FRANK M. WHEELER

Twenty-nine descendants of Mr. and Mrs. Frank M. Wheeler, on whose farm the first big Drumright oil strike occurred in 1912, gathered here Saturday and Sunday, July 13-14, for a reunion.

Most of them were grandchildren representing the Wheeler and Weaver sides of the families. They came from seven states.

The family invited D. Earl Newsom, author of "Drumright! The Glory Days of a Boom Town," to their meeting and he took them on a special tour of the Drumright Historical Museum. The group was also greeted by Billie Linduff, a member of the Ambassador's Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, who took pictures for them.

Attending were Mrs. Mildred Pratt of Maud; Mrs. Zelma Mae Daniels, Del City; V.A. and Edna Pratt, Maud; Leroy and Thelma Evans, Salem, Ill.; Mike and Kari Sever, Bristow; Ivan and Othelle Weaver, Dupach, La.; Fern and Dick Korevec, Kellyville, Calif.; Clifford and Callie Mae Weaver, Norman; Calvin and Marcella Weaver, Norman; Billy Weaver, Norman; Louise and Jerry Hickman and sons, Carter and Clint, Yukon.

Also, Frank and Hazel Wheeler, Santa Barbara, CA.; Ray and Sue Wheeler, Hurst, TX.; Norman and Ruth Appleby, Irving, TX.; Ruth Pettigrew, Norman; Betty Jean and G.L. Custer, Copan; Jack and Dean Wheeler, Pawhuska; Charles and Patty Brewer, Arkansas City, KS.; Lea Ann Darbrow and Holly Nichols of Wichita, KS.

The family voted to return to Drumright for another reunion in 1987.

Among Frank M. Wheeler's grandchildren who came to the Wheeler reunion in Drumright were four children of Frank L. Wheeler: Ray L. Wheeler, Hurst, TX.; Frank E. Wheeler, Santa Barbara, CA.; Betty Jean Custer, Copan, OK.; and Jack Wheeler, Pawhuska.

These direct descendants of Frank M. Wheeler were among the 29 who attended the reunion on July 13-14 in Drumright.

Twenty-nine descendants of Frank M. Wheeler gathered at the Drumright Community Center. The first oil gusher of the famed Drumright field occured on the Wheeler farm in 1912.

The oldest and youngest grandchildren at the Wheeler family reunion were Leroy Evans of Salem, Ill., and Patty Ray Brewer of Wichita.

It was on a small farm in 1912, that the third largest oilfield in the United States was discovered. The farm was owned by a livery stable proprietor and stone mason named Frank M. Wheeler.

The discovery of the first oil well in the Cushing-Drumright Pool is a factual story. The learning of when, how and where the well was discovered is educational. The events that happened during and after the drilling of the Wheeler #1 Well provide a story suitable for a movie to be written about it.

The one hundred and sixty acre farm has changed over the past seventy-two years, so have the settlements on the property, and the people who have owned the land. This well's production led to the establishment of the many other oil wells within a two or three year period, after the original well was drilled. It also led to the starting of a boomtown known as Drumright.

Mr. Frank M. Wheeler was born somewhere in Illinois on June 22, 1858. He went to school in both Illinois and Ohio. He became well known aa a stone mason, and his works can be found in Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas, Colorado, Utah, Kansas and Oklahoma. In Oklahoma a person can find his buildings still standing in Guthrie, Oklahoma, Payne and Lincoln Counties, and scattered about the northeastern and central parts of the state.

On August 7, 1880, Frank married Hannah Elizabeth Fritch, a native Indian maiden from Winfield, Kansas. The couple was married in Hannah's home town. They lived in Kansas until 1891; the year he made the run to Oklahoma. He, his wife and five daughters came to the Sac and Fox country; they made their home on one hundred and sixty acres located in Lincoln County. The land he staked out by the Homestead Act was prime grazing land. He built a log cabin on his acreage and started raising cattle. Not long after his cattle ranch took hold, Frank Wheeler gave up his masonary work to ranch.

