Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1916-02-24
|OIL FIELDS lively
Boom at EldOradO 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 gas and
oil lease on 100 acres of land for $685.
200 new high mark for a lease bonus
In the Eldorado field was established.
The record price of nearly $500 an
acre was paid by Wrightsman G Fos-
ter, heavy leaseholders in Oklahoma
fields, to ]. B. Adams, M. ]. Long and
II. 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 $2S 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 1t, as it is
located less than a mile from pro-
duc'ng oil we'll
Each succeeding high figure paid as
bonus for leasing renews the excite
meat which attended the bringing in
OF The Stapleton well. the first in the
field, on September %, 1915 The u.s.
ually quiet little city of Eldorado is
excited. Daily its commercial club
gets together to consider me ssages
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. 1t 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 rapid
development of the field. The first
of the week saw eleven new drill rigs
unloaded, which brings the total il
the field to sixty-seven.
X X X
School Heads Meet. - The annua
conference of the superintendent o
Kansas schools, in cities of the frs
and second classes, closed at Empori;
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 helC
heretofore.
X X X
Minister SO Years od.-The Rev
Philetus Beverly, a retired Methods
minister, kept open house in Ottawa
recently at the home of 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.
X X X
Funds for Farm Bureau.-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 delegation Of farmers repre-
senting the 260 members. Under the
state law, the bureau will receive a
like amount from the state agricul
tural college.
X X X
kingman Banker Dead.-W. S .Gros
venor, So years old, banker and for
mer mayor of Kingman, died the other
night, the third banker to die in King
man within few weeks. He was a
pioneer and built the Independent
] Telephone Exchange.
X X X
Wichita Nurse to War-Miss Gene
We've Walker of Wichita, sister Of
! Mrs. Andrew Newman, has sailed fol-
London, where she will become a wal
nurse at the front She is a gradu
ate of Mercy hospital, Chicago, and
is a member of DR.. Murphy's class
of war nurses.
X X X
Dog Brought HeIp-Bob Dunbar, e
negro who lives on an island in the
Arkansas river near the south limits
of Wichita, heard his dog barking flu
riously the other day and upon going
to the scene found man caught in q
barbed wire fence that stretched
across the channel and calling foi
help. The man had broken through
the ice and soon would have frozer
had not the dog called attention to his
plight. Dunbar saved him. He was
member of camping party.
X X X
Atchison Attorney Dies--C. s. Hull
So years old, an Atchison attorney fol
twenty-five years and resident o
the city for thirty-five years, is deat
there He was graduate of Oska
loosa college, now Drake university
at Des Moines.