The following is an article written by Shirley Hanson for the Neodesha
Newspaper in June of 1971 during the Centennial Celebration. I have corrected
as many scanning errors as I could. Kerry Elkins 3/2006
The Influence of the Oil Industry on Neodesha
By Shirley Hanson
The Norman No. 1 site is a tribute to the important role oil has played in Neodesha's history, but it was only the beginning. Its drilling in 1892 opened the Mid-Continent Oil Field and prospectors began to flock to town, leasing land and looking for ''black gold".
Pipelines were soon laid and Standard Oil Company built its refinery in 1897. The refinery contributed heavily to Neodesha's development over the years. Even when American Oil had to close the refinery in 1970 they helped Neodesha by donating their land to the city for use as an industrial park.
The Prairie Oil and Gas Company, owned by Standard, was another forerunner. Their business was to lease land for drilling and producing oil and ship it out by pipeline. They bought and operated all the leases around Neodesha. P.O.&G. had an 8 inch pipeline, built to carry oil from Oklahoma and other locations, which ran near Neodesha and fed the oil to the refinery, supplementing the local supply. A pump station was put in on what was known as Argo Farm, now the location for W-T Equipment Company.
Argo was located two miles north of Neodesha and was a main line station at a time when all work was done by hand. The workday was 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. with an hour out for a cold dinner from the dinner bucket. The road there was jammed with traffic — teams, wagons, buggies and men on horseback — at going-to-work time. Workers were building tank dikes, digging ditches and shaping dikes. Imagine digging by hand a ditch 14 inches wide and two to 12 feet deep!
There have been only 3 owners in the history of the Neodesha wells. Prairie Oil and Gas were the first operators of the leases and they sold them to C. R. Mong, Sr., in 1933. Mong sold to Albian and Maurice Bailey in 1946 and their company was known as Bailey Brothers. Albian purchased Maurice's interest in 1957 and he has expanded them by drilling more wells, over 100 in 1965-66 alone.
This oil field is the oldest west of the Mississippi still operating and the No. 2 well, drilled in 1894 at the south end of 2nd Street south of the hospital, is still pumping oil. The Bailey contact with oil in Neodesha began in 1900 when Albian and Maurice's father, A. W. came here and went to work as a driller. The Prairie Pipeline Company was organized on Jan. 14, 1915 and took over the pipelines, pumping stations and telegraph lines owned by P.O. &G. The charter for this company was signed by William F. Gates, C. H. Kountz, F. M. Wilhelm, R. G. Hare and George Coyle who were subsequently elected officers and directors of the company.
Harry Sinclair built and maintained a like system and in the depression years Standard quit buying oil from Prairie and acquired the Sinclair Pipeline Company and Sinclair acquired the Prairie Pipeline system. Standard called its system Standolin Pipeline Co. and Sinclair named his Sinclair-Prairie P.L. Co. Both companies' pipeline systems came through Neodesha.
The Prairie Pipeline Company had its headquarters in Neodesha on the west side of the Missouri-Pacific railroad tracks where the building stood until a few years ago. Albian Bailey bought the site for a pipe yard and later sold it to Adley Lorbeer who tore the structure down and built the large storage facility at the west of where the original headquarters stood.
Although Prairie Pipeline wished to remain in Neodesha and build their offices here, circumstances didn't allow and they built at Independence instead. Sinclair Oil merged with the Atlantic-Richfield Company and the pipeline company name is now ARCO.
The Argo station was at first steam operated but Prairie Pipeline changed to crude oil burners and expanded the tank farms. Sinclair built a 24-inch line, which goes just east of Neodesha, and abandoned the Argo station and all 8" lines except one. The remaining line was converted to a products line and carries gasoline, diesel oil and kerosene and has a small booster station at Argo.
I am indebted for the details of this story to Ralph Bowman, who gathered the facts from his memory, from old records and from Albian Bailey. Ralph went to work for Prairie in 1920 as a truck driver and he was the last foreman Sinclair pipeline had in Neodesha. An interesting sidelight is that his wife, Pearl, was the last chief operator here for Southwestern Bell before they closed their switchboard in Neodesha.
Ralph said of the local field, "It is still producing oil and bringing in money. The Bailey families have had a lot to do with the production and still are, which we should all thank them for. Albian Bailey and his son, Gene, are now the operators for most of the field here and quite a few farmers have profited from the oil too."
Ralph stated, "I have been on the big and little inch pipelines in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and most everywhere I've been, when I'm asked where I'm from and answer Neodesha, someone will say, 'I've been there'." Neodesha is still known in oil circles.
With World War I raging in 1918, my Grandfather, Esley Earnest Elkins (Sr), was drafted into the United States Army. In an attempt to get into a field other than infantry, he obtained letters of reference from past employees. Here is the one from Sinclair-Cudahy Pipe Line Company detailing his experience with them:
