem.

The Million Barrel Museum’s 525-foot by 422-foot main attraction, originally built to store Permian Basin oil in 1928, became a water park for one day in 1958. Photo courtesy newswest9.com 2024 video, “Exploring Million Barrel Tank and its Museum of Memories.”

“There were great oil discoveries around 1926 and few places to put the oil. No pipelines or tanks,” explained Elizabeth Heath, chairwoman of the Ward County Historical Commission, in 2010.

A single well in the Hendricks field could produce 500 barrels of oil a day. “Unfortunately, the Roxana Petroleum Company — later absorbed by Shell Oil — did not have a pipeline to get all that oil to a refinery,” added journalist Mike Cox in his 2006 “Texas Tales” column. To solve the problem, the company decided to build a giant concrete reservoir.

Paved with cement, the experimental 35-foot-deep tank covers eight acres. It once included a domed roof of California redwood and a network of lightning rods. Photo courtesy Top of Texas Gazette.

Using mule-drawn equipment, workers completed an excavation and laid wire mesh over the packed earth, Cox explained. Contractors then started pouring tons of concrete.

The museum in Monahans, Texas, tells the story of how a lack of pipelines during 1920s West Texas oil discoveries led to construction of the massive tank. Photo courtesy Texas Historical Commission.

“By late April 1928 workers hammered away at a wooden cover for the colossal tank, placing creosote-soaked support timbers at 14-foot intervals across the sprawling reservoir floor,” Cox reported. The timbers supported a domed redwood roof covered with tar paper. Completion of the walls, pillars, and roof took just three months because construction took place 24 hours a day.

“When Roxana injected a million barrels of oil into the tank, the weight bearing down on the concrete amounted to four hundred million pounds of pressure,” Cox noted. “One thing Roxana’s engineers forgot to take into consideration was the weight of crude.” One gallon of oil weighs nearly eight pounds.

Founded in 1881, Monahans incorporated two years after oil was discovered in 1926.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” added Ward County historian Elizabeth Heath. She said a Monahans High School math teacher measured the dimensions of the storage tank at 525 feet by 422 feet. Its concrete-covered earthen walls rose 30 feet tall with a slope of 45 degrees. When finished, problems quickly emerged. 

“It didn’t work. It leaked from too many places, and the company couldn’t seal it properly,” Heath explained. “When workers poured the cement, they did it in sections, so it made seams all around. You didn’t have caulking like we have today, so oil seeped into the sand.”

Artist’s conception of the million-barrel reservoir with timbers at 14-foot intervals supporting a redwood roof. Courtesy Ward County Historical Commission.

Although the Monahans oil storage facility soon became known as the “million barrel reservoir,” engineers had designed it to hold “a staggering five million barrels of oil,” Cox claimed. It was filled with one million barrels just once.

Despite the tank’s domed, California redwood roof — which included a network of lightning rods — oil also began to evaporate. According to Heath, Shell Oil pumped out the oil and dismantled the wooden structures soon after the start of the Great Depression. Much of the tank’s redwood lumber reportedly ended up in Monahans homes and businesses.

Empty and abandoned, the tank gaped on Monahans’ east side for decades.

Water Park for a Day

Then in 1954, Wayne and Amalie Long purchased the concrete reservoir from Shell. The entrepreneurial Monahans couple had an idea. The Longs believed in the tank’s potential as a community attraction — a water park. To fill the tank, Wayne Long pumped water from wells he drilled nearby.

About 35 miles west of Odessa, Texas, the Million Barrel Museum features railroad memorabilia in addition to artifacts from the surrounding oilfields.

Workers constructed a boat ramp from an opening oil company engineers had carved to remove the interior pillars and the roof. On opening day, October 5, 1958, the one-of-a-kind, man-made lake, which the Longs named “Melody Park,” attracted swimmers, boaters, skiers, and anglers. A professional ski team from Austin put on an exhibition.

Leaks at the seams forced the water park to close after just one day.

Ward County’s Oil Museum

A 2006 letter by Wallace Dickey Jr., nephew of the Longs, offered a first-hand account of what happened next. “I was there in the summer of 1958, when I was in high school, when they tried to turn it into a stock car racetrack after it would not hold water long enough for fishing and swimming,” Dickey explained. The reservoir was no more. 

After his uncle died in 1980, his aunt eventually donated it to Ward County. Left unattended for a few years, Monahans High School students enjoyed visiting the site at night, some adding graffiti to the concrete.

A new chance for life arrived in 1986, when Amalie Long donated the structure and the more than 14 acres surrounding it to the Ward County Historical Commission.

The museum includes a hotel once at the terminus of Monahans-Ft. Stockton Stage Line.

“Her husband wanted it to be a community project, something we could work on for local history,” Heath noted. The community rallied behind the idea of creating a museum. With the help of local teachers and historians, construction of the Million Barrel Museum began in 1986 as part of the Ward County sesquicentennial.

The museum opened with much fanfare on May 30, 1987.

Geologist’s House 

By the early 2000s, the museum grounds included the Holman House, carefully moved from west Monahans, farming equipment, a railroad caboose and memorabilia – and oilfield artifacts from the surrounding oilfields. The Holman House, built in 1909, became a hotel and, for a time, a hospital.

Eugene Holman, who grew up in Monahans, was chief geologist for Humble Oil Company in 1926. As president of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, he appeared on the cover of TIME, which proclaimed the Monahanian its International Oilman of 1947.

In 1960, the American Petroleum Institute awarded Holman the API gold medal of distinguished achievement, which “recognizes exceptional leadership and service to the natural gas and oil industry, the communities in which the industry operates, and the broader nation.”

API’s first gold medal was awarded in 1946 to Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company.

Eugene Holman, who grew up in Monahans, was president of Standard Oil of New Jersey when TIME featured him in 1947.

A section of the tank’s wall is now the Meadows Amphitheater and includes a rebuilt roof similar to the original. The imposing concrete walls have witnessed class reunions, craft shows, and other community events, including an annual Fajita Cook-off and Tejano Dance held in May. The former oil tank also has hosted rock concerts. 

On the first weekend of December, the Million Barrel Museum has hosted a Christmas lighting and holiday activities. It is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays in the summer. Admission is free.

Million Barrel Timeline

1923 – The Santa Rita No. 1 uncovers the Big Lake oilfield on land owned by the University of Texas. The discovery led to one of the largest oil booms in the United States. Learn more in Santa Rita taps Permian Basin.

1926-1928 – More discoveries in Ward and Winkler counties (notably the Hendricks oilfield) increase oil production. Storage problems result from a lack of pipelines to reach refineries. In 90 days a 179,500-square-foot concrete oil tank is built in Monahans.

Stretching across the Texas-New Mexico border, Monahans Sandhills State Park attracts tourists to its 200 miles of sand dunes with 70-foot mounds. Photo courtesy Michael Murphy.

1930 – Shell Oil Company abandons use of the tank because of leaks, evaporation – and higher taxes on stored oil.

1935 – Shell Oil removes the roof, pillars, and superstructure.

1940s – The tank becomes a parade ground. Former Monahans resident Eugene Holman is president of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

1950s – Dancers and spectators gather in the tank for square dancing and community events.

1954 – Monahan residents Wayne and Amalie Long purchase the tank. They consider its potential for the community.

1958 – Wayne Long uses water pumped from wells he drilled to create a water park. Professional water skiers from Austin put on a show at the grand opening, October 5. “Melody Park” closes the next day because of leaks.

1960s – 1970s The abandoned tank remains a community landmark — and a site for high school graffiti artists.

1986 – In honor of her late husband, Amalie Long donates the tank and surrounding 14.5 acres to the Ward County Historical Commission. As a class project, local teacher Deolece Parmalee encouraged her students to research the tank’s history and build a scale model.

May 30, 1987 – Grand opening of the Million Barrel Museum. The entrance, funded by the Sid Richardson Foundation, includes two pillars of red sandstone, the same used to build the first Ward County courthouse. Brick paving is from an old carbon black plant. A segment of the tank  was later transformed into a 400-seat amphitheater.

2004 Historic Marker

On June 26, 2004, the Texas Historical Commission dedicated a the Million Barrel Tank historic marker at 400 Museum Boulevard in Monahans.

A “Million Barrel Tank” marker was dedicated in 2004. Photo courtesy the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI).

The marker reads: A project of the Shell Oil Company, the construction of this oil storage tank in 1928 was the result of an oil boom in the area. Built to accommodate crude oil until it could be shipped to refineries, the tank was constructed by crews working on a 24-hour schedule using hand operated and horse-drawn equipment. Covering eight acres of land, the tank was able to hold over one million barrels of oil. It was filled to capacity only once. Efforts to convert it into a water-filled recreation center in the 1950s were unsuccessful, and it became a museum in 1986.

It Came from Outer Space

East of the Monahans Sandhills State Park is another attraction. Not to be overlooked by I-20 travelers, the outdoor exhibit rivals the Million Barrel Museum’s in size, but it has an alien origin.

The Odessa Meteor Crater Museum, 30 miles from Monahans, educates visitors about an eroding impact crater 550 feet across and 15 feet deep. Discovered in 1926 and still visible despite wind and rain erosion, the Permian Basin meteor impact site is a national landmark, earning that distinction from the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1965.

“Many residents of Odessa claim they never knew it was in their area, even if they were born and raised here,” notes the museum. which opened in 2002. The crater is ranked 27th out of the nation’s 29 impact craters in size — including one in Oklahoma that in 1991 led to an oilfield discovery that attracted global attention (see Ames Astrobleme Museum).

More oil-patch history stops for Texas I-20 travelers can be found, beginning with Midland’s Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025. Traveling eastward brings still more oil history, including the town of Cisco (see Oil Boom brings First Hilton Hotel) and a museum preserving the 1917 “Roaring Ranger” oilfield.

Petroleum history exhibits continue at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, and in Dallas, where the Perot Museum of Nature and Science opened in 2012 with oil and gas exhibits.

Finally, another I-20 exit east of Dallas leads to the Van Area Oil and Historical Museum in an old warehouse built in 1930 by the Pure Oil Company. Fifty miles farther, travelers can learn the history of the Great Depression’s “Black Giant” oilfield at the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore.

No matter which U.S. interstate traveled, there’s often a petroleum museum nearby.

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Recommended Reading: Chronicles of an Oil Boom: Unlocking the Permian Basin (2014). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information: Article Title: “Million Barrel Museum.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/monahans-oil-museum. Last Updated: September 28, 2025. Original Published Date: May 31, 2013.

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About 450 million years ago, a meteor 1,000 feet wide struck north-central Oklahoma, creating an impact crater — an astrobleme — more than eight miles wide. 

The small town of Ames (population 190 in 2024) has claimed the Paleozoic Era crater as its own with an annual celebration. The impact sight also marks a significant milestone in the geological knowledge of the global petroleum industry.

The 1991 discovery of oil at Oklahoma’s Ames Crater impact site led to five other oil-producing craters in the United States.

Meteorite Crater

As•tro•bleme (noun) – A depression, usually circular, on the surface of the Earth that is caused by the impact of a meteorite — astro- + Greek blçma “wound from a missile.”

Located about 20 miles southwest of Enid, the Ames astrobleme is buried by about 9,000 feet of sediment, making it barely visible on the surface. The impact crater remained unrecognized until 1991, when a prolific oilfield was discovered by Continental Oil Company.

On August 18, 2007, Ames citizens celebrated the historic discovery by opening of their Ames Astrobleme Museum, which describes the small meteor’s large impact.

A meteorite hit Oklahoma 450 million years ago, producing a crater thousands of feet deep and eight miles wide. Image courtesy Judson Ahern, University of Oklahoma.

The museum design includes an open-ended, A-frame structure that requires no staff, according to independent producer Llewellyn “Lew” O. Ward, III (1930 – 2016), founder of Ward Petroleum in Enid. He was among those who drilled successfully in a region known as the Sooner Trend in the early 1960s.

A former chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), Ward helped establish the Ames museum — and also was instrumental in building a new heritage center in Enid. “The Ames Astrobleme is one of the most remarkable and studied geological features in the world because of its economic significance,” Ward noted in 2007.

The small museum remains open 24 hours. It features high-tech, all-weather video panels on its north and south walls. The panels describe the crater’s formation…and its geological significance, which was revealed by a leading independent producer in the early 1990s.

The Ames Astrobleme Museum features all-weather automated video panels to educate visitors. Photo by Bruce Wells.

One of the videos includes comments from the man who defied the experts and discovered oil in the crater – Enid independent producer Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, and a friend of Ward.

Both Hamm and Ward were awarded the petroleum industry’s Chief Roughneck Award (Ward in 1999 and Hamm in 2016), presented since 1955 at IPAA meetings. 

Impact of Harold Hamm

Many geologists had believed impact craters unlikely locations for petroleum. Hamm, who had drilled wells in the Ames area since the early 1960s, thought otherwise. Although wells had been drilled nearby, no one had attempted to reach deep into the crater.

The man who found oil in the Ames crater, Harold Hamm (center) spoke at the Astrobleme Museum’s opening in August 1992. Photo courtesy Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.

In 1991, a geologist at Continental Resources found something unusual in the site, so the company drilled a deeper than the normal well – about 10,000 feet – and struck oil. Initial production from this first well was about 200 barrels a day. 

According to the American Association of Professional Geologists (AAPG), the potential for petroleum production from impact craters “seized the attention of the Oklahoma oil industry in the early 1990s. Several new, deep wells in the Sooner Trend produced exceptional amounts of oil and gas.”

Since the historic Continental Resources 1991 oil discovery, many more wells have been completed in the Ames astrobleme, some wells producing more than a million barrels of oil. In 1994, the combined flow from three of the company’s wells averaged more than 2,000 barrels of oil and 730,000 cubic feet of gas per day.

By the end of 2006, cumulative production at the Ames astrobleme in Major County showed oil production from the Arbuckle geologic formation alone approached 11 million barrels, noted Parwest Land Exploration Inc. in 2007.

The crater “is one of the most remarkable and studied geological features in the world because of its economic significance.” Image courtesy Judson Ahern, University of Oklahoma.

The Ames impact site — one of only six producing craters in the United States — was among the largest oil-bearing craters, yielding 17.4 million barrels of oil and 79.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas by 2007. Ultimate recoverable reserves were estimated at 25 million barrels of oil and 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

As the primary developer of the Ames Astrobleme Museum, Hamm spoke at the August 18, 2007, dedication ceremony during the annual Ames Day, a fundraising event for the local volunteer fire department.

The museum dedication ceremony included Bert Mackie, vice chairman of Security National Bank, who grew up in Ames and was the first to advocate promoting the crater’s historical significance. Mackie introduced Charles Mankin, director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), who described the crater’s significance for the citizens of Ames, geologists, and worldwide petroleum history.

Editor’s Note – Article adapted from stories in the Enid News & Eagle in 2007, and the AAPG Explorer, March 2002. Lew Ward, an early supporter of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society, also led the campaign to establish in Enid the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center, which opened in 2011. 

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Recommended Reading: Groundbreakers: The Story of Oilfield Technology and the People Who Made it Happen (2015); Oil in Oklahoma (1976); Oil and Gas In Oklahoma: Petroleum Geology In Oklahoma (2013); The Oklahoma Petroleum Industry (1980). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information –Article Title: “Ames Astrobleme Museum.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/ames-astrobleme-oil-museum. Last Updated: August 12, 2025. Original Published Date: December 1, 2007.

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A restored 1885 mercantile building downtown, the Luling Oil Museum (formerly the Central Texas Oil Patch Museum) preserves drilling and production equipment from the Luling oilfield of the 1920s. Exhibits educate visitors about the modern petroleum industry.

Known for its tasty BBQ ribs, watermelon seed-spitting contest, and colorfully decorated oil pump jacks, Luling became a petroleum boom town in 1922, when leading citizen Edgar B. Davis discovered a giant oilfield. The oil museum gives little credence to local stories of the giant field being discovered thanks to a famous psychic’s “reading.” 

Exhibits in an 1885 Luling mercantile store educate visitors about a 1922 oilfield discovery and the modern petroleum industry. Photo courtesy Luling Oil Museum.

Luling’s oilfield discovery northeast of San Antonio and south of Austin allowed the small town to join recent oil booms already making headlines to the north in Ranger (1917) and Burkburnett (1918). At its peak in 1924, the Luling field had about 400 wells producing more than 11 million barrels of oil. 

Years later, new technologies like horizontal drilling helped reinvigorate the central Texas oil patch, according to Carol Voight, a director of the Luling Oil Museum interviewed by an Austin TV news reporter in 2013. 

The city of Luling, Texas, has hosted a watermelon festival every June since 1954.

The oil museum, “shows the contrast of the tools and technology of the past with those utilized in the oil industry today,” Voight explained. Exhibits trace the development of the oil industry — from the first U.S. oil well in 1859 in Pennsylvania to the social and economic impact on central Texas.

Downtown Oil Museum

Housed in the 1885 Walker Brothers mercantile store and renovated several times, the Luling Oil Museum building once sold “everything from nails and hammers to ladies’ shoes, to toys,” reported the Lockhart Post-Register in a 2021 article about the renovation. “It was the oldest continually operating mercantile store in Texas until it closed in 1984.” 

After its founding in 1990, the museum purchased the building four years later to showcase what made Luling one of the earliest and wildest boom towns in Texas. Renovations have incorporated new heating, ventilation, and air conditioning powered by geothermal wells. Exhibits continue to be added.

“We strive to demonstrate the struggles between the men and women who were the oilfield pioneers and to create a better understanding of the process of oil exploration and production,” noted one volunteer.

Edgar B. Davis in 1922 discovered an oilfield 12 miles long. Photo by Bruce Wells.

“Our collection includes a working model of a modern oil rig, pump jacks, the ‘Oil Tank Theater,’ and an excellent assortment of tools from each decade of the oil industry,” added Voight. To preserve the city’s petroleum heritage, locally donated artifacts show “not only how it was in the olden days,” but also “what can be accomplished with community efforts, cooperation, and creative programs.”

Museum staff in 2015 credited Luling area petroleum companies and service companies like Tracy Perryman, himself a multi-generation independent producer. One of the museum’s great outreach success stories was “Reflections of Texas Art Exhibit.”

Combined with the permanent oil exhibits, the art show attracted more school field trips from San Antonio. Another program was an annual quilt show, which brought another kind of audience into the museum’s oil exhibit spaces. Like many small oil and gas museums, preservation work depends on community support.

In a frugal approach to integrating downtown with outdoor exhibit space, the museum in 2012 partnered with Susan Rodiek, PhD, and graduate students of architectural design at Texas A&M University. Her student teams proposed designs to economically exploit existing facilities while providing new exhibit spaces. Students approached the project competitively, proclaiming the museum their “first client.”

Dad signs the museum guestbook for this visitor in 2015. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Museum Association Board Member Trey Bailey noted, “The preliminary designs that the Aggie students presented to us were fantastic. There were some terrific concepts, and the work was detailed and quite fascinating.”

Voight added, “They really got it – Luling’s rich heritage in oil, the E.B. Davis story and more. Being able to get this quality of work and vision is tremendous to our efforts to showcase some of the true historic gems of Luling. “Dr. Rodiek and her able team have again offered us the ability to get this project moving, especially considering the limited budget we have at this time.”

Once known as the toughest town in Texas, visitors today flock to Luling on the first Saturday in April for the annual Roughneck BBQ and Chili Cook-Off. — where they have found “Best ribs in the country,” according to Reader’s Digest. Crowds also gather every June for the renowned Watermelon Thump Festival and Seed-Spitting Contest.

Museum Board Member Trey Bailey and his children examine an oilfield map almost a century after the 1920s Luling boom. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The Guinness Book of World Records has documented Luling’s watermelon seed-spitting with a distance of 68 feet, 9 and 1/8 inches, set in 1989. The distance reportedly is still unbeaten. 

A Giant Oilfield

Although the Luling Oil Museum’s historic Walker Brothers building was a center for trading cotton, crude oil replaced cotton in Luling’s future thanks to Edgar B. Davis and his Rafael Rios No. 1 discovery well of August 9, 1922.

After drilling six consecutive dry holes near Luling, Davis’ heavily in debt United North & South Oil Company finally struck “black gold.” The wildcat well revealed an oilfield that proved to be 12 miles long and two miles wide.

After sampling “the best ribs in the country,” visitors to Luling, Texas, marvel at the many decorated pump jacks seen in its historic downtown.

Some people proclaimed that Davis, president of the exploration company, found the town’s oil-rich geologic formation after getting a psychic reading from clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. A geologist working for Davis figured out the oilfield’s likely location. 

“Many have called Edgar B. Davis eccentric, and perhaps it was his unconventional personality that led to several half-truths about a career that would be exceptional without embellishment,” noted Riley Froh in a 1979 article in the East Texas Historical Journal.

In the early summer of 1922, Davis was struggling financially when he located the oilfield’s discovery well five miles northwest of Luling. “Drilling on the recommendation of only one geologist and against the advice of several, Davis located his seventh well at random,” Froh reported.

Luling’s downtown museum preserves “the vibrant life and times of ‘the toughest town in Texas’ and the oil boom in the Central Texas oil patch.” Photo courtesy Luling Oil Museum.

By 1924, Luling was a top-producing oilfield in the United States, exceeding the early 1900s fields of southeastern Texas, including Sour Lake and even the world-famous Spindletop Hill.

Exhibits at the Luling Oil Museum focus on the real science behind the discovery, which resulted in the town’s population skyrocketing from less than 500 people to 5,000 people within months after the Rafael Rios No. 1 well.

Psychic Dreams of Oil

Biographers of the once-famous American psychic Edgar Cayce have noted that he found his own mysterious path into exploring the oil patch at Luling. In 1904, Cayce was a 27-year-old photographer when a local newspaper described his “wonderful power that is greatly puzzling physicians and scientific men.”

The Hopkinsville Kentuckian reported that Cayce – from a hypnotic state – could seemingly determine causes of ailments in patients he never met. By 1910, the New York Times proclaimed that “the medical fraternity of the whole country is taking a lively interest in the strange power possessed by Edgar Cayce to diagnose difficult diseases while in a semi-conscious state.”

As his reputation grew, Cayce expanded his photography business with the addition of adjacent rooms and a specially made couch so he could recline to render readings. He became known as “The Sleeping Prophet” while his readings expanded beyond medical diagnoses into reincarnation, dream interpretation, psychic phenomenon…and advising oilmen.

Edgar Cayce visited his drilling site in San Saba County, Texas, in 1921. The once-famous psychic’s abilities failed him searching for oil.

Sidney Kirkpatrick, author of Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet, explained that Cayce in 1919 provided detailed trance revelations to several oilmen probing the prolific Desdemona oilfield in Eastland County, Texas. The results reportedly inspired Cayce and several partners to form their own company.

In September 1920, Cayce became the clairvoyant partner of Cayce Petroleum Company. Guided by his own psychic readings, Cayce Petroleum Company leased some acreage around Luling. Not far away, Edgar B. Davis had drilled eight dry holes and nearly gone broke before completing the discovery well for Luling’s oilfield. 

But raising capital for Cayce Petroleum drilling proved difficult and eventually led to loss of the Luling leases. Cayce’s company tried again 150 miles north in San Saba County, Texas, and according to Kirkpatrick’s book, Cayce’s readings included “detailed descriptions given of the various rock geological formations that would be encountered as they drilled.”

Cayce Petroleum’s Rocky Pasture No. 1 well would drill beyond 1,650 feet in search of what Cayce described as a “Mother Pool,” capable of producing 40,000 barrels of oil a day. The psychic’s exploration company did not find any oil, ran out of money, and failed.

Salt Dome Faults

In a 2017 email to the American Oil & Gas Historical Society, long-time AOGHS member Dan Plazak noted Cayce spoke of finding oil at a salt dome at Luling. Petroleum and the geology of salt domes had been in the news since one had been revealed at Spindletop Hill in 1901, thanks to the persistence of Patillo Higgins, “Prophet of Spindletop.”

Plazak, a consulting geologist and engineer, reported that Cayce, “speaking in a trance, proclaimed that oil would be found at Luling associated with a salt dome. But there are no salt domes at Luling, and Cayce’s bad psychic advice could only have prevented Davis from finding oil.

“It was a geologist working for Davis who saw faulting in the outcrop and correctly predicted that the oil would be trapped behind the fault,” Plazak added. 

An associate of Cayce, David Kahn, later wrote Davis asking the successful oilman to give some of the Luling profits to Cayce, but Davis declined. “Edgar Davis was famously generous, but his refusal to reward Cayce indicates that he didn’t consider Cayce to have been of much help,” explained Plazak in an email to AOGHS.

However, the geologist added, Davis continued to consult Cayce concerning possible presidential ambitions — Davis had convinced himself he was destined for the White House.

Plazak explained that it was a geologist working for Davis who saw faulting in the outcrop, and correctly predicted that the oil would be trapped behind the fault.

After a few early wells, “Cayce’s oil-exploration readings were a complete bust, both for his own oil company and later for many other oil drillers, in locations all over the country.”

In his email, Plazak — a “geologist and researcher of finding oil with doodlebugs, dreams, and crystal balls” from Colorado — added there are still those today who believe in psychic advice who no doubt are “raising money on the internet to drill yet another dry hole in San Saba County.”

Despite the psychic’s exploration readings not working, investors apparently can still be tempted with promotions of Cayce’s ability to find a “mother pool of oil.” More interesting research from oil patch detective Dan Plazak can be found at Mining Swindles. 

A graduate of Michigan Tech and the Colorado School of Mining, Plazak in 2010 wrote “an entertaining and informative volume that delightfully investigates the history of mining frauds in the United States from the Civil War to World War I,” according to his publisher, the University of Utah Press.

“In his estimable work, A Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top, Dan Plazak strikes it rich with his examination of the old west’s most successful villains and their crimes.” — Utah Historical Quarterly

Modern “Crudoleum”

Today, the psychic legacy of failed oilman Edgar Cayce lives on at the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, Virginia, founded in 1931, and “the official world headquarters of the works of Edgar Cayce, considered America’s most documented psychic.”

A psychic’s creamy petroleum product “for healthy hair” sold today.

An invention from Cayce’s venture into the oil business remains on the market — his “pure crude oil” product he recommended as a first step toward replenishing healthy hair. Cayce invented a “pure crude oil” product he called Crudoleum, which is sold today as a cream, shampoo and conditioner. Baar Products Inc. of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, offers Crudoleum Pennsylvania Crude Oil Scalp Treatment.

Learn more U.S. petroleum history by visiting the Luling Oil Museum in the historic Walker Brothers building in downtown Luling.

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Recommended Reading:  Texas Art and a Wildcatter’s Dream: Edgar B. Davis and the San Antonio Art League (1998); Drilling Technology in Nontechnical Language (2012); Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet (2001); A Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top: Fraud and Deceit in the Golden Age of American Mining (2010). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support AOGHS to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Central Texas Oil Patch Museum.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/luling-oil-field. Last Updated: July 31, 2025. Original Published Date: June 21, 2015.

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The sticky black pools attracting tourists between Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles are natural asphalt, also known as bitumen. Although the repetitive tar pits’ name has stuck, the seeps are part of America’s oil history.

The La Brea site — discovered by a Spanish expedition on August 3, 1769 — originated from naturally produced California oil seeps found onshore and offshore.

Bitumen Swamp

“We proceeded for three hours on a good road; to the right were extensive swamps of bitumen, which is called chapapote,” noted Franciscan Friar Juan Crespi, who accompanied the expedition led by Gaspar de Portola.

Outside the Page Museum of Los Angeles, life-size replicas of several extinct mammals are featured at a bitumen pool at Rancho La Brea in Hancock Park. Photo courtesy Page Museum.

The friar reported in his diary that members of the expedition, “debated whether this substance, which flows melted from underneath the earth, could occasion so many earthquakes.”

Friar Crespi, the first person to use the term bitumen, described the intensely black pools where oil had been seeping through fissures in coastal plain sediments for more than 40,000 years, according to geologists. The occupation of California by the Spanish resulted in the name of Rancho La Brea, or “the tar ranch.”

The Southern California pools of petroleum would become a popular tourist attraction and home to a natural history museum. 

Pools form when crude oil seeps to the surface through fissures in the earth’s crust.

The Page Museum at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits west of downtown Los Angeles on Wilshire Boulevard is one of the world’s most famous sources of Ice Age fossils. Thanks its oil seeps, the museum has uncovered and preserved a diverse assemblage of extinct plants and animals.

Learn more Southern California petroleum history in Discovering Los Angeles Oilfields.

Asphalt Pits

Native Americans had used the substance for centuries to waterproof baskets and caulk canoes when, in 1828, Antonio de Rocha established Rancho La Brea via a land grant by the Mexican government.

Although commonly called the “tar pits,” the thick liquid that bubbles out of the ground at Rancho La Brea is asphalt. Tar is a by-product made by the distillation of woody materials, such as coal or peat, while asphalt is a naturally formed substance comprised of hydrocarbon molecules (see Asphalt Paves the Way).