In 1902 he was forced to sell his ranch to the Katie Railroad. He bought a farm in Payne County, just four miles down the road from his old ranch. It was here that he built the "House of Eight Gables" with nine large rooms. The precise location is not known and wasn't found in the records of the Payne County Courthouse. The family of seven had now grown to eleven. Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler had eight daughters: Lula May, Carrie Leata, Maude Bell, Birdie Florence, Pearl Hazeldede, Blanche Ellen, Thursa Fern and Josie Ivy and one son: Frank Lester Wheeler.

The family lived in Payne County until August 10, 1910; the year Mr. Wheeler had pioneer fever again. He bought one hundred and sixty acres of Creek Indian land twelve miles east of Cushing, Oklahoma. The land was not good for farming or ranching. The land was known by the family as sixty acres of plow land and one hundred acres of rocks and scrub. The barren farm caused the Wheeler family to be on the brink of poverty. Frank spent time as a livery owner and seeking stone mason jobs in the community. This property adjoined what was later the Aaron Drumright farm. The boundaries of the Wheeler farm started as far south of the alley dividing Pine and Shaffer Streeets, as far north as the Highway 33 truck by-pass, as far west as Ohio Street and as far east at ten to fifteen acres east of Tiger Creek.

Wheeler leased his mineral rights to Tom Slick to drill an oil well. At the time that he leased his land, Frank didn't think oil would be found, because of the many dry holes in the area. The land was leased in late 1911, and Mr. Slick immediately started hunting for financial backers for his new venture. After the gusher came in, the Wheeler family was forced to move for peace and tranquility.

Overnight the Wheeler farm changed from a poor barren land to tent city. People were waiting in long lines at the Wheeler kitchen door for food handouts, because the nearest cafeteria was twelve miles west in Cushing, Oklahoma. The Drumright Oilfield Museum has a picture of the lines of men, women and children "Waiting for Dinner" outside the Wheeler home every meal. Hannah fed as many people as she possibly could each day.

After leaving the Wheeler community known as Tent City; Shaffer's Camp, Fulkerson, Deep Rock and now Drumright; he moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma. There he bought a home at 232 Duncan Street and lived in this house until after all his children were out of high school. Then he moved to 501 Lewis Street, now part of the Oklahoma State College area. He owned and lived in this house until his death.

He bought a ranch of 1230 acres in Foraker, Oklahoma, about eighteen miles northwest of Pawhuska, and another ranch of 1200 acres in Harlingen, Texas. He raised cattle on both ranches and citrus fruit in an orchard on the ranch in Texas. During World War I he furnished beef and fruit to United States Army from his Texas ranch. Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler spent their winters in Texas until their deaths. Mrs. Hannah Wheeler died December 14, 1927, and Frank Wheeler died August 31, 1932. This couple had gone from "rags to riches" during their lifetime. At their deaths, both were buried in the Fairlawn Cemetery at Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Mr. Frank M. Wheeler donated land for a school to be built on. The school was to be called Wheeler School and it was a two-story red brick building. It was built and for a short time referred to as the Wheeler School, but later named Ward Four. It was torn down in the late 1940s and a new single-story building erected and it was named Edison Elementary School. This school held grades first through eighth. After the school was partially destroyed in the 1950's, it was reconstructed on the original site. The school is now named Edison Middle School and holds grades sixth through eighth. Mr. Wheeler also plotted forty acres of his land for the Wheeler 1st Addition of Drumright to be built, but the exact location was not found in research.

Tom Slick, a self-educated geologist, was positive that there was oil in the area between Sapulpa and Cushing, Oklahoma. He departed out of Sapulpa walking the country-side, for "the smell of oil sands were perfume to his nostrils," in hopes of finding signs of oil. At four mile intervals he leased and drilled his way into the land owned by the Creek Nation. Each time Slick would drill another dry hole or duster was found. That was how Tom Slick received his nicknames: Mad Tom Slick, Dry Hole Slick and King of the Wildcatters. Late one evening Tom found himself tired and weary and he decided to stop and rest in a valley. He noted the bugs on the ground, the dirt signs and felt this was the place to put his next well.

