16 University Geological Survey of Kansas. 
flannel cloