USA > New York > Genesee County> History of the Genesee country (western New York) comprising the counties of Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Erie, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates, Volume II > Part 32
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"Triangle City is no more. The soft greasy, good-natured name of Petrolia has been substituted for the merry, jingling musical name of Triangle. 'Triangle City', though yet young, was famous. It had already worn metropolitan airs and made posi- tive record. The rousing cheer, the turkey raffles, the duel, the battle of the soiled doves, these and many other incidents, rich and rare, must be laid in one common grave. They formed the sharp points in the angles of 'Triangle' history, and 'Triangle' is dead. All this trouble comes of the necessity of a post office, and that there is already a 'Triangle' in the state. Goodbye, 'Triangle;' Welcome Petrolia."
RICHBURG, A TYPICAL OIL TOWN.
Thirty years ago, in 1895, Mr. John P. Herrick, prominent oil producer, then editor of the successful oil country weekly, The Bolivar Breeze, wrote a graphic story for the New York Sun entitled, "Richburg's Year of Glory." He said :
"A mile up the valley from Bolivar, in a hollow of the hills of Allegany County, is the nearest approach to a deserted city to be found in the Empire State. There are large business blocks with windows boarded up, long rows of vacant buildings that are tumbling from shaky foundations, a great brick church slowly crumbling, a brick bank building that cost several thousand dollars now used as a dwelling house, streets that are as silent as a churchyard, and over the whole hangs an air of deso- lation and decay. Once eight thousand people thronged the streets and it was as lively and wicked as any mining camp that ever flourished in the Rockies. All there is to show of its former greatness are three hundred people and the village charter. Three years ago it was proposed to throw up the charter and a special election was held. There were not many votes cast, but the majority was on the right side, and the incorporation papers were not surrendered. It is the one badge of honor that poor old deserted Richburg retains."
History has now turned another page. After nearly a double Rip Van Winkle sleep, Richburg about 1919, awakened to a new drilling campaign. Oil wells are again producing in her front door yards and there are many more of them than ever before. The chug of the gas engine and the lift of the polished rod now goes on continuously, night and day, and, while religious services are being held in the big brick church on Sunday, nearby wells are never stopped pumping. Population has more than doubled since Mr. Herrick wrote of the deserted city, and wealth has increased ten fold. Richburg may never be more than a village and her mushroom days of 1881 may not have returned, but she has risen gallantly from the depth of decline and surprised her- self as well as her neighbors. Again she is staging the gay county celebrations of the volunteer firemen, a reminder of the days when she gloried in a world championship for firemen runners.
1075
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
Every structure in the village is occupied and new houses are being built. Just out of the village on the Bolivar Road is located the largest oil operation in the State of New York, that of the Forest Oil Company, on the famous Reed and Ackerman and other farms. This successful company, organized by C. B. and Forest Dorn of Bradford, Penn., has done more than any other one factor to revive Richburg. It is pleasing that the blood of Richburg oil pioneers, which experienced the big boom of nearly half a century ago, as well as the following depression, is inter- ested in the Forest Oil Company's successful revival of Richburg oil production. Herbert and Ralph Lester, of Richburg, sons of Crandall Lester, who located the Richburg discovery well in 1881, were original stockholders, as was W. J. Richardson, president of the Citizens National Bank of Wellsville, who was a Richburg banker before the town's decline.
It is the discovery of a new method of production from the same oil sands that had been pumping more or less profitably for over forty years that has revived Richburg. This is called "flooding" and is described elsewhere in this story as a restor- ation of exhausted pressure, by means of driving the large amount of oil still left in the sands from one well to another by the introduction of water to create hydrostatic pressure and encourage capillary activity. Some of the flooded wells near Richburg have started off as high as one hundred barrels of oil a day.
It is estimated dependably, that upon results already obtained by the Forest Oil Company on the Reed farm, at least 10,000 barrels of oil an acre, and maybe 15,000 barrels, will be recovered from the richest leases, in addition to about the same amount which they have heretofore produced by the old methods. One well to five acres was the customary drilling practice in the field before flooding began. Now it takes two or three wells to one acre. This means a great deal of drilling, and it will take many years, even of the most intensive work, to exhaust the sands in the region of Richburg. Thus with a fair price for oil she should enjoy at least another generation of oil production from the present sands. It is not contrary to the geology of this region that much deeper sands may not, when drilled, produce oil in great quantities at Richburg and elsewhere in Allegany County.
1076
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
OIL COUNTRY ROMANCE.
"On April 1, 1881," wrote Mr. Herrick, "Richburg was a country hamlet that did not even boast of a telegraph office. There were perhaps twenty-five houses clustered along the shady road that led over the hills to Friendship on the Erie Railroad, eleven miles away. The event of each week day was the arrival of the stage that carried the mail and an occasional passenger. On Sunday the villagers went to church and after that discussed the prospect of an advance in cheese if it was summer, or the price of hay and pine logs on the skids if it was winter. All unmindful of the fact that billions of feet of natural gas was imprisoned beneath their farms they hauled beech and birch logs to their door yards and sawed them into stove wood every fall, and occasionally one of them grew tired of trying to get a living from a side-hill farm and went west, although the underside of the farm was lined with a rich oil-bearing sand.
"The Pennsylvania oil operators who had followed the line of developments from Oil Creek to Bradford began to cast their eyes across the state line toward Allegany County, which was on the 'forty-five' degree line. In due time several test wells were drilled in the county, but none of them gave much promise of wealth, though several of them produced oil in small quantities. On the morning of April 27, 1881, a well was completed on the hill above Richburg that started off at 400 barrels a day. It was the key to a rich field.
"Oil scouts who had been watching developments closely rode with all haste to the railroad towns over the hills and the wires carried the news of the big strike to the newspaper offices. The next day people in all parts of the country knew that a new oil field had been opened. Then began a wild scramble for leases, and oil operators from the Pennsylvania regions flocked across the state line in droves, anxious to secure a slice of the new Eldorado.
"Four stage lines were established in less than a week between Eldred, on the line of the Western New York and Pennsylvania, midway between Richburg and Bradford, and the scene of the excitement. The big, old-fashioned stage coaches drawn by four horses were loaded with passengers at $3 apiece. A few days
1077
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
after the strike a building boom struck Richburg. Houses, stores saloons and dance halls were built in a night. There was a wild rush for hotel accommodations. Men willingly paid $1 a night for the privilege of sleeping on a billiard table, and the regular charge for sleeping in a bar room chair was 50 cents. So great was the rush that the hastily-built hotels simply could not accom- modate the great crowds that flocked in. It was nothing strange to see twenty men crawling out of a hay mow in the morning and many nights during the summer months as many as 200 men slept under the big maple trees in a little park that surrounded the schoolhouse. A building lot of twenty feet front rented for $50 a month and choice locations were scarce at that price.
"The men and women who rushed to the new field to make their fortunes came from all points of the compass. Pittsburgh, Bradford, Oil City, Buffalo, Rochester and many other cities helped to swell the crowd. The new town was a paradise for crooks of high and low degree. Gambling houses were run wide open and games of every description flourished. The town boasted of more than a hundred saloons and no attention was paid to secur- ing a license. The people were too busy getting rich to bother about so small a matter. And it was the same way with the gam- bling houses. One saloon keeper's stock arrived ere his building was completed. He had no time to lose so he put two whiskey barrels on end, utilized a plank for a bar, and began business at the side of the street. The first day his receipts were $72. Money flowed like water.
"Richburg at that time had two solid banks, a water works system, an electric fire alarm system, two hose companies, a fine high school building, a brick church that cost $10,000, a pros- pective street railroad, machine shops, oil well supply factories, a nitro-glycerine factory and two daily newspapers. The Oil Echo, edited by P. C. Boyle, now owner of the Oil City Derrick and Bradford Era, was printed on a three-revolution Hoe press, possessed a news franchise and was as lively as the town. About the time the boom burst the Echo office was destroyed by fire and Boyle informed the writer that he walked out of the town because he did not have money to buy a ticket. But he is rich now.
"As soon as the oil boom was fairly under way, a narrow- gauge railroad was built to Richburg from Friendship and was
1078
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
then continued down the valley to Olean. The first month a freight car served as a station and the records show that the freight receipts amounted to more than $12,000. In a short time a railroad was built over the hills from Bradford to Bolivar and thence across a new extension of the oil field to Wellsville on the Erie Railroad. A spur was built from Bolivar to Rich- burg and a train run every half hour. It was called the dinky line. The engine was a cross between a cookstove and a fanning mill, but it had a whistle that could wake all the dormant echoes within ten miles. Some days this dinky train carried as many as seven hundred passengers.
"The principal part of the criminal business of the county courts came from Richburg and the outlying oil field. Holdups were of nightly occurrence and the farmer who came into town with a load of produce had to bring a hired man with him to guard his load if he expected to realize anything from it. The most unprovoked murder that ever occurred in the county was committed on the main street of Richburg in November, 1881, when John C. McCarthy, a desperado who had drifted in with the oil boom, stabbed Patrick Markey, a tool dresser, in front of a saloon. Quick-witted officers saved McCarthy from being lynched. Horace Bemis, one of the leading criminal lawyers in the state at that time, defended McCarthy. Judge Charles Daniels presided at the trial. McCarthy was hanged at Angelica in the following March. His nerve was good. On the scaffold he asserted his innocence 'in the sight of God,' although many of the spectators had seen him commit the crime.
"In Richburg everybody was simply oil crazy. Wells were drilled in the center of the town on garden lots and the little village cemetery was surrounded by oil derricks. Even the church people caught the fever and a well was drilled on the parsonage lot. It did not prove to be a winner and the trustees decided to invest no more church funds in that kind of gamble. A preacher speculated on the oil market during the week and pointed out the straight and narrow path on Sunday, and no one chided him in the least.
"No boom lasts long. In May, 1882, the news of the big gushers struck at Cherry Grove, down in Pennsylvania, caused a
CHIPMONK
HUMPHREY POOL CO
MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF OIL POOLS IN NEW YORK STATE
SECOND SAND
BRADFORD OR THIRD SAND
ALLEGANY
VARIOUS SANDS 3ª9,4" PENNEY FULMER VALLEY WAUGH + PORTER
CLARKSVI POOL
EXHAUSTED AREAS SHOWN BY BROKEN LINES
CARROLLTON
CLARKSVILLE
0
RED HOUSE
CHIPMONK POOL
OLEAN
PORTVILLE
· ALLEGANY
RICE
· OLEAN
BROOK POOL
BRADFORD
R
RED HOUSE POOLS!
CENESEZ
· ROCK CITY
CAT TARAUGUS
Kr
STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA
SAND
STRAY SAND
HUMPHREY
SCALE OF MILES
POOL
THESE POOLS ARE 13 MILES NORTH OF LOCATION HERE SHOWN.
GROVE
SHORT TRACT
AMITY
WARD
ALFRED
HARTSVILLE
SCIO
POOLS
ANDOVER
POOL
SCIO
ANDOVER
MADISON HILL POOL
ANDOVER
WIRT
FULMER VALLEY POOLS
GREENWOOD
· WELLSVILLE
WELLSVILLE
RICHBURG
MARSH, POOL
ALMA POOL
POTTER OR
BOLIVAR ·
MERVINE POOL
BOLIVAR
WILLING
INDEPENDENCE
WEST UNION
BURG POOL
ALMA
ALLEGANY COUNTY
STEUBEN COUNTY
1083
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
great slump in the oil market, and Richburg's floating population flocked to the new and more promising field. There is nothing more fickle than the floating population of a boom town in the oil country. This was the beginning of the end of Richburg's greatness. Bolivar, a hamlet a mile down the valley, began to boom in the spring of 1882 and soon the Standard Oil Company moved its buying office to Bolivar and Richburg began to go to seed. Fires wiped out some of the finest buildings, and others were torn down and moved to adjacent villages. Buildings that cost thousands of dollars went for a mere song. The fine opera house was converted into a cheese factory. The railroads were long ago torn up and a stage line again connects Richburg with the outside world. The 300 people who live there today are very loyal to the deserted city and to the village charter. Even the oldest resident dates everything from the oil excitement. He does not remember much that happened before that because there was little to remember."
AREA AND LOCATION OF NEW YORK'S OIL FIELDS.
The oil fields of New York cover approximately an area of 50,000 acres in the southwestern part of the state.
There are two separate and distinct fields. The greater one in Allegany County, extending by separate pools into the edge of Steuben County. This has in addition to a large main pool, several minor ones of lesser area.
The Cattaraugus County extension of the Bradford, Penn., development, with lesser near-by pools constitutes at this time New York's only other oil field.
THE ALLEGANY COUNTY OIL FIELD.
The Bolivar pool, including Richburg, covers about three- quarters of the area of Bolivar township, half of Alma, about a third of Wirt, a quarter of Genesee, an eighth of Clarksville, and a small part of the southeastern part of Scio. Its greatest length is from east to west, about 13 miles, and through central Bolivar it runs north and south about 6 miles. The so-called Clarksville pool is not connected with it but extends in a rather
1084
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
narrow streak about 6 miles long, from the northwestern corner of Wirt township, southwesterly, well down into Clarksville.
