Oil From Shale

Nevada is famous for gold and silver, but here someone tried to wring oil from rock. Driving of the main shaft began in 1916 to extract oil from the shale beds in this area—one of several attempts in the state, and the only one that actually worked. Oil shale held tantalizing promise in an oil-hungry century: vast deposits that, heated and processed, could yield petroleum. The economics rarely justified the effort, and most ventures failed before they started. This operation managed genuine production—a small success in a field of disappointments, and an unusual chapter in Nevada's mining history.

What the plaque says

Directly south of this point and across the valley floor are the remains of a short-lived extraction plant, which reached the peak of its productive capacity in the early twenties. Driving of the main shaft began in 1916. Of several tries at extracting oil from shale, this was the only successful operation in Nevada. Robert M. Catlin, Sr. spent many years experimenting on the extraction of crude oil from these beds before beginning the commercial production of oil. After a production period of less than two years, the plant was closed in the fall of 1924. Hi-power Catlin Oil was too expensive to compete with the fossil oils of that day. Easily 50 years ahead of his time. Catlin did, for a few years give Elkoans and Nevadans, a dream and the community an oil boom in the Roaring Twenties.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Elko — 1.0 mi
  The railroad built it, cattle made it, and gold keeps it — the working capital of northeast Nevada, a frontier cow town that never got around to becoming a relic.
• California Trail Interpretive Center — 7.9 mi
  A free, surprisingly ambitious BLM museum of the overland crossing — eight miles west of Elko, on the trail itself, where the California Trail met the Hastings Cutoff that doomed the Donner Party.
• Carlin & the Carlin Trend — 19 mi
  The small railroad town west of Elko that sits beside the largest gold complex on earth — and, because the gold is invisible, shows you almost none of it.
• Lamoille Canyon & the Ruby Mountains — 26 mi
  The great exception to Nevada's sagebrush monotony — a glacier-carved canyon and a wall of eleven-thousand-foot granite peaks an hour southeast of Elko, fairly called the state's Alps.

More markers nearby

• Elko Airport — 0.2 mi
• Elko — 1.8 mi
• Ruby Valley Pony Express Station — 1.8 mi
• West End of Hastings Cutoff — 8.4 mi