The Coffeyville Explosion. 



BY ERASMUS HAWORTH. 



(With I'lutc I, Fig. C.) 



In the early morning of July 26, 1894, a terrific explosion occurred 

 in the northern suburbs of Coffeyville, Montgomery county, Kansas, 

 which was of sufficient force to throw from two hundred to three 

 hundred tons of rock and earth to the surface. The noise produced 

 was not very great in comparison with the force manifested as is 

 shown from the fact that perhaps less than half the citizens of the 

 town were awakened. The usual sequence of sensational press 

 dispatches with startling head lines followed, as might have been 

 expected, and the University was flooded with inquiries, personal 

 and by letter, asking for an explanation of such an unusual occur- 

 rence. Nearly all of the various theories advanced by those 

 making inquiry connected the explosion in one way or another 

 with natural gas, which was known to exist in that vicinity in great 

 quantities under a pressure of more than three hundred pounds to 

 the square inch. The gas operators and the well drillers, on the 

 contrary, throughout southeastern Kansas, stoutly affirmed that no 

 such incident ever had occurred in the gas fields of the east, and 

 that it was a physical impossibility for gas to explode so far 

 beneath the surface. 



Upon a careful examination of the grounds some months after 

 the explosion the following conditions were observed: To the 

 southwest of the gas well a short distance many fissures were seen 

 in the earth's surface trending southwest and northeast which 

 approximated parallelism. They were from six inches to eighteen 

 inches in width and at the time observed the walls had caved to 

 such an extent that the widest appeared to be less than three feet 

 deep, although immediately after the explosion rumor has it that 

 some of them were known to be from six to ten feet deep. Some 

 of them bifurcated, while others did not as far as could be seen. 

 Fig. 2, Plate I, drawn one hundred fifty feet to the inch, shows the 

 location of the gas well, G. W., the fissures, the piles of earth 

 thrown up the break in the gas main at b, and the fissure 

 through the cistern C. , near the house H. The larger pile of 

 earth is located principally in a shallow ravine which has been 



(67) KAN. UNIV. QUAR.. VOL. IV. SO. 1. .JULY 1. 1895, 