While drilling for oil and mining for asphalt, the Hancock family discovered the scientific value of Rancho La Brea fossils.

After the American Civil War, Captain George Allan Hancock inherited 4,400 acres of land from the original Mexican land grant. The Hancock family owned and operated a refinery at Rancho La Brea between 1870 and 1890, commercially mining and exporting asphalt to local markets.

Rancho La Brea

Research has been conducted at Rancho La Brea since the early 1900s. The preservation work continues at the Page Museum.

A scientific publication first recorded fossils in 1875, after Professor William Denton explored the pits to evaluate oil prospects. He noted many fossilized animal remains.

Although Denton wrote about his discovery, it took several decades and another geologist interested in oil prospects, William W. Orcutt, to excavate and collect a substantial fossil collection — including the only complete skull of a saber-tooth tiger in the world.

A circa 1910 photograph of asphalt pools in what is today downtown Los Angeles.

“Asphalt is a superb preservative; small and delicate fossils, such as hollow bird bones or paper-thin exoskeletons of beetles are very well-preserved here,” observes the museum. “As a result, our collection of fossil birds is one of the world’s largest.”

In 1916, the Hancock family — wealthy with the onset of the oil boom in southern California — donated the 23 acres of Hancock Park to Los Angeles County to preserve and exhibit the fossils exhumed from Rancho La Brea.

Visit the Page Museum and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to learn more about Los Angeles as it was during the last Ice Age, when mammoths roamed the Los Angeles Basin.

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Recommended Reading: Monsters Of Old Los Angeles – The Prehistoric Animals Of The La Brea Tar Pits (2008); Los Angeles, California, Images of America (2001); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry (2016). Amazon purchases benefit the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter today and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: Discovering the La Brea “Tar Pits.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/discovering-oil-seeps. Last Updated: July 22, 2025. Original Published Date: April 29, 2014.

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Petroleum geologist and historian Raymond P. Sorenson has spent much of his professional career writing about the oil and natural gas exploration and production industry. 

Among Sorenson’s ongoing projects is documentation of the earliest signs of oil worldwide, including references to hydrocarbons long before the 1859 first U.S. oil well drilled 69.5 feet into the Venango sands of Pennsylvania.

About three centuries earlier, a Spanish expedition in the Gulf of Mexico led by Don Luis de Moscoso landed at the mouth of the Sabine River in the future state of Texas. The New World explorers in 1543 discovered Indians had for centuries utilized natural seeps to waterproof canoes, apply to abrasions, and more.

A Spanish expedition in 1543 used brigantines to explore the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Sorenson, retired and living in Tulsa, initially focused his research on geological surveys, reports from other exploring expeditions, and scientific journals. He then progressed to references cited by others, concentrated his efforts on North America and English language sources — the most readily available — but discovered rare sources as well.

Oil in Antiquity to Today

The petroleum geologist’s ongoing work has added more than 740 reference pages (with captured images) of his sources for the earliest signs of hydrocarbons in North America and other parts of the world.

In 2002, Sorenson shared with the American Oil & Gas Historical Society his 59-page bibliography of “Pre-Drake” publications. “For the past few years I have been engaged in a systematic study to document what was known about oil and natural gas prior to the Drake well,” he noted.

“I have an additional list of cited references that I have not yet examined of comparable size,” Sorenson added in a follow-up email to AOGHS. “The majority are in languages other than English, and I suspect that many of them will not be accessible through my library resources (or my linguistic skill set).”

A petroleum historian and consulting geologist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sorenson explained in his email to AOGHS that to aid researchers, he has been using images of every page that contains relevant material, posting the full reference information at the top, and outlining the relevant portion of the text.

An 1835 reference to signs of oil and natural gas in Massachusetts prior to the first commercial U.S. oil well in Pennsylvania. Image courtesy Ray Sorenson.

“So far I have found relevant information in more than 550 publications with over 3,500 net pages, covering at last count 31 states, five Canadian provinces, and many foreign countries on other continents,” Sorenson noted in January. “For several topics, I have created subsets. I expect to continue to build the collection.”

In addition to antiquity references, Sorenson’s research for his “Pre-Drake Literature Collections by Subject” has thus far included:

California, Canada, Central & South America, Early Geologists, Europe, Fiction, Humboldt, Industrial & Laboratory, Initial Reactions, Kentucky, Maps & Figures, Medicinal , Middle East Asia Africa, Midwest, New England, New York, Oil & Gas Wells Pre-Drake, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Religious, Scientific American, Shales that Burn, Southern United States, Taylor R.C., Statistics of Coal, Textbooks, Volcanoes and Earthquakes, David Wells, Annual of Scientific Discovery, and Western United States.

Although many of his discoveries were found in obscure scholarly journals, Sorenson also found petroleum references in popular 19th-century publications. For example, the April 18, 1829, issue of “Niles’ Register” reported a Kentucky salt well driller finding oil.

“We have just conversed with a gentleman from Cumberland county, who informs us that in boring through rocks for salt water, a fountain of petroleum, or volatile oil, was struck, at the depth of 180 feet,” the Baltimore publication noted on page  117.

Sorenson’s Research Gigabytes

A long-time member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and the Petroleum History Institute (PHI), Sorenson has made many presentations and published academic papers with both. He submitted to PHI a paper on his history of oil and natural gas production from wells prior to 1859 for the journal Oil-Industry History.

The wells were drilled seeking water or brine, but Sorenson found one that flowed an estimated 2,500 barrels of oil per day in the 1820s.

In 2007, Sorenson adapted many of his contributions to AAPG for its extensive Discovery Series with “First Impressions: Petroleum Geology at the Dawn of the North American Oil Industry.”  In January 2013, his “Historic New York Survey Set High Geologic Standards” was published in AAPG Explorer magazine, one of his many contributions to that publication.

Sorenson, who also has assisted with AOGHS articles (see Rocky Beginnings of Petroleum Geology), noted in his email that he has no plans to provide this collection in searchable form on a website, but will work with anyone who is conducting similar research.

Everything in the Sorenson collection is preserved in hard copy and digital (PDF) form, adding up to 11 feet of shelf space — about 27 gigabytes of computer memory.

Sorenson intends to give his full collection of research to the Drake Well Museum and Park in Titusville, at the site where Edwin L. Drake first found oil in the upper Venango sands.

Today, the Oil Region Alliance of Business, Industry and Tourism proclaims that historic part of northwestern Pennsylvania, “The Valley that Changed the World.”

For more information about Ray Sorenson’s on-going oil history projects and resources, post a comment below. 

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1859 Pennsylvania Well

The beginning of the science of petroleum geology might be traced to 1859 when a new industry began in western Pennsylvania. An oil well drilled in 1859 by former railroad conductor Edwin L. Drake along Oil Creek at Titusville sought oil for making kerosene, a new lamp fuel at the time made from coal.

Slowed by delays in receiving funds for what locals called “Drake’s Folly” and drilling with a steam-powered cable-tool rig, it took Drake more than a year to find oil at a depth of 69.5 feet. He also made his own innovations along the way, including adding a 10-foot cast iron pipe to the bore hole — a first.

To the relief of company founder George Bissell and investors in the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut, Drake completed the first U.S. oil well drilled specifically for oil. The August 27, 1859, discovery came in a geologic formation that would be called the Venango sands.

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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); The Birth of the Oil Industry (1936);  The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (2008); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Sorenson Oil History Project.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/exploring-the-earliest-signs-of-oil. Last Updated: July 18, 2025. Original Published Date: August 5, 2020.

