The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-10-07
The Latest Oil Strike.

diger"-the animal always has the bulge
on luck. Any man with thousand
dollars can bore; but boring here and
elsewhere is on the formula which estab-
dishes the difference between the muSh-
room and the toadstool-yOu eat it; if you
live it is mushroom, if you die it is a
toadstool. If you strike oil you have
bored in the right place; if you don t
strike oil. YOU haven't; that's all. 1t is
very simple. l saw to-day man who
found that he had bored in the right
place, and he had just made the dis
.covery | feel justified in saying he was
drunk with Joy. He is now drunk with
the worst whisky outside of Washing
ton. Yesterday he wanted to sell his
claim for $1,000 An hour before he
broke The earth's crust, and when it was
certain that the oil in some quantity
would be reached, he offered to part with
his risk for So, 800. No takers. When
that hour had expired he had tapped
reservoir, or ''the belt" at 900 feet, and
the liberated oil spouted in torrents into
the tanks and air. He is now worth
$50, 900. He had eaten mushrooms.
But am anticipating. The first thing
( saw on my arrival in Franklin was the
apparent excitement about oil. Frank
lin and Oil City have been quite over
Swallowed in the oil speculation by that
wonderful 800 barrel well at Garfield.
SO was rather surprised to hear that
Yesterday strike was made in Gran
berry Township, near here, and just
such q remarkable flow discovered.
Following everybody else, | got
buggy after some difficulty. and started
nor the scene of excitement. 1t was al
most opposite the town over the river,
but it was a roundabout way of six
miles to reach it. The livery man adj
monshed me to keep the horse out of the
oil ia the road, as it would take the hair off.
This road was wild, rocky, crooked,
wicked road, and was marked with
greasy pipes here and there, which
seemed TO creep down from the noun
tain like endless, Shiny blacksnakes-
through the bushes, under the slender
maiden-hair ferns, beneath blackberry
briar and the tangled wire-grass, among
the gnarled scrub oaks and the riot
golden-rod- finally plunging under the
road and disappearing over the bluff on
the other side. Far below they con-
nected with the great iron tanks beside
the railroad track. These iron pipes
have been connected with the sea-board
recently, and the pump stations, at con-
'venient distances, force the oil to grease
It's own way to the Eastern refinery and
places of shipment. When | reached
the top of the bluff / saw the tall der
ricks dotting the fields on either side,
and the smoke and steam and walking
beam told of activity. 1t was where the
road beyond was blocked up by horses
and vehicles that the attention was di-
rected. There was q small farmhouse
on the left. In the family garden-patch
a gang of men were busily at work put
ting up an immense derrick. In the
family barn-yard one had Just been
erected, and workmen were getting in
the machinery. In the corn-teld beyond
the garden stood derrick about ninety
feet high. There was another one just
like it this side, in the oats, and this
derrick was black with oil from bottom
to top. This was the big well where
the strike was made yesterday, and the
blackened derrick was the mark of the
oil-spout that shot eighty feet into the
air SO unexpectedly.
Ny horse in fence corner, [ plunged
through the oat stubble to join the look
ers-on, and suddenly found myself over
shoe-tops in oil-mud. The flow had
slooded the whole neighborhood and
left it sticky and disagrceable. There
was curious scene here, The corn was
trampIed in the mud; the oat shocks
thrown down; the fences were half
destroyed, On the grounds were Strewn
ends of worn-out ropes, joints of iron
pipe, rails and odds and ends of rude
machinery. There was furnace and
steam boiler mounted between the corn
rows, and the stalks wilted with the heat
or were trampled under foot. No one
noticed so small thing. The place
looked like battlefield where a battery
had been worked. The machinery was
still. There is no need of machinery.
The Oil is glad enough to come up and
be run in. The pipes simply connect
with the casing of the well and run off
there through the corn, where they
empty into two great tanks. You can
hear the roar of the escaping gas as it
blows off the dark oil into the tanks, now
ceasing, now gurgling, now making a
rushing noise like the escaping steam of
IA locomotive. You can climb up the
little ladder and look over the top of the
half-flled tank into the dark, creamy,
sickening oil within,
This is what was doing when heard
shout down the road and saw the
crowd jumping over the fences into the
opposite field, Here in the clover was
another well. and it seemed to be CEN
ter of excitement. | followed the rest,
and pell-mell we went through the corn,
over the broken fences and into the
clover field. A dozen sleek and oily
looking spectators were dabbling in
some sand. | didn't know what the
sand was, but gathered up handful
very carefully and examined it very
critically. They took me for a specu-
Aator and waited for my opinion. had
never seen any such sand before, but
everybody has very decided opinions on
such matters. They wanted mine and
risked it:
II think it is very good sand" said l..
''First-class," said greasy little man
with aprancing voice. Il say it is good