Slick wandered through the Black Oaks up a portion of a hill to a small five-room cabin. He was made welcome to dinner and a makeshift bed for the night. That night in late 1911 he leased the land from Frank M. Wheeler to drill for oil. He promised Mr. Wheeler 1/8th of all the oil he discovered on the lease. The following morning Slick departed, carrying with him the key to the incredible Cushing fields, one of the richest oil strikes ever to be found in the United States.

The site for the well was in Section 31, Township 18 North, Range 7 East in Creek County. The backers of Slick were skeptical to loan or finance another well with him, since the last well was another dry hole. He went to Cushing after being turned down by B.B. Jones of Bristow, but even after offering 1/2 interest in all his leases, nobody was willling to advance him the $8,000.00 necessary to drill the well on the Wheeler farm. As a last minute resort he went to Chicago to talk to an old acquaintance of his from back in the Pennsylvania oil fields. Charles B. Shaffer decided to loan Slick the money, and drilling on the Wheeler #1 Well began promptly on his reutrn to Oklahoma.

The drilling operation on the farm proceeded rapidly and in about a month reports were that a depth had been reached of close to 2000 feet. The Cushing Democrat Newspaper report was the "oil sand with what appeared to be an abundance of oil" in its publication of February 21, 1912.

A wooden cable-tool derrick was used in the drilling of the Wheeler Well. The old cable-tool rigs through the 1920's had a crew usually consisting of a driller and his tool dresser. The tool dresser dressed the tools being used in the drilling. A cable-tool system is a method of pounding a hole by repeated blows with a bit attached to a drilling string, a heavy length of steel jars suspended from the cable. The jars provided the weight to force the bit into the ground. The cable-tool rigs were famous in early days for their blowouts and gushers, since they had no blowout prevention systems on them.

Slick's crew included O.A. Bartley, the driller and S.O. Ellis, the tool dresser, who both lived in Drumright until their deaths. On March 12, 1912, the well blew with a roar of gas-driven oil that flooded the earth all around the derrick. The well came in at a depth of between 2319 and 2347 feet. It was blowing out 400 barrels of oil per day. Slick immediately capped the well, and he spread fresh soil over the oily dirt to conceal the discovery. He covered the well with a tub, and several hundred pounds of weights was placed on top of the tub. The well had such great pressure that every seventeen minutes it would erupt. The pressure would lift the tub, weights and drill from the hole, and it forced two barrels of oil out of the hole. This is how the Wheeler #1 Well became known as "Old Faithful."

When the gusher came in, Tom Slick ran to the Wheeler house and cut the telephone wire so nobody could leak word of the discovery. After concealing the well the best he could, he went to Cushing and Tom bought all the horses and livery wagons he could find. He had hoped that the transportation to the well site from Cushing would be stopped for awhile. He hired armed men to surround and protect the well from fortune seekers, oil leasers and other oilmen. Slick overlooked one automobile in Cushing. When word did get out about Slick's strike, it carried passengers to and from the area to the well for $25.00 per person. Many men hunting work set out on foot across the dense treed and uncultivated hills between the Wheeler farm and Cushing.

Slick telegraphed C.B. Shaffer about the gusher, and Tom asked him to come at once with J.K. Gano and his experienced crew of "lease getters." It started a period of feverish drilling and almost overnight a forest of oil derricks sprang up on all sides of the discovery well. The field spread in all directions; people poured in from everywhere; shacks, tents and flimsy buildings appeared overnight. The beginning of a boomtown had started. The oilfield took its name from the nearest town. It was called the Cushing Field.

The oil from the first well was found in the Drumright Dome, on the western slope. The zone was named the Wheeler Sand and now is often referred to as the Oswago zone or sand formation. It is a formation of oil sands about seventy-five feet thick and approximately 2,200-2,300 feet below the earth surface. It consists of two members or coarse-grained, light-brown limestone with a shale break.