The Scio pool proper is about 3 1-2 miles long and a half mile wide, located in the northeastern part of the township. There were 470 wells in this and a little nearby pool in 1924. Flooding and its consequent extra drilling had not yet been begun to any extent in the Scio pool.
The Fords Brook third sand development in Alma and the northwestern edge of Willing is about three miles from north to south and a half mile wide. Drawn on a map, with the little fourth sand lens crossing it near its northern end, it looks much like an old-fashioned razor, the fourth sand area being the partly opened blade and the third sand the handle. The productive fourth sand is about two miles east and west and half a mile wide, extending from Willing into Alma. In the year 1925 there are 202 producing wells in the Fords Brook pool, with only two wells yet drilled for the flood.
Wellsville Township is crossed by the Fulmer Valley pool in its southwest corner, the development running about five miles long, from north central Willing across Wellsville and into Andover. This is about a mile wide and extends northeast to southwest.
The little Madison Hill pool, with fifty-nine wells in an area of about 300 acres, lies in north central Wellsville, just crossing the line into Scio Township. The sand is the same as that of the Scio pool proper, but there is a dry streak between them.
There is a small irregularly shaped pool in south central Andover, east of the Fulmer Valley district. Another small pool in northwestern Andover extends into Greenwood, Steuben County.
Independence has a small pool near its eastern border, just north of the east central part of the township.
The most easterly oil development in the United States has been a profitable little pool and lies a few miles east of the pool in the town of Independence, Allegany County. It is called "The Marsh" and is located in the north central part of West Union Township, Steuben County. It is irregularly round and covers one and a third square miles of area.
1085
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
CATTARAUGUS COUNTY OIL AREA.
The Cattaraugus County oil field used to be known as the State Line pool. There are about eight miles of dry territory between it and the Allegany County field. It is an extension of the famous. Bradford, Pennsylvania, field and lies along the state line south- west of Olean. It is the Rock City-Knapp's Creek region and ex- tends about eleven miles east and west along the state line, with an irregular width of three miles north and south, and a tongue of the producing sand jutting six miles north of the state line to the edge of the village of Allegany. The southern parts of the townships of Olean, Allegany and Carrollton are included in this pool.
The Chipmunk pool, in the towns of Allegany and Carrollton; the small Rice Brook pool, and the little Red House pools, comprise the Cattaraugus County field except a very small producing area in the southwestern part of Humphrey Township.
THE PROCESS OF FLOODING.
The New York State oil sands all produce some gas along with the oil. This has escaped faster than the oil has been produced, and thus the gas pressure, which has encouraged the flow of oil through the pores of the sandstone, is largely lost after a long period of production. As the gas pressure declines, the oil produc- tion likewise declines, and it has been conclusively proven that only a comparatively small part of the oil contained in the sand can be produced by the old methods. The gas pressure which has been lost is restored in the New York and Bradford fields by another means-that of the hydrostatic pressure of a column of water, standing in a well as high as its depth. Several hundred pounds pressure per square inch are thus exerted on the oil sand at the bottom of the wells. Extra pressure of about as many hundred pounds as desired is in many cases developed by pumping the water into the wells chosen for the water drives. Where the sands are closer and tighter than in the Richburg Valley this method of adding to the natural hydrostatic pressure is becoming popular with operators. The first entirely successful water pressure plant operation was by Thornton & McEnroe on Lot 17,
1086
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
Alma, where a production of twenty-six hundredths of a barrel a day was raised to twenty barrels a day.
Flooding is the driving of the oil from a well or wells by means of. water, and then drilling wells in advance into the flood of oil which usually advances ahead of the water. This method works successfully in the Allegany and Bradford fields, but has failed when tried in some other districts. Gas pressure or air pressure has been successfully used in Ohio, Oklahoma and elsewhere.
Mr. Lawrence E. Smith, staff writer for the National Petro- leum News, described the flooding methods of the Forest Oil Com- pany on the Reed farm, near Richburg, New York, as follows :
"The Forest company put into effect a system of flooding about two years ago somewhat different from that which had been employed theretofore. It consists, in brief, of the drilling across the center of a property of a row of wells in all of which the water is put on the sand. On either side of this row of flood wells a row of oil wells is drilled, these being at equal distances from the water wells and from each other and each oil well is outward in a straight line from a point midway between two water wells. The theory upon which this system is based is that waters advanc- ing from two flood wells toward each other push the oil at right angles to the water travel and the oil wells situated as they are catch the oil."
Relative to methods of flooding, Mr. Forest Dorn, of the Forest Oil Company, said at a meeting of the New York State Oil Pro- ducers Association :
"Our problem was to find the best method of extraction. We experimented with the old circular method, then the four spot method, then the straight line method with every other well producing oil and finally the triangular pressure system. It is the triangular pressure that we are using now and it has proven very successful. We mapped out all of our properties in what we termed 30 year pressure units, that is we figure to totally deplete these units in 30 years. We found that drilling of the necessary wells, power installations, and operating costs averaged about $8000 per acre."
GEOLOGY OF THE NEW YORK OIL FIELDS.
In the summer of 1922, under the direction of Mr. C. A. Hart- nagel, assistant New York State geologist, an investigation, pre- liminary it was hoped to a real survey, was begun of the state's oil fields. It was continued in a small way, but dropped in 1924 for lack of an appropriation, and continued in 1925 with a few weeks' field work.
In writing of the New York oil fields, Mr. Hartnagel said: "The region is a dissected plateau, as a result of which the depths of the oil-bearing sands of the Chemung group of Devonian age vary greatly." The oil sands are encountered in the Genesee
900
COWLES 2
COWLES 3
ROOT
RICHBURG STRAY
S.RICHARDSONE
WRICHARDSON
EMERSON I
COON
PHILLIPS 10
MAXON
MAXON
BURDICK
700
600
SAND CONTENTS NOT STATED
500
500
400
SAND
400
CONTAINING SALT WATER
300
300
OIL SAND LEGEND
RICE BROOK SAND
CHIPMONK SAND
400-
1700 FEET TO OLEAN
SCIO
MADISON
PENNY SAND
300
SAND
HILL SANG
200
SECOND SAND
CONGLOMERATE'->
RICH BURG STRAY
FULMER
MARSH SAND
100
VALLEY SAND
BURG. SOUTH ALMA, FOROS RDS
FORDS BROOK
WEST NOTCH SAND
FOURTH SAND
0 1
VERTICAL SCALE
CLARKSVIL
UPPER WAUGH AND PORTER SAND
LOWER WAUCH AND PORTER
OR NILE SANOS
-
UPPER LIMIT OF BLACK SHALE
CORRELATION OF PRODUCING SANDS
GILBERT 9
MC GIBBENY 1
CANFELD 36
900
800
RICHBURG SANO
800
700
LOWER STREAK
SAND CONTAINING GAS
0
600
NILET SANDS
CONGLOMERATE+
WHITE SAND OR MOUNTAIN SAND
-
LJ800 FEET TO OLEAN
SAND?
BRADFORD SAND
QUICK L
1089
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
River Valley at Scio, Allegany County, at a depth of 500 feet, whereas the sands lie about 1,800 feet below the surface on top of Alma Hill and White Hill, in the town of Alma.
"The very long life of the New York wells," says Mr. Hart- nagel, "is due to the hard, compact nature of the sandstones, which are much like building stones and which have a low porosity and a low but ever-present gas pressure. The main pools, how- ever, are without water-the great terror of many oil fields.
"In spite of the large number of wells that have been drilled, the structures of the oil sands are but imperfectly known. A general southwest dip is often recognized, and a few local anti- clines and synclines have been determined, but undoubtedly many more are present, and recent studies indicate the presence of a few closed structures. Another type of structure is the flat basin- shaped sand lense. The absence of water from most parts of the field and the presence of oil in synclines are noteworthy features. The lack of reliable well logs has hindered greatly in determining structures, and only in the last few years has the importance of reliable well logs been recognized by many of the operators. Geologists were not employed until the fields were thought to be nearly exhausted and much data which might have been of value were no longer available."
REPORT OF A PETROLEUM ENGINEER.
Mr. William L. Russell, petroleum geologist, was the field in- vestigator for the New York State Department of Geology during the summers of 1922 and 1923. He read a paper before a meeting of the New York State Oil Producers Association in 1923, which is herewith reproduced in part:
During the course of our investigation the structure of some of the oil pools was mapped, in order to ascertain the causes which produced them, and find out if a knowledge of these causes could be used to predict new undiscovered oil pools; a study was made of the methods used in flooding, and a number of floods of special interest were mapped in detail; laboratory experiments were carried on to discover the scientific principles and laws which govern flooding. The chief purpose of these investigations was to gather data of practical value to the oil men.
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