First Oil Well

The well set off a three-year rush. After Bucholz No. 1 came in, larger companies arrived, the Skelly Company with a crew of fifty-five, and the search spread across Richardson County, into Missouri and about fifty miles north toward Peru. With no refinery in the county, crude went by truck to the Searle Refining Company in Omaha until, by October 1940, two refineries were running in Falls City and a third was being built in Salem. Owners later held back production to stretch the field, but output fell from late 1941 through 1942 as the wells were pumped dry.

What the plaque says

First Oil Well The first publicized report of oil in Nebraska was an 1883 newspaper account of a "vein of petroleum" discovered in Richardson County. Over the next 57 years, the search for oil consumed thousands of dollars, and hundreds of wells were drilled through- out Nebraska. Traces of oil were reported at various locations across the state, but Nebraska did not have a producing well until 1940. In 1939 and 1940 the Pawnee Royalty Company had two encouraging but unsuccessful drillings near Falls City. A third well, known as Bucholz No. 1, was begun near here on April 22, 1940. On May 29, 1940, the well began producing and averaged 169½ barrels daily for the first 60 days. Bucholz Well No. 1 thus easily qualified for a $15,000 bonus offered by the Nebraska Legislature for the first oil well in the state to produce at least 50 barrels daily for 60 consecutive days. Interestingly, Bucholz No. 1 was located about five miles east of the "vein of petroleum" reported in 1883. Although today Nebraska's oil production is largely centered in the southwestern panhandle, the pioneer efforts in this area have resulted in a major contribution to the economy of the state. Nebraska Petroleum Council Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Indian Cave State Park — 15 mi
  Wooded Missouri River bluffs in the old Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation, with carvings of animals cut into a sandstone shelter, the ghost town of St. Deroin and miles of trail.
• Brownville — 23 mi
  A Missouri River town of 1854 that bet on a railroad and lost, kept its arts through the decline, and now has Nebraska's oldest repertory theatre and a 1932 steam dredge on the bank.
• Iowa and Sac & Fox Mission Museum — 27 mi
  The surviving part of an 1846 Presbyterian mission school near Highland, built largely with the tribes' own annuity money and returned to the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska in 2021. Closed during remodeling.

More markers nearby

• Nemaha River Falls — 3.7 mi
• The Lane Trail — 12 mi
• Missouri River — 13 mi
• Lewis and Clark Camp Site: July 13, 1804 — 13 mi