The oil that was produced by the Wheeler #1` at the time of discovery was a very high-grade crude oil. The Shaffer Oil Company opened an office in Cushing over the old City Drug Store. Later they opened an office in Drumright. The Wheeler well was producing so rapidly that Shaffer constructed two wooden storage tanks, and later a steel storage tank was built, capable of holding 32,000 barrels of oil.

There was a lack of transportation in the area, because there was no railroads or pipelines. Much oil spilled or gushed onto the ground, due to the lack of storage tanks and pipelines. It was in 1912 that the first pipeline company placed its pipe into the ground, and hooked it up to the Wheeler #1 Well. The Company was the Prairie Oil and Gas Company, later known as the Sinclair Prairie Oil and Gas Company, Sinclair Oil and Gas Company, Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas Company and Arco Pipeline Company.

The Prairie Oil Company bought forty acres of the Wheeler property east of the #1 well for $64,000.00. The original building site that the Shaffer Oil Company used was also bought from the Wheeler family in 1912. It was later known as Shaffer Oil Company, Deep Rock Oil, General American Company and Phillips 66 Oil Company. It is located at the intersection of Old-North Highway 33 and the Highway 33 Truck by-pass and it is across the road from the turn off to the Wheeler #1 Well.

In 1952 the businessmen of Drumright gathered to pay tribute to the well that led to the founding of their town. Among those at the well site were Lou Allard, Jr., Doctor Woodard, Archie Wiemer and Haskell King. These men erected a monument and they placed a plaque on the top with an inscription on it. It read, "Old Faithful, site of the No. 1 F. M. Wheeler discovery well of the Drumright-Cushing Oilfield. It was completed by C.B. Shaffer, et al on April 1, 1912; set off one of the greatest 'oil booms' in history. The well has produced oil for more than 35 years." In 1970 the plaque was removed and placed in Z.D. Howard's Ford Garage in storage because of vandalism attempts. The plaque is presently on the wall by the entrance ot the Drumright Oilfield Museum.

The Oilfield Museum has several books with information on the Wheeler well, the Wheeler family, the oil boom days, the beginning of Drumright and the Cushing Oilfield. There are pictures of the era, the workers on the #1 well, the Wheeler family and early boomtown days. Other than the plaque, some pictures, a few folders at the museum and a few books scattered in the library with brief mentions of the Wheeler #1 and Frank M. Wheeler, they are virtually non-known subjects. There is no road sign to mark the well. The children in Drumright rarely know about the discovery well that led to the establishment of their town, nor do tey know who Frank M. Wheeler was.

The founding of the Cushing-Drumright Oilfield started a change to the barren farms that prople had barely endured on before the strike. Mrs. Ellis, whose husband worked on the first well, opened the first boarding-house in the Drumright area. Her rooming house did not accomodate the large masses of prospectors that were now in the new community of Wheeler.

Mr. Aarron Drumright, J. W. Fulkerson and Harley Fulkerson divided 900 feet along the east-west section line into lots. The east-west section line along the 900 feet was christened "Broadway Street." It is still the main fareway in Drumright today.

The lots that were divided up were sold at a cost of $12.50 a front. The size of the lots were 25 feet in the front and about 50 to 100 feet deep. Harley Fulkerson received about $40,000.00 for his 40 acres and land. The community was called Fulkerson, since the original building sites were mainly on the Fulkersons' farms. Due to a vulgar pronunciation of the Fulkerson name, Mr. J. W. Fulkerson requested that the town be changed to Drumright. In January 1913 the people of the boomtown area elected to become a town of Oklahoma, and Drumright, Oklahoma, was on its way to be a chartered town. December 7, 1915, it was recognized as a brand new chartered town of the State of Oklahoma. It had a population of about 6,460 people, 109 businesses were in operation and about 150 boarding houses accomodating as many as 500 people were in the town.

