Opening of the Mid-Continent Oil Field

The well took its name from a blacksmith. In 1891 four Neodesha businessmen asked William M. Mills, a Pennsylvanian who had drilled gas wells in several southeast Kansas cities, to find natural gas for the town, and the first site chosen was a four-acre garden plot on the edge of town owned by T. J. Norman. Mills struck oil there on November 28, 1892, and the well first gave twelve barrels a day. It was abandoned in 1919 and lay overgrown on the Verdigris River bank until 1961, when a replica derrick went up on the site.

What the plaque says

Opening of the Mid-Continent Oil Field Kansas has long been oil country. There are legends that the Indians held council around the lights of burning springs. Emigrants, it is known, skimmed "rock tar" from such oil seeps to grease the axles of their wagons. A mile southeast is the site of one of the most famous oil wells in the United States, Norman No. 1, first commercially successful well of the Mid-Continent field. It was drilled in 1892 by W. M. Mills of Pennsylvania. Within 22 days, at 832 feet, the hole began filling with oil. Mills plugged it, reporting a poor well, and began to drill another. Then he hurried to Pittsburgh with samples. These so galvanized operators Guffey and Galey that they leased a million acres, while Norman No. 1 and its secret remained plugged for ten months. In the next two years they drilled over 100 wells, then sold out to Standard Oil. Oil was first drilled in Kansas in 1860, near Paola, but the sinking of Norman No. 1 began the continuous development of the Mid-Continent field, the nation's largest, which spreads over Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Erected by Kansas Historical Society and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Little House on the Prairie Museum — 22 mi
  The Ingalls family's claim of 1869 and 1870 southwest of Independence, a squatter's homestead on the Osage Diminished Reserve, with a replica cabin, schoolhouse and post office.
• Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum — 23 mi
  Chanute's museum of the hometown singer and the jeweler's son who filmed the South Seas, East Africa and Borneo for paying audiences, and of the West African art that now shares their building.

More markers nearby

• Drum Creek & the Civil War — 13 mi
• Osage Nation — 27 mi