First Oil Well Kentucky

THE FIRST OIL WELL IN KENTUCKY By WiUavd Rouse JiUson 1952 THE FIRST OIL WELL IN KENTUCKY By Willard Rouse Jillson 1952 THE FIRST OIL WELL IN KENTUCKY Notes on The History, Geology, Production and Present Status of the Beatty Oil Well, Drilled in Wayne, now McCreary County, Kentucky, in the year 1818 By WILLARD ROUSE JILLSON, Sc. D. OeoIogUt and Engineer ROBERTS PRINTING CO. FRANKFORT, KY. 1952 First Printing SEPTEMBER 3, 1952 FOBEWOBD America traditionally accords honor and dis tinction to those who are the first to achieve success in any field of important national endeavor. Retro spectively one recalls the great acclaim that attended Robert Fulton's demonstration of the practicality of the steamboat, Eli Whitney's tremendous success with the cotton gin, and Wilbur Wright's short but epochal flight o'er the sands of Kitty Hawk. To these the names of a good many others who have won for themselves a kind of immortality might be added—^Lewis and Clark as explorers, McCormick with the reaper, Bell with the telephone, Westing- house with the air brake, Erickson with the mono- tored gunboat and Hoe with the straightline press— to name only a few 1 In the dynamic, industrial field of PETROL EUM, the middle years of the nineteenth century witnessed the miracle-like emergence and recognition of Edwin L. Drake as the first practical oil producer,. and of John D. Rockefeller as the first national oil refiner and distributor. Though upwards of a hun dred and fifty years have passed since the event took place, it now seems but tardy justice to add to these great names topping the scroll of the petroleum pioneers, a third, that of Marcus Huling of Penn sylvania, who in the year 1818 brought in the Martin Beatty No. 1 on the South Pork of the Cumberland River, the first oil well in Kentucky and the iirst flowing well of importance in America! 7?ie^ Frankfort, Kentucky June 10,1952. HRST OIL WELL IN KENTUCKY SALT WATER During the first decade of the nineteenth cen tury, the rapid growth of population in the middle Ohio Valley created an insatiable demand for those essentials of life which are derived, more or less directly, from the earth. Iron for nails, implements and wagons; coal for forges and grates; and salt for the kitchens, tables and preserving processes of the pioneers, like meat and bread, were in the very fore front of domestic requirements. In Kentucky, mar velously expanding spear head of Anglo-American civilization in the West, the demand for salt exceeded the supply produced at "the Licks" for upwards of half a century after the building of the first forts and stations. During these early years it became not only an eagerly sought staple of merchandising, but in lieu of hard currency which was generally and provocably scarce, was frequently used in trade and barter as a commodity of monetary exchange. Time and again, when available, coarse, granulated salt was held at a value of $25.00 and $30.00 a barrel, and frequently at town and crossroad stores it was retailed at prices double and treble this amount. In an effort to meet the steady demand for in creasing volumes of salt, pits of considerable size and depth, were dug at all of the "improved" salt licks in Kentucky to increase the flow and volume of the natural brines. Outstanding among the "salt works" operated in this manner within or bordering the Bluegrass country were those at Lower Blue Licks, Big Bone Lick, Drennon's Lick, Mann's Lick, Bullitt's Lick, and Flat Lick. When it became ap parent that the limit of productivity had been reached by this method at these and a few other salt springs, it was but a natural step to change over from the shallow pit or "dug well" to a drilled well, which at somewhat greater depths might, and as it shortly developed, did penetrate the beds that ac tually contained the salt water. As it chanced the ex- peiriment began in a small way in 1806 at one of the salt licks in the Kanawha River in what was then Vir ginia, Within two years hard rock drilling had be come recognized as a successful brine producing practice and by the time the War of 1812 began to raise the prices of many eatables in the West, par ticularly preserved meats, men of enterprise and in genuity were "kicking down" salt wells with hand made "spring pole rigs" in southeastern Ohio and southern Kentucky. Though it was but remotely anticipated, if at all, by these pioneer operators at the time of this initial sweep of drilling exploration, in the light of present day geological knowledge, it was a certainty and only a matter of time and location before one or more salt well drillers would strike oil. Accordingly it is not at all surprising to find in the folk lore of southern Kentucky the tale of a salt well drilled two 10 mUes south of MonticeUo in 1815 which "at a depth of 283 feet was abandoned because petroleum was found in such quantities as to ruin ... it as a salt well." In the midsummer of 1865, fifty years later, the bare essentials of this epoch marking discovery of oil in the southern part of this Commonwealth, already vague and legendary, fortunately found per manent record in the news columns of the daily Ob server and Reporter, of Lexington, Kentucky. It is stated that Micajah Phillips possessed the land during the sixties on which this remarkable well was drilled, but it appears that the name of the driller and the land owner, at the time the strike was made, have been irretrievably lost. Evidently the amount of oil found in this salt well in 1815 was rather small, insufficient to cause more than a local ripple of inter est, recollection of which has been all but obliterated in the lengthening flight of the years. OIL WELL Late in December, 1817, Martin Beatty, whose surname is frequently written Beaty—purchased of John Francis of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1000 acres of land lying on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River at a point about two to three miles above or south of Bear Creek. Beatty was originally from Abingdon, southwestern Virginia, but at the time of this transaction was operating an iron fur nace near the great spring at Cumberland Gap, Ten nessee. He had somewhat previously purchased an appreciable undivided interest in another 1000 acre tract located on the west side of the South Fork at and about the mouth of Bear Creek upon which nat- 11 ural brines had already been produced in a drilled well and where salt was later manufactured in con siderable quantity. This establishment seated in Wayne County opposite the mouth of Bear Creek later came to be known as Saltville. It was operated with variable success down to the year 1840, when due to heavy and continued losses sustained in at tempting to ship the product out on occasional high tides and thus override the navigatory perils of the "jumps" and the "shoals" of the river, the opera tion was closed down and permanently abandoned. In acquiring the upper or second 1000 acre tract, money apparently being not readily at hand, Beatty issued as consideration the notes of the Saltville partnership which besides his own, embraced the interests held by Lilburn L. Henderson and Stephen T. Conn, both of whom were also from Abingdon. Francis had entered and surveyed the tract on De cember 24, 1817 as may be noted in Wayne County, Kentucky, Surveyors Book No. 1, page 370, under the Act of the Q-eneral Assembly passed February 2, 1813 to encourage the manufacturing of salt. This statute provided that any individual or group, after "improving" a tract of previously unoccupied land and producing 1000 bushels of salt, could acquire fee simple title to the land by paying to the Treasurer of Kentucky $10 per 100 acres for the land on which the salt was produced. Finally, after considering the matter at some length, Beatty determined to take only 727 acres of the 1000 acre entry and this boun dary was then surveyed and patented by him on December 28, 1821. In the meantime, however, Martin Beatty acting for the Saltville co-partnership, leased the 727 acre 12 . tract to one Marcus Huling and his associate, An drew Zimmerman, both of whom desiring to drill for salt brines, had come into the country from Lee County, Virginia, but were originally from north western Pennsylvania. A well was located in the bottoms of the South Fork just above the mouth of a sizable south flowing tributary of the Cumberland. This stream is today known as Oil Well Branch. Its debouchure and the adjacent drilling site are about one mile below the mouth of Troublesome Creek. Operations with a "spring pole rig" were begun in the Spring of 1818. Some time late in the Fall, probably the latter part of November, at a depth of "about two hundred feet" a heavy black oil was en countered, which rose rapidly in the hole, over flowed the hollow log conductor and ran in consid erable volume over the bank into the Cumberland River and on dowli stream for a good many, perhaps 30 or 40 miles. From such records as are now available it ap pears that this drilling—^widely heralded in its time and since as the Beatty Oil Well—^flowed upwards of 100 barrels per day under a gas head for several days immediately after it was "brought in as a producer." Its flow then gradually declined and fimaUy ceased, due probably to the reduction of the gas and rock pressure.

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