The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-01-21
THE OIL STRIKE IN WEST VIR-
 GINA.

1iLNlta-
 | On the 21st of last September the Widow Copey went out on to her pi-
 azza to call the oil hands to dinner
 from the well then drilling on the banks of Sand Ford creek, on the line between Lewis and Gilmer counties, twelve miles from the town of Weston.
 While her voice was echoing, its tones
 were drowned by an upheaving roar as
 column of reddish oil blew off the
 empty cap, shot upward through and
 beyond the seventy-foot derrick, and
 curving outward like waterspout de-
 seconded in a cloud-burst of petroleum,
 nearly drowning the hands, who no
 longer thought of their dinner for
 hours. The two tanks already erected
 held five hundred barrels. They were
 filled in less than two hours after con-
 nection was finally made. The four
 inch pipeline was totally inadequate,
 and two more were hurriedly laid, one
 of them six-inch tube, and for
 month this phenomenal gusher not only
 kept them vusy carrying off the oil to-
 wards Camden, ten miles away, but
 poured steady overplus into tank af-
 ter tank as fast as they could be put
 up, until nearly one hundred were
 struggling along the creek, some of
 them holding 1850 barrels each. Not
 satisfied even with that, this Minerva
 born geyser sent thousands of barrels
 (not gallons) down Sand Fork with
 such celerity that 1t took three dams to finally check the flood.
 TN., 4lnt Kanawha river were reddishly greasy with the lurid-looking fluid. People dipped it up by the bucketful just for the fun of the thing, and wondered how the Copleys felt. Horny-handed ex- populists quit drealming of free silver and tariff reform, and coquetted with monopoly and the option men for bet ter terms. Spectators overfowed Weston until the very wagon-sheds sheltered men with gripsacks filled with banknotes and a clean shirt whom the more pretentious buildings would not hold. The single-track rail- road became gorged with unaccus- toned traffic, and the "man with the team" was more the monarch of the and is even yet, than Millet and Markhams Man with the Hoe" probably ever hoped to be should his special millennium unexpectedly arrive. The eight hundred inmates of the near by state insane asylum were certainly not less crazy in their behavior. at least, than were hundreds of those who | surged through Weston upon the rag | ged ridges of Sand Fork for weeks.
 When a month later, the Turner | gusher'' started in at three hundred | barrels an hour pandemonium reiencd. Farmers who had already leased, sold | traction of their ne-eighth royalty for fabulous sums. One man named Mick, who just previous to the breaking out of the Copley had vainly offered his barren little side-hill farm for a horse md cart, went off to a mountain lun- Der camp in disgust. To his surprise lis brother presently appeared with cam and offered to reconsider. Mick No. 1 gladly accepted, and took the horse and cart, while Mick No. 2, who Snew all about the Copley's recent per- ormance, hurried back and sold out he farm to a speculator for six thou- and dollars. This man, in his turn made other deals with other specuIa- ors, so that, when Mick No. 1, smelling ! rat, returned, he found that his few barren acres were worth thirty-five housand dollars, with offers. Result. brotherly row, contingent lawsuit nd the end is not yet And so the anne old story with varia tions was re- nacted that has enivened the early history Of every great oil strike from { ne days Of Coal Oil Johnny down to ne present day.-Glenvile CW. Val | of the Springfield Re ublican {
 Grip made me very weak and nerv- with ticrht1,nrc, ". 1 (