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Since its founding a few years after World War II, a national association of women in the petroleum business has “ebbed and flowed with the tides of the energy and allied industries.” 

The organization began when a secretary at Humble Oil & Refining Company organized a 1949 meeting in New Orleans. Three years later, representatives from other cities gathered there to establish the Association of Desk and Derrick Clubs (ADDC) of North America. 

After a 1949 meeting in New Orleans, petroleum industry secretaries organized chapters to establish the Desk and Derrick Club in 1952.

Articles of association were signed on July 23, 1951, by the president of the New Orleans club and the presidents of clubs founded in Jackson, Mississippi, Los Angeles, California, and Houston, Texas. The newly organized group of businesswomen began promoting energy education in the United States and Canada. 

Greater Knowledge

“Greater Knowledge — Greater Service” became the ADDC motto of women working primarily as secretaries in the oil and natural gas industry. Many began organizing clubs in dozens of other oil-producing states.

ADDC got its start thanks to the Humble Oil secretary, who established the first club in New Orleans. A company secretary, Inez Awty (later Schaeffer), frustrated from writing reports about things she knew little about, “believed women working for oil companies wanted to see and know more about a derrick and other aspects of the industry,” noted a 2012 article in the Permian Basin Petroleum Association’s PB Oil & Gas.

Awty worked for Humble Oil & Refining Company, founded in 1911, thanks to a giant oilfield discovery at Humble, Texas, four years after the famous 1901 Spindletop gusher. Production from the Humble field exceeded the total for Spindletop by 1946.

By 1951, there were 1,500 Desk and Derrick members in the United States and Canada. Photo courtesy Permian Basin Petroleum Association.

“Miss Awty thought if men in the oil industry could be organized and know other men outside their own company, then the women could do likewise,” the Midland Reporter-Telegram reported in 1951.

The charter clubs dedicated themselves to “the education and professional development of individuals employed in or affiliated with the petroleum, energy and allied industries and to educate the general public about these industries.”

The PB Oil & Gas article added that in April 1957, the club’s guest speakers included a young Midlander named George H.W. Bush, who reviewed offshore drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Bit of Fun” 

Educating youth about the earth sciences and how the modern petroleum industry works is part of the Desk and Derrick mission. In 1957, the organization’s members adopted a motto, “Greater Knowledge — Greater Service.” 

Since 2004, the group has published (in English and Spanish) “Bit of Fun with PetroMolly and PetroMack,” an energy activity book designed for third and fourth graders.

In 1982, ADDC established The Desk and Derrick Educational Trust, “for the purpose of awarding scholarships to students pursuing a degree in a major field of study related to the petroleum, energy, or allied industries, with the objective of obtaining full-time employment in the industry.”

In addition, ADDC began to assist members in developing new educational projects and programs.

In 2018, about 1,200 women and men employed in or affiliated with the energy and allied industries comprised 48 clubs in seven regions. Membership numbers fluctuate in close relation to the state of the oil and gas industry — and oil prices.

ADDC has since continued to promote its energy education mission using a variety of programs, including seminars, field trips, and individual clubs hosting the annual national convention. 

“Thousands of hours of education have been provided for members through monthly programs on the many facets of this industry and given by speakers ranging from company CEOs to oil-well-fire fighters.”

ADDC Milestones

1949 – The first club is founded in New Orleans by Inez Awty Schaeffer.

July 23, 1951 – Articles of association are signed by presidents of the clubs founded earlier in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston and Jackson, Mississippi.

December 1-2, 1951 – First Board of Directors meeting in New Orleans.

ADDC published its first “Bit of Fun” Energy Activity Book in 2004.

1952 – A newsletter is published (today’s The Desk and Derrick Journal) after Josephine Nolen of Odessa, Texas, wins a contest for its name: The Oil and Gal Journal.

1952 – The first convention is held at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, led by the first association president, Lee Wilson Hoover. Forty member clubs are represented by almost 1,000 registrants. The Shamrock Hotel became the largest in the United States at the time. Independent producer Glenn H. “Diamond Glenn” McCarthy spent $21 million to build it. 

1957 – “Greater Knowledge — Greater Service” is adopted as a motto.

1977 – “of North America” is deleted from the association’s name and the acronym ADDC becomes common usage.

1982 – ADDC established The Desk and Derrick Educational Trust for awarding scholarships to students pursuing a degree in a major field of study related to the petroleum, energy, or allied industries.

1987 – Foundation is established, and the first issue of The Desk and Derrick Journal published, replacing the Oil and Gal Journal.

1988 – Delegates at the annual convention approve equitable membership in the association, opening membership to men.

1996 – The first association website goes online in September.

2001 – Celebration of the association’s 50th anniversary year.

2004 – ADDC publishes its first “Bit of Fun” energy activity book.

2010 – Website is improved.

2025 Regions & Clubs

The 73rd annual ADDC Convention and Education Conference, is planned for September 16 – 21 at the Estancia del Norte in San Antonio, Texas. The 2024 gathering took place in Dallas.

Map of Association of Desk & Derrick Clubs courtesy ADDC.org.

Central Region Clubs: Graham, Great Bend, Liberal, Lone Star Club of Dallas, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Wichita, and Wichita Falls.

Northeast Region Clubs: Three Rivers, Tri-State, and Tuscarawas Valley.

Southeast Region Clubs: Baton Rouge, Lafayette, New Orleans, Red River, San Antonio, Victoria, and Westbank.

West Region Clubs: Abilene, Amarillo, Artesia, Farmington, Grande Prairie, Midland, Pampa, and Roswell.

Oil Patch Field Trips

The association’s conventions often have included field trips to onshore and offshore drilling platforms, refineries, drill-bit manufacturing plants, pipeline facilities, and other petroleum industry locations.

During the 62nd convention in 2013 at Charleston, West Virginia, coordinator Melinda Johnson managed a theme of “Autumn in Appalachia.” The local club included 95 oil and natural gas companies. The convention program offered seminars — and the choice of five day-long field trips.

Among the 62nd convention seminars were Five Traits of Professionalism; Intro to Petroleum Engineering; Hot Oil and Gas Plays in the Appalachian Basin; Formulas and More — Excel Training; and Leadership and Effective Communication.

Further, on one of the field trips, service company representatives from Nabors Services provided a seminar and demonstration on fracturing treatments in the Marcellus Shale. Convention attendees learned the steps in performing a hydraulic fracturing treatment and the difference between how a conventional reservoir and an unconventional reservoir is fractured.

Another field trip visited a Halliburton oilfield service yard for education on coil tubing — with a “snubbing” unit demonstration. Still another trip toured a Baker Hughes center in Clarksburg, where visitors learned about directional drilling and viewed downhole motors, rotary steerable subs, and different kinds of drill bits.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Desk and Derrick Educators.” Author: AOGHS.ORG Editors. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/desk-derrick-educators. Last Updated: July 20, 2025. Original Published Date: July 21, 2014.

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Summertime brings new visitors to community oil and gas museums, including teachers and students anticipating the return of field trips and K-12 programs as the school year approaches. The American Oil & Gas Historical Society advocates visiting these frontline energy educators.

Whether visited on vacation or during the school year, petroleum museums in Texas , Oklahoma, California, and Pennsylvania offer earth science and other petroleum-related exhibits. Visitors to all of oil and gas museums often are met by volunteer docents — retired petroleum geologists, engineers, or other oilfield professionals. 

Petroleum exhibits educate visitors to the Texas Energy Museum in Beaumont, where a 1901 oil discovery at Spindletop Hill launched the modern petroleum industry. Photo by Bruce Wells.

In Texas, the Petroleum Museum in Midland includes many summer energy education programs for kids, as does the Ocean Star, an offshore rig museum in Galveston. Many community museums also are part of annual “derrick festivals,” which take place in Taft, California (West Kern Oil Museum), and other states with oil and gas production.

Alabama has a small county museum in Gilbertown with an “old Hunt oil rig” similar to the one that discovered the first oilfield in Alabama in 1944.

Further, many oil patch communities celebrate their petroleum heritage every summer with parades, special events, and museum tours.

Visitors to the Drake Well Museum at Oil Creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania, can tour a replica of Edwin L. Drake’s cable-tool derrick and steam engine house among other outdoor exhibits. Photo by Bruce Wells.

For those interested in the industry’s exploration and production history and traveling this summer, check out these exhibits chronicling the nation’s discoveries.

Western New York boasts a museum in Bolivar with some of the nation’s earliest petroleum artifacts. While dairying and livestock have become the cash crops, the region still produces a small amount of very high-quality oil and natural gas, says Director Kelly Lounsberry. This museum tells the story of oil and natural gas production in the region.

Exhibits at a museum in Bolivar, N.Y., include oilfield engines, maps, documents, pictures, models and tools. Wonderful Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum once owned a petroleum products company there – and sold oil cans. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The first U.S. well specifically intended to obtain natural gas was dug near Fredonia by William Hart, who had noticed gas bubbles on the surface of a creek. In 1821, he dug a 27-foot well and built a “log pipe” to bring gas to nearby houses for lighting.

Hart’s work led to the formation of the Fredonia Gas Light and Water Works Company – the first U.S. natural gas company, according to the American Gas Association, Washington, D.C., which was founded in 1918.

Further, thanks to the region’s oilfield production, L. Frank Baum opened a petroleum products business in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1883. The future author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz once sold buggy wheel axle grease — and oil cans (learn more in Oil in the Land of Oz).

Just to the south of Bolivar, there are many museums and historic attractions in the state where the modern industry began: Pennsylvania.

East of I-79 in northwestern Pennsylvania, the Drake Well Museum in Titusville exhibits “Colonel” Edwin Drake’s famous August 27, 1859, discovery well – today recognized as the first U.S. oil producer. 

The Drake Well Museum’s outdoor exhibits include a recreation of the original cable-tool derrick Drake used. Among the most popular summer attractions for young students is the “Nitro” well-fracturing reenactment demonstrating the use of “go-devils” for fracturing a well.

Visitors also can stop by the museum gift shop to find a reprint of The Early Days of Oil, by Dr. Paul Giddens, considered to be the “Bible” of information about the birth of the U.S. petroleum industry. Many images in the book are from originals made by photographer John A. Mather and preserved at the museum.

Located on 270 Seneca Street in Oil City – in a Beaux Arts building listed in the National Register of Historic Places – the Venango Museum of Art, Science & Industry preserves the oil region’s industrial heritage. Its exhibits include a 1928 Wurlitzer Theater Organ.

Once a world-famous Pennsylvania boom town, visitors today can walk the grassy paths of Pithole’s former streets. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Another must-see oil history spot is the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s Pithole Visitors Center — the site of a vanished 1865 oil boom town now managed by Drake Well Museum. The once infamous boom town is in Oil Creek State Park. 

A dedicated group of railroad enthusiasts maintains the Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad, a nonprofit group that offers trips through the historic oil region. Near the railroad is the refurbished home of “Coal Oil” Johnny. Read his fascinating tale in the Legend of “Coal Oil Johnny.”

The Penn-Brad Oil Museum — and Historical Oil Well Park — is located three miles south of Bradford, Pennsylvania, on Route 219, near Custer City. Photo by Bruce Wells.

At nearby Oil City is a center dedicated to the study of the oil heritage region at Clarion University, Venango Campus. The Barbara Morgan Harvey Center for the Study of Oil Heritage contains hundreds of rare books of the region, newspaper clippings from the early 1900s, and even minutes from the meetings of early companies, maps, and photographs.

First Billion Dollar Oilfield

About 70 miles to the east of Titusville, the Penn-Brad Oil Museum (and historical oil well park) at Bradford takes visitors back to the early boom times of “The First Billion Dollar Oil Field.” Guided tours are conducted by retired geologists or petroleum engineers who volunteer their time to relate exciting first-hand experiences.

The museum in Custer City is three miles south of Bradford, along Rt. 219. Nearby is a refinery built in 1881 and still operated by the American Refining Group. The facility is considered the oldest continuously operating refinery in America.

The museum maintains stationary internal combustion engines for education and enjoyment. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Before leaving Pennsylvania, visit one of the world’s largest collections of oilfield engines. Century old “hit and miss” gas engines, vintage oilfield equipment, and early electric generators are among the permanent exhibits at a unique “power museum” in Coolspring.

With perhaps the largest 19th-century engine collection in the world, the museum is housed in 13 buildings with about 250 engines – many of them operational.

The Coolspring Power Museum is located east of Pittsburgh just off Route 36 midway between Punxsutawney to the south and Brookville to the north. According to longtime Director Paul E. Harvey, the collection presents an illuminating history of the evolution of internal combustion technology that put an end to the steam-powered era.

Twice a year engine collectors from around the country gather on the extensive grounds – and the “barking” of hundreds of antique engines lasts several days.

Community oil and gas museums are linked to the AOGHS website. Museum events and K-12 education efforts are featured alongside stories of America’s petroleum heritage.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Summer Travels to Oil Museums” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/pennsylvania-petroleum-vacation. Last Updated: July 6, 2025. Original Published Date: May 7, 2013.

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A small museum in southwestern Kansas preserves the history of one of the largest natural gas fields in the world. The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton opened in 1961 near a gas well drilled in 1945 and still producing.

Hugoton’s petroleum museum, founded by a group of dedicated volunteers led by Gladys Renfro, serves as a Kansas energy education center. Its exhibits are “a memento of the Hugoton gas field and the progressive development of Stevens County.”

Exhibits at the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton, Kansas, include late 19th-century production equipment. Settlers named their town Hugo in honor of French writer Victor Hugo.

The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum also includes early 1900 furnishings, farming tools, printing and other displays from a farming community proclaiming itself as America’s “Natural Gas Capital.” Hugoton hosts a Gas Capitol Triathlon and the Gas Capitol Car Show & Rod Run every August.

Natural Gas Giant

The Hugoton natural gas field is the largest in North America. Covering more than 14 counties in western Kansas alone, it extends 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. In 2003, about 11,000 wells produced natural gas and oil in the Kansas portion of the Hugoton area, according to the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS). Thousands of miles of pipeline have carried Hugoton natural gas nationwide.

The Hugoton field produced 358 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2007, making it the fifth largest U.S. source at the time. The economic value of production from southwest Kansas exceeded 50 percent of all the petroleum produced in the state.

However, Hugoton field production by 2022 dropped to 68.5 billion cubic feet due to reduced reservoir pressures, according to KGS.

Early Gas Wells

Although natural gas had been discovered as early as 1922 near Liberal, Kansas, that exploratory well did not produce oil — so it was considered of little commercial value and remained unused for several years.

“In 1927, gas was discovered at the Independent Oil and Gas Company’s Crawford No. 1, about 2,600 feet below the surface southwest of Hugoton,” reported KGS. In 1929, Argus Pipe Line Company started construction of a pipeline to furnish gas to Dodge City.

Beginning in the 1930s, Phillips Petroleum Company produced Hugoton natural gas from 3,000 feet deep in Texas County, Oklahoma (also see ConocoPhillips Petroleum Museums).

Natural gas had been discovered as early as 1922, but the potential of the Hugoton-Panhandle field was not revealed until a 1927 well southwest of Hugoton.

“This field with subsequent deeper discoveries of oil and gas has provided landowners with royalty revenue and cheap fuel,” reports a historical marker in a Guymon, Oklahoma, park. “There are nearly 8,000 producing oil or gas wells in Texas County today,” the historic marker notes.

“For 75 years, the county has been one of the largest sources of revenue for the state of Oklahoma through taxes on oil and gas production.”

World’s Helium Supplier

Hugoton natural gas fields also have become a leading source of helium, thanks to a University of  Kansas professor who in 1905 discovered helium could be extracted from natural gas (learn more in Kansas “Wind Gas” Well). The Hugoton-Panhandle gas continues to be the largest source of helium worldwide.

In southwestern Kansas, the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton is above a giant natural gas-producing area (in red) that extends 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.

The natural gas museum at 905 S. Adams Street in Hugoton, includes early oil patch equipment, restored buildings — including a historic Santa Fe Hugoton Train Depot — an 1887 school house and home, a grocery store, and a barbershop. A natural gas well drilled in 1945 is still producing at the museum.

A 2004 Hugoton Asset Management Project brought together KGS and eight industry partners in the Hugoton field — to build a “knowledge and technical base required for intelligent stewardship, identification of new opportunities, and continued improvement in recovery strategies.”

“Hugoton-Panhandle gas provides the world’s largest source of helium from which the U.S. Government has drawn a 40-year supply stockpile and spacecraft and other industries obtain current needs,” notes a monument in Guymon, Oklahoma.

Improved production technologies have increased production of unconventional gasses — shale gas and coalbed methane — and overtaken the Hugoton field’s once-dominant role. Prolific discoveries were made at Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 2004 and Haynesville, Louisiana, in 2008.

Learn about another giant natural gas formation, the Trenton field of the 1880s, in Indiana Natural Gas Boom.

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Recommended Reading:  The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); The Natural Gas Revolution: At the Pivot of the World’s Energy Future (2013). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Natural Gas Museum” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/natural-gas-museum. Last Updated: May 9, 2025. Original Published Date: May 12, 2013.

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A 1905 oil discovery at Caddo-Pines brought America’s rapidly growing petroleum industry to northwestern Louisiana. A state museum in appropriately named Oil City tells the story.

Originally the Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Museum, in May 2004 the Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum was dedicated as a state museum under the Louisiana Secretary of State. 

Gulf Refining Company in 1911 built drilling platforms to reach the oil beneath Caddo Lake, Louisiana. The early “offshore” technologies worked, and production continues today.

Located about 20 miles north of Shreveport, the first public museum in Louisiana dedicated to the petroleum industry maintains an extensive local history library and collected photographic archives. Exterior exhibits include the former depot of the Kansas City Southern Railroad.

“Located in aptly-named Oil City, the Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum interprets the fascinating drama of Louisiana’s early oil industry history through photographs, films and life-size dioramas,” according to the Louisiana Department of State’s website.

“This part of Louisiana, of course, was built on the oil and gas industry and visitors interested in the technical aspects of oil field work will find the museum particularly appealing,” according to the site.

Chevron donated an oil derrick that stands beside the Louisiana State Oil Museum in Oil City, about a 20-minute drive from Shreveport.

Across the street from the museum — next to the old train depot — oilfield rigs and other equipment educate visitors about early petroleum drilling and production technologies.

The earliest manufacturing plant in Caddo Parish was in the Gas Center facilities outside Shreveport, where Purified Petroleum Products Company of Louisiana patented a process for treating gasoline and kerosene. The earliest oil pipeline in the area was completed in 1910 by Standard Oil of Louisiana, connecting the oilfield to Standard’s Baton Rouge refinery.

Shreveport’s Spring Street Historical Museum includes petroleum-related exhibits — and the nearby statue at 90 Market Street commemorates the city’s historic 1870 natural gas well.

Oil City’s state museum preserves stories and artifacts from Caddo Parish oil and natural gas discoveries – and the early 20th-century economic prosperity petroleum brought to North Louisiana.

In 1955, the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce dedicated a 40-foot monument commemorating the 50th anniversary of oil in Caddo Parish. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Chevron donated a derrick and other oilfield equipment that helped draw tourists to the museum. Visitors also learn about the region’s earlier history, starting with the culture of Caddo Indians.

Northern Louisiana Oil Discovery

Four years after oil had been found in southern Louisiana, brothers J.S. and W.A. Savage of West Virginia in 1905 completed the first well in the Caddo Parrish oilfield. Teams of oxen hauled the drilling equipment needed for their derrick. According to local historians, the well’s roughnecks were paid $2.50 for each 12-hour workday. 

The Savage brothers’ well first showed signs of natural gas, but they decided to drill deeper, finding an oil-producing formation oil on March 28, 1905, after reaching 1,556 feet.

More northern Louisiana exploratory wells quickly followed and by 1910 almost 25,000 people were working in and around Oil City, which became the first “wildcat town” in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas region (also see First Arkansas Oil Wells and Arkansas Oil Ventures.)

A statue in Shreveport commemorates an 1870 well that provided the first known commercial use of natural gas in Louisiana. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The museum documents the historical importance of the first oil discovery in 1905 — and the technology behind the May 1911 Ferry No. 1 well at Caddo Lake, one of the nation’s earliest over-water oil wells.

Gulf Refining Company completed an early “offshore” oil well on Caddo Lake, where production has continued. Heavy rains in 1887 caused an Ohio lake to rise, also creating offshore wells (learn more in Ohio Offshore Wells).

The first commercial natural gas field in Louisiana was discovered accidentally in 1870 by a water well drilled at the Shreveport Ice Factory, according to a petroleum industry trade association founded in 1923.

“A night watchman at an ice plant in Shreveport accidentally discovered natural gas emanating from a well drilled in search of artesian water when he struck a match. Gas from the well was piped to the plant to provide illumination — the first use in the state of the fuel that today heats the vast majority of Louisiana homes and places of business.” — Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association (LMOGA),

First Louisiana Oil Well

Eight months after the January 10, 1901, “Lucas Gusher” at Spindletop Hill, Texas, an oilfield was discovered in a rice field 90 miles to the east, not far from Lake Charles, Louisiana. W. Scott Heywood — already a successful wildcatter at Spindletop — drilled the discovery well of the Jennings oilfield. 

Heywood’s September 21, 1901, oil gusher was on a small fraction of an acre lease, but it marked the state’s first commercial oil production. The wells that followed opened the prolific Jennings field, which Heywood further developed by building pipelines and storage tanks.

Learn more in First Louisiana Oil Wells.

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Recommended Reading:  Louisiana’s Oil Heritage, Images of America (2012); Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil: A Photographic History, 1901-1946 (1982). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Louisiana Oil City Museum.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/louisiana-oil-and-gas-museum. Last Updated: May 6, 2025. Original Published Date: September 1, 2005.

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