First Over Water Oil Well

Ferry Lake No. 1 is remembered as a first, but the claim has rivals. The American Oil and Gas Historical Society notes that an Ohio field was producing oil from over water in 1887, and 64 Parishes dates the start of open-water work at Caddo Lake to 1908. Gulf Refining Company's well of 1911 stood on water that a federal survey of 1913 and 1914 still called Ferry Lake, the name the well kept. It reached 2,185 feet and made about 450 barrels a day. Read the plaque's first as first on this lake.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum — 1.7 mi
  The state's first public petroleum museum in Oil City, on the 1905 Caddo Parish strike and the 1911 over-water well on Caddo Lake, with a derrick and a log-jam exhibit.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 12 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 19 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

• Caddo Lake — steps away
• Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter — steps away
• Trees City Office & Bank — 1.0 mi
• Oil City — 1.1 mi