Oil history: For more than a year now, I've had a reminder in my phone going off from time to time — Oil was first discovered in North Dakota in April 1951, 70 years ago.
We had two pages of photos and history in Sunday's paper, and one of the resources I relied on was a scrapbook we had mailed to us several years ago.
The red book is stuffed with clippings from the Herald and other papers about the early days of oil exploration in North Dakota. We have bound volumes, but the scrapbook has hand-written dates, making finding things in our archive a lot easier.
There isn't much I love more than diving into the archives, so having a scrapbook put together by someone else is a dream. I wish I knew who created it. The scrapbook was dropped off at the office a few years ago, but I wasn't at my desk and I either don't remember or never learned the name of the person who gave it to us. If it was you,please send me an email so I can thank you!
Cool photos: One of the best part about any dip into the archives is finding great photos. I'll share two, along with their original captions.
A photo from April 1951 showed off a piece of industrial technology many were unfamiliar with at the time. The original caption:
This comely titian-haired miss needs help to hold a handful of diamonds. Nona Newell of Oklahoma City, employed in Amerada’s land department office in Williston, is displaying a diamond core bit whose drilling surface is studded with hundreds of industrial diamonds, which weigh 165.76 karats and are worth about $2,000. It is similar to the one used during coring operations of Amerada’s Tioga well. The bit weighs 33 pounds, 11 3/4 inches high and an outside diameter of 6 1/8 inches. Helping hold the diamond core head is Joseph NeVille of Casper, Wyo., well drilling tool salesman and son-in-law of Mrs. Florence McFarlin of 610 Sixth Avenue West. He married the former Donna McFarlin.
There is romance and beauty in the wildcatters life. The romance is the hope of fulfillment of new discoveries and conquests. The beauty is the outdoor life, the derrick painted against a fire-streaked sunset or primrose dawn, the voices of ancient gods speaking through the guttural roar of oil and gas belching from the bowels of the earth, the poetry of the motors’ rhythm and the whirl of the rotary table, the symmetry and perfection of design as shown the this picture of the discovery rig at the Clarence Iverson No. 1.
I love talking history — do you have memories from the first oil boom back in the early 1950s? I'd love to hear it, email me at editor@willistonherald.com.
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