Howell County’s Oil City

The quest to discover oil in Howell County began in the summer of 1904, just over the Ozark County line near Bakersfield. 

 

It appears that earlier in the year, farmer J. T. Parrish, in an attempt to drill a water well, struck liquid at 140 feet. However, when the water did not clear, it was declared spoiled, and the drill was moved to another location. West Plains’ attorney, H. D. Green, happened to learn of the incident while attending to other business in Bakersfield and visited the well with a couple of local merchants. They skimmed a dark colored liquid from the top of buckets of water drawn from the well and took it in a jug to West Plains. There, when a string dropped into the jug "burned as readily as pine when ignited with a match," the race was on. Green notified a client of his, the previously mentioned F.R. Cook, who attempted to lease or get an option on the Parrish property, which was refused. Farmer Parrish wanted to sell the property outright.

 

Neighbors were willing to allow leases, and pressure in the community for Parrish to allow further development of the well turned into threatening notices by "unknown persons" telling him to leave the country. According to the Gazette, "One night, someone dropped a pole into the well, and then Parrish became alarmed. He placed his family and household goods into a wagon and left for other parts, first having rented the farm to another party." In what sounds like the plot of a movie, it seems Cook had already started drilling on a nearby farm, but when he discovered the Parrish property was now accessible to him, he gained control, sent off samples of the oil, and made plans to plug the well. 

 

Not to cast any undue dispersions upon Mr. Cook, it should be noted that he was at the time Howell County's State Representative, and an immigration agent for the Frisco Railroad at West Plains. Oil mania had a hold on the natives, and the Gazette reported in October 1904 that Cook had secured options and leases on over 5,000 acres near Bakersfield and Moody, along with his attorney, H.D. Green. Drilling at Moody was reported already at 500 feet, and a larger drill was secured from the Kansas oil fields to sink a shaft 1,500 feet on the Parrish place. 

 

Two Experienced oil drillers from the fields in Pennsylvania were brought to the project at the end of 1905, along with new high-powered steam-driven drilling equipment from Oil City, Pennsylvania. 

The Gazette reported that two railroad cars were required to transport the rig (to West Plains), and seventeen wagons and horse teams were required to haul the equipment to Bakersfield. Additional wells were planned to be drilled at Bakersfield. A meeting was held in West Plains to incorporate a company called F.R. Cook Development, with Green & Green of West Plains as its attorneys. Options and leases on over 10,000 acres of land had been secured. Drilling continued through 1906, with another deep well at Bakersfield. The end result: no oil. Although this project was abandoned, the prevailing mentality was that future drilling would eventually find the gusher and change the fortunes of Howell County's citizens.

 

Ten years later, the torch was picked up by J. A. Feffer, a prosperous farmer south of West Plains. On one of his thousand-acre fruit farms south of West Plains, he noticed "oil signs" and hired geologist S. J. Hatch of Kansas City to investigate. Hatch would prove instrumental in pushing forward years of further exploration efforts in Howell County, with what turned out to be faulty science. Over the years, a stream of scientists and geologists would declare Howell County should have drillable quantities of oil. After visiting the Feffer property, he submitted a report, which was in turn sent to the Commercial Club of West Plains. As a result, the West Plains Gas, Oil, and Mineral Company was formed in 1916, offering 6,000 shares at $100 each to those willing to take a gamble. A group of prominent West Plains businessmen was inducted as the first board of directors, and the West Plains Journal reported, "Nobody knows whether there is oil or not, but these men are willing to put up their money to find out. If they fail, they have shown their faith by their works."

 

By 1917, the Journal reported that $25,000 in stock would be made available to initiate oil drilling on the Feffer Farm. Some three years later, in 1920, the money was finally accumulated to start the project, and the Howell County Gazette announced that a drilling rig capable of going down 3,000 feet was on the Feffer farm ready for action. The project, however, was now under the control of the Feffer Oil and Gas Company, and J.A. Feffer was living in Kansas City. The principal investors of the corporation were equally from West Plains, and Kansas City. Oil was obviously never found, and the Feffer project faded quietly from the scene.

 

The most visible and longest-running oil exploration project in Howell County began at the end of 1918. With World War I over, an economic boom underway, and the widespread use of the automobile and demand for oil at an all-time high, investment in oil seemed a sure thing. The demand for and rising value of stocks, along with a speculative bubble that seemed to have no limit, pushed many small-time investors into markets they might not have otherwise entered or should not have ventured into. In this climate, the unlikely community of Pomona found itself in the center of a predicted oil field. The Pomona Oil and Gas Company was organized on December 30, 1918, with an initial public offering of 100,000 shares, priced at $1 each. Anyone could invest at some level in this opportunity. 

 

Pomona was a relatively new and quite prosperous community at the time. Built as a result of the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railroad's arrival in the early 1880s, the area wasn't officially a town until 1894, when a plat of streets was filed and a post office was approved. Pomona is named after the Roman goddess of fruit, and at the turn of the century, that was its main business. Thousands of acres of apple, pear, and peach trees surrounded Pomona and the Olden community. At one time, Howell County was home to the largest fruit orchard in the nation and was rightfully known as the "Land of the Big Red Apple." Pomona was growing in 1918, with several stores, a newspaper, a mill, churches, and the Pomona Citizens Bank, founded in 1906.

 

The chief officer of the bank, Albert Lee Babb, Cashier, was a major investor and principal stockholder in the Pomona Oil Company, buying an initial 15,000 shares. The West Plains Journal reported on May 29, 1919, that the drill was being erected six miles northeast of Pomona in the Antioch community. It also reported that some 6,000 acres in the Pomona and Hutton Valley communities were under lease by the company. 

 

If you have an abstract of deed in the middle or southern portion of the county, check for a lease from the early oil hunters. The land on which I live, two miles south of Hutton Valley, miles from the well location, has a recorded gas and mineral lease to the Pomona Oil and Gas Company from this time period. Many of these leases were never cleared.

 

In April 1921, the Willow Springs Republican reported, “A new town to be known as ‘Oil City’ is being laid out in the Napier addition, two miles east of Hutton Valley, and as soon as arrangements can be made, an auction sale of the town lots will be held.”. Pomona Banker Babb convinced a lot of people, and I believe he was convinced a gusher was coming.

 

All area newspapers reported on the progress of drilling, often with personal accounts from those witnessing the work. For example, the Douglas County Herald in Ava told its readers that, “It is being rumored around Cabool that W.H. Farley of that place claims to have operated his automobile with crude oil obtained from the Pomona oil well.”

 

The West Plains Quill reported June 8, 1922, “A large number of people from West Plains attended the celebration at the test well of the Pomona Oil Company, southeast of Pomona, yesterday afternoon. There also were many visitors from Willow Springs, Mountain View, and other neighboring towns who had been invited to visit the well and to see the rainbow formations in the tailings, which were taken from the well.” The cuttings from the drill bit were periodically soaked in water to see if any oil would float to the top often creating a multicolored sheen.

 

The drilling continued, along with the promotion to sell more stock and keep the enterprise going. Banker A.L. Babb wrote the Licking, Missouri News about a visit to the well on the 4th of July, 1924, “I visited the Pomona Oil Well and found the drillers at work. They have drilled to a depth of 3,500 feet, the deepest in the state. They are drilling day and night with the expectation of finding oil at any moment. They are over 2,200 feet below sea level, and yet they are still going down. The driller told me they struck sand ranging from two to three feet in thickness, then they struck rock for several feet. He informed me that if they got sand from fifteen to twenty feet in thickness, they would have oil. I hope this is true. It is almost too good to be true.”

 

By July 1930, the Pomona well was at 4,000 feet, with signs of oil and still no gusher. Not long after, the Pomona Oil and Gas Company again ran out of money. With the nation in the depths of a depression the prospect for further drilling was gone. 

 

One by one the other wells in South Central Missouri suffered a similar fate. The derrick at Pomona was torn down and the metal hauled off for scrap. The well was capped and forgotten. One of the last attempts to find oil in Howell County occurred at Crider. When they failed to find oil a pump was installed and the well was used as a source of water for the community. This and the jobs provided local men engaged in drilling were perhaps the only benefit derived from oil fever in Howell County, unless you count the experience.

 

Often in this period stock offerings in shady schemes were just a sophisticated way of bilking folks out of their money. The oil bubble could in some instances been seen as just a con game, but the evidence at Pomona and the other Howell County efforts point to a genuine belief that oil would be found here. The men involved were led by so called experts to invest and continue to invest against all hope in what turned out to be some spectacular failures.

 

In 1924 the Pomona Citizen’s Bank failed when it was found that Cashier A.L. Babb had sunk over sixty-two thousand dollars of the bank’s money in the failed well at Pomona, believing it was a good investment.  It seems Babb had been using the money, according to his own admission, to help finance the drilling with the expectation that any day a strike would change his fortunes and those of the bank depositors. He stated he had every intention of returning every penny of the money to the bank. The impact of his actions caused a collapse and closing of the bank, and to Babb pleading guilty.  He was quickly sentenced to six years in prison, which was commuted by the Missouri Governor after he had served three years.

 

According to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources we just don't have the geography for oil reserves. While oil is found on the western border of Missouri, extending to the northwest corner, northeast corner, and extreme southeast corner of the state in varying quantities, there should be no significant quantities here. A lot of time and money was spent in this region to learn that lesson in a period when science was erroneously telling us oil was here.

 

There are several towns named Oil City in the United States, including Oil City, Pennsylvania. There would have been one in Howell County if we could have found any of the stuff.