OK oil

Oil is king here in Oklahoma.

1 in every 5 jobs in Oklahoma are directly or indirectly employed by the state's oil and natural gas industry. 

How do you find oil? Like Jed Clampett?

Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed

Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed

Then one day he was shooting for some food,

And up through the ground come a bubbling crude

(Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea)

In nearby Edmond, Oklahoma, J.M. Young was convinced that there was oil on his land, back in the early 1940s. Using a "doodle bug" attached to a gold chain hanging from a goat-skinned bottle, (homemade divining rod), the West Edmond oil field was discovered, one of the most productive in the nation. By 1944, Time magazine called the West Edmond field the "greatest concentration of rotary drilling rigs in the world."

We are living and working here in oil country, staying in a working man's campground. Most of the folks here are working on oil pipelines, their flatbed pickups with welding equipment are covered in red Oklahoma dirt.

Internet search reveals a lot about the oil business here in Oklahoma, I found this timeline very interesting, starting out with the Indians:

Pre-1859 Oil seeps, known to Indians as ‘medicine springs’, identified in the Indian Territory.

1889    The first intentional oil find made near Chelsea in Rogers County. Its production of one half barrel per day is used as ‘dip oil’ to remove ticks from cattle.

1905    Glenn Pool oil field is discovered near Tulsa in Creek County. Owned in large part by Henry Ford Sinclair, it became central in the formation of the Sinclair Oil Company in 1916. ~see Timeline HERE

Pictured above: In June 2014, a life-sized bronze sculpture called West Edmond Field was placed in Mitch Park. The sculpture depicts an oil rig with two oilfield workers. It highlights the drilling of the West Edmond Field in the mid-1940s, which ranked among the largest oil discoveries in the world. Other side of sculpture: