The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1916-02-26
OIL FIELDS LIVELY
Boom at EIdoradO and Augusta
Sends Lease Values Up
at Both Places.
BANKERS MAKE A BIG PROFIT
Farm Which Cost Them $4,000 Last
May Recently Sold to Oil Men
for $4,000.

With the sale recently of a gas and
oil lease on $50 acres of land for $685.
900 new high mark for lease bonus
in the Eldorado field was established.
The record price of nearly S4OO an
acre was paid by Wrightsman & Fos-
ter, heavy leasehoIders in Oklahoma
fields, to ]. B. Adams, NJ. J. Long and
H. B. Ferry, local bankers. Under the
terms of the lease, drilling must start
in sixty days, and the owners of the
| land are to receive one-eighth of the
| oil and one-sixth of the gas.
The transfer of the lease provides a
good example of how men suddenly
grow rich in the gamble for oil and
gas in new field In May, 1915, Mr.
Adams and his associates bought the
tract on which the high lease bonus
was paid for SIS an acre. The deal
Involved 800 acres, and it cost them
approximately $4,000. They still re-
tain $50 acres CT the original tract
free from lease. And there is no guess
as to the ultimate value of it, as it is
located less than a mile from a pro-
duc1ng oil well.
Each succeeding high figure paid as
a bonus for leasing renews the excite
ment which attended the bringing in
OF the Stapleton well, the first in the
field, on September 25, 1915. The US
uaI1y quiet little city of Eldorado is
excited. Daily its commercial club
gets together to consider messages
from prospective investors, business
men and promoters. 1t all goes in an
oil boom and the entire Walnut Valley
is in the throes.
Twenty-Five miles further down the
valley is Augusta, where there is a
life-size Oilfield year older in produc-
ton than the field here. It has been
announced that earnings of the Santa
Fe Railway at Augusta for February,
1915, by more than $1,000.
Augustus trouble right now is in
taking care of the influx due to a rapid
! development of the field. The first
of the week saw eleven new drill rigs
unloaded, which brings the total in
the field to sixty-seven.
x x x
School Heads Meet. The annual
| conference of the superintendent of
Kansas schools, in cities of the first
and second classes, closed at Emporia
with the election of officers J. o.
Hall of Hutchinson is the new presi-
dent; r. G. Mueller of Seneca, vice
president; H. P Study, Neodesha,
secretary-treasurer The next meet
ing will be held in Emporia next Octo-
Der and will consist of five sessions
instead of three, as have been held
heretofore.
Minister 90 Years OId.-The Rev.
Philetus Beverly, a retired Methodist
minister, kept open house in Ottawa
recently at the home of a daughter in
celebration of his ninety-ninth birth,
day anniversary. He is active in body
and mind, reading without glasses and
walking without a cane
Funds for Farm eureau-The Lyon
County Board of Commissioners has
appropriated $1,000 to the use of the
Lyon County Farm Bureau for 1916
The request for. the appropriation was
made by a delegation of farmers repre-
senting the 26O members. Under the
state law, the bureau will receive {
like amount from the state agricul
tural college.
kingman Banker Dead.-W. S eros
venor, Go years old, a banker and for
mer mayor of Kingman, died the othel
night the third banker to die in King
| man within a few weeks. He was
. pioneer and built the Independent
Telephone Exchange.
x
Wichita Nurse to War-Miss Gene
We've Walker of. Wichita, sister O
Mrs. Andrew Newman, has sailed 70
London, where she will become a wa
nurse at the front. She is a gradu
ate of Mercy hospital, Chicago, an,
, is a member of DR.. Murphy's clas
: of war nurses.
Dog Brought HeIp-Bob Dunbar,
negro who lives on an island in tn
Arkansas river near the south limit
of Wichita, heard his dog barking fl
: riously the other day and upon goin
to the scene found a man caught in
barbed wire fence that stretche
across the channel and calling 70
help. The man had broken throug
the ice and soon would have frozel
had not the dog called attention to hi
plight Dunbar saved him. He wa
} a member of a camping party.
x x X
| Atchison Attorney Dies-C. S. HUI
| 52 wears old an AtchiSOn attorney 70