Kentucky’s Great American Well An 1829 spring-pole well drilled seeking brine finds oil instead. Petroleum from Kentucky’s Great American Well is bottled and sold for medicinal purposes. Also known as the Old American Well and the First Great American Gusher, the Kentucky discovery is one of the earliest commercial U.S. oil wells. Although oil would not be drilled for – and found – in Pennsylvania until three decades later, officially launching America’s petroleum industry, Kentucky claims the first oil gusher. Boring for salt brine with a simple spring-pole device (used in ancient China) on a farm near Burkesville, Kentucky, Martin Beatty strikes an oilfield. Drilled for a local doctor, the March 11, 1829, gusher shoots “to the top of the surrounding trees.” According to one Kentucky historian, the 1829 well, “was the first commercially operated oil well in the United States, predating the establishment of the oil industry by some thirty years.” Beatty drilled his Cumberland County well with “an apparatus consisting of a spring pole made from a strong sapling, set in the crotch of a tree, with a short ‘bit’ fastened to the free end of the pole.” The driller manipulated this bit by his own foot power – and what a slow task this must have been, according to the Burkesville Riverfront Lodge Motel today located nearby. Its promotional article adds: “The Old Oil Well led the parade in 1829, and so it will continue to mark the spot where the world’s greatest industry was born.” Pride of Burkesville The well’s marker – a large mill stone topped by a bronze tablet – was erected in 1934 by the Kentucky Legislature: The history and subsequent events of the First Great American Gusher have been kept alive through a few interested citizens who have never, for any length of time, let go this birth of what has come to be a necessary part of the world today. The 50,000 barrel, Old Oil Well, led the parade in 1829 and so it will continue to mark the spot where the world’s greatest industry was born. Unfortunately, soon after its discovery, oil from the 171-foot-deep well reached the Cumberland River – where it ignited and burned for three weeks, halting riverboat traffic 50 miles downstream, according to the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS). Petroleum drilling, production and control technologies had not been invented. “The salt borers were greatly disappointed,” reported an 1847 account of the discovery. “The well was neglected for several years, until it was discovered that the oil possessed valuable medicinal qualities.” Oil’s Curative Power Petroleum’s uses in medicine, which continues today, began as a cure-all bottled in large quantities and “extensively sold in nearly all the states in the Union.” The 1810-1960 Burkesville Sesquicentennial booklet cites an August 22, 1919, article from the Burkesville Leader: The well was a continuing puzzle to the curious travelers who succeeded in winding tortuous journey over bed of the creek…There was a reputation as a cure all which spread around among the various adventurers through the years. The fluid was bottled and sold under the caption of “American Rock Oil.” The writer knew personally, in later years, one man who vouched for its curative powers for baldness. He stated that when he left the oil field on Saturday night he always took his double handful of crude oil and thoroughly douzed his head in it massaging it into his scalp. When he died at the age of 91 he had a beautiful shock of white hair!
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 03:22:47 +0000
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