On the original Wheeler farm was a livery stable and ice house owned by the Wheeler family. The Shaffer Oil Company, Wheeler School, Deep Rock Camp, Prairie Oil and Gas Company, Kerr McGee Oil Company and the Wheeler 1st Addition were just a few of the early constructions developed on the farm. Over the years many other buildings have been established or their names changed. Edison Middle School, George Seals Automobile Repair Shop, Independent Trucking Company, Drumright's County barn, Phillips 66 Oil Company and many acres of residential homes are scattered about the old Wheeler homestead.

The Wheeler #1 Well was producing 400 barrels a day in 1912 and brought royalties of $125.00 per day for the Wheeler family. Within a few months of the #1 Well, fourteen other producing wells had been developed on the Wheeler farm. The valley and hills in the Drumright area were peppered with oil derricks and oil wells. In less than one year after the first strike, 150 wells had been drilled and were producing 23,079 barrels of oil per day. Drilling rigs could not be constructed fast enough to keep up with the growing number of drilling company requests for derricks.

By July 1914, there was 890 operating wells, 32 abandoned wells and crews busy drilling 182 new wells. The daily oil flow was an astounding 161,078 barrels and a total amount of oil stored in wooden and steel tanks was 1,843,338 barrels. By June 1915, the produced oil was 8,002,500 barrels.

Old Faithful presently pumps about four hours a day, and in that period, it produces one barrel of oil. It produces its oil from three different zones: the Wheeler Sand, the original sand, the Layton Sand and the Bartlesville Sand. The sand formation levels are for the Layton 1,700-1,900 feet below the surface, the Wheeler 2,200-2,300 feet below surface and the Bartlesville about 2,600-2,700 feet below the surface.

A secondary recovery method is now being used on the Wheeler #1 for oil recovery and production. The process is known as "cracking the well." Where substances such as sulphuric acid or sand is used to break down the mineral deposits that ruin the oil porosity. The porosity is the hole's or the sand's density. The deposits, that have to be cracked, have closed the holes. The oil cannot be recovered until the well is cracked. The #1 well has been sand-fractured. The sand is forced under high pressure to "crack" the mineral deposits, so the oil can now flow.

The oil from the discovery well is owned by General American Company. They sell the oil to Kerr-McGee Oil Company. The well is currently connected to a separation unit by two inch pipeline. This separating unit is one-half mile from the well, and it separates the oil from the water; then pipes the oil to storage tanks owned by the General American Company. The General American Company is now the Phillips 66 Company in Drumright, Oklahoma. It is north of the Kerr-McGee Oil Company on old Highway 33.

Old Faithful is now on an electric pump, but a person can still see the old pumping unit at the well site. This well has never stopped pumping oil in seventy-two years and eight months. It still produces a high-grade of oil. The Wheeler #1 is a reliable and faithful producing oil well, and it deserves its name: Old Faithful.

Frank M. Wheeler was a poor livery owner, dirt farmer and ex-stone mason at the time that the Wheeler #1 Discovery Well was founded. Within only a few months he has become a very wealthy man. He is one of the true men in history that went from "rags to riches" overnight.

The Cushing Oilfield was located by a man, Tom Slick, who started drilling every four miles west of Sapulpa; until he hit one of the largest oilfields ever discovered. This well and its backers, driller, operator and workers are a part of the great history related to the Wheeler #1 Well. The well started the development of the Town of Drumright. The well sits outside of town and it is unmarked and virtually unknown to the public.

In the past seventy-two years "Old Faithful" has never stopped producing oil. The oil is still of high grade quality and it produces an average of about one barrel of oil per day. The Cushing-Drumright Field led to the beginning of the Oilton Field, Glenpool Field and many more fields. The oil fields and the oil wells of the past are part of the history of Oklahoma. If it had not been for them being discovered, the great men and the town of the boom era would not have been established. Drumright, Oklahoma, would not have been the pipeline and oil capital of the world for many years, if the Cusing oilfield or the Wheeler #1 well had not been discovered.