Commemorating First Oil Well in Caddo Parish, LA

Behind the plaque's timeline are the men who drilled. At the Savage brothers' well near Oil City, completed in 1905, oxen hauled the equipment in, and local historians say roughnecks earned $2.50 for a 12-hour day. J. S. and W. A. Savage came from West Virginia; their hole showed gas first, and oil came in on March 28 at 1,556 feet. By 1910 almost 25,000 people worked in and around Oil City. This marker, placed in 1955 by the oil industry's own committees, stands at the State Fairgrounds, far from that field.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Exhibit Museum — steps away
  A circular Art Deco museum of 1939 on the Shreveport fairgrounds, with a 1,000-year-old Caddo log boat, rotunda murals and dioramas of early Caddo Parish.
• Shreveport Municipal Auditorium — 2.9 mi
  The Art Deco hall of 1929 where the Louisiana Hayride went out over KWKH from 1948 to 1960 and where Elvis Presley first played Shreveport on October 16, 1954.
• R. W. Norton Art Gallery — 3.1 mi
  A free art museum and 40 acres of azalea gardens in Shreveport, founded in 1946 on Rodessa oil money, with Remington and Russell, an Audubon folio and no photography allowed.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 3.2 mi
  An 1887 brick pumping station on McNeill Street where Worthington steam pumps ran until 1980, now a free museum and a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• World's First Shriners Hospital — 1.8 mi
• Central School — 2.1 mi
• Josh Logan Home — 2.4 mi
• Old Agudath Achim Synagogue — 2.7 mi