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First Oil WellsftWorked in State. Date Hack to C'i\ i 1 War and Site of s | Burning Springs, Wirt *j County, for Beginning i 1lt;The first oil wells in West Virginia | date hack to Civil War times and 1t the scene of the first big strike was ( , on the Little Kanawha river near f the present site of the town of Burn- * , ing Springs in Wirt county. sf The name Burning Springs is very j j suggestive of either oil or gas, or 1 both and the name originated b\ theiI practice of setting fire to the oil Ir■Ithat accumulated on the surface ofI several springs in that locality. The |• stor of the Burning Springs there , is similar to the legend of the• Seneca Indian Springs on Oil Creek, Pe nnsylvania.Shorth after the strike at Burning Springs developments were begun at White Oak. Hitehie county, and at Horse Neck in Pleasant county. Here too the spring polemethod of drilling was made use of and was found practicable as the pay sand was struck at a depth of 12 feet in the latter well. This unusual condition is accounted for !v the peculiar formation of the oil strata at that place, due it is said to J a pre-historie upheave!, .lust a few | miles east of Horse Neck at Vol-! cano on the Parkersburg branch of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad the sand formation in which oil wasifound at Horse Neck is on the sur- gfalt; ■ of the ground. It dips as you ■proceed northward and in the Ohio Valley the sand is found at a depth of from 3 to 4 hundred feet.A spring pole well was drilled in the late sixties on Fishpot Bun. in Pleasants e unty, to a depth of 17!) feet hut no oil was found and only a moderate How of gas. which still finds its wa\ to the surface through fissures in nearby rocks.It was a number of \ears later l»e-, fore deveh pments were begun on a large scale. This renewed activity followed :t strike of a large well ( nCow Bun or rather Cow Creek on■ the West Virginia side of the Ohio■ Hiver some 12 miles northward■ from Marietta. Ohio. It was from ' this that the productive oil sand,known as the “Cow Bun sand” took11 its name Eureka.As an outgrowth of the* earlv act-'drtivities in this section several luist-■ ling oil towns sprang into existence,: Among those were Waverlv in• Wood county. Belmont, Schultz, and• Eureka in Pleasants county.One of the first pipe lines laid in . this section of the state was the oneI put down l»\ the Mountain State Gas .company from tin* Slussar wdlig• which supplied Weston with gas for' domestic purposes. Later a line was laid into the Clarksburg district, jI The great cost of laving both these I lines could have been avoided halt;• the men who laid them known at the time that practically every farm on which the line was laid had an abundance of gas under it.:::■
Newspaper Details
Beckley Sunday Register
Beckley, West Virginia, US
Sun, Mar 30, 1924
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
VA, USA 19 Jun 2019
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