In 1919, an Oasis Oil executive accompanied two landowners near Oakley to a "perfect oil dome" that gas was escaping from and where nearby wells proved unfit for use. They hired a geologist for $1000 and his findings excited them enough to send a man east to buy an oil drill, planning a sixteen inch hole to go as deep as four thousand feet. The Southeast Idaho oil well rush was on--though it would prove to be but a gasp.
By May the oil drill at George Creek, near Almo and present-day City of the Rocks, was being assembled, and in November drilling had commenced. In March of 1921, it was still drilling away. A year later, oil fever caught hold closer to Bingham County, with drilling going on in Arbon Valley, near Pocatello.
A group of area investors, including Grimm seed growers from Sterling and sheepmen and businessmen from Pocatello, got excited about the oil just as earlier men had been struck by gold fever, and incorporated the Maude Ellen OIl Company with a capital stock of $150,000, $48,000 of which was already subscribed. Three carloads of investors visited the well site near Vernal, Utah in December of 1925, eager to partake in oil wealth.
The directors of Maude Ellen included President A.E. Fridenstine and Vice President Guy Wakefield of Pocatello, directors Alva Belville and R.A. Carson of Blackfoot, as well as Charles Watson of Pocatello. Fridenstine and Belville had worked together before in an unrelated business: pianos. Wakefield and Carson were Belville's son-in-laws. Belville was selling and tuning pianos in Blackfoot and much of Bingham County, including Sterling in 1905 and after, but he also dabbled in horses--he traveled to Omaha for some sales--and ran a dairy and ranching for a time, having a ranch on the Blackfoot River in the teens and then eventually purchasing ground in Springfield, where he grew Grimm alfalfa seed. Fridenstine, who owned Pocatello Music early in the century, was a sheepman of some note, joining with a consortium of other grazers to lease 35,000 acres in the Taber area and reporting from Mud Lake in 1932 that 50,000 sheep were in danger of starving from an intense winter which kept them from finding browse and kept him from reaching them with feed.
It wasn't as unusual as it sounds to wear more than one hat at that time--the mayor of Blackfoot ran a Furniture and Undertaking enterprise, after all, and Judge Hart ran a shoe store and had a farm near Tilden, on the side. In part, there were a lot of different things to do, none of the profitable on their own, and in part the early days of any endeavor (like oil drilling) hold promise even for the uninitiated of that profession.
In March 1926, with $90,000 worth of stock sold, construction of the drilling rig, an eighty-foot tall derrick, commenced. Meanwhile, the geologist at Oakley was packing his bags after seven years of drilling and evasive about the prospect of oil. In 1927, 5000 acres worth of oil leases were placed in Melon Valley, west of Twin Falls. Buhl and Boise area drilling was underway, and in May the Maude Ellen hole encountered difficulties--the 12 1/2 inch hole was caving in at three hundred feet, requiring it be filled with cement and drilled again. It was back in business in July at 450 feet deep, with casing being run to prevent caving. The drilling shut down for a month in October, then resumed and was at 600 feet in February.
The oil craze hit BIngham County in a bigger way in April, Standard Oil taking ten thousand acres in leases. At Arimo, a sixteen thousand acre oil lease was being tested. Buhl and Jerome activity ramped up. In July of 1928, Maude Ellen was at 1080 feet. In December, 1410. At 1450, it broke its stem.
March 1919, 1780 feet. A delay in May for fishing--tools dropped down the well needed to be retrieved. July, 1610 feet. October, 1650. November, 1742. In January of 1930, after four years of drilling, the hole was 1860 feet deep. Investors visited the scene in June, perhaps concerned their investment had yet to yield anything.
But in April of 1931, news did come--of an unwelcome sort: the Blue Sky Division of Idaho's Department of Finance, created to oversee companies selling stock in order to protect purchasers from unscrupulous characters, accused Belville, Beverly Howard of Melon Oil, and Wakefield of false representation, with Howard being taken into custody.
Meanwhile, Maude Ellen kept plugging away, was at 2200 feet in April of 1932. And Grand Teton Oil was still drilling near Driggs in 1934, the year Maude Ellen lost its charter. Standard Oil packed its bags quietly and left, but in Burley the oil craze was still at it in 1939, a California company erecting bunkhouses and a derrick at the Utah border in Boxelder County.
Ralph Thurston is the author of "Tilden", a novel set in turn-of-the-century (twentieth) Bingham County. You can find a copy in Blackfoot at Kesler's Market, in Idaho Falls at Winnie and Mo's, and online at https://www.amazon.com/Tilden-Ralph-Thurston/dp/166557223X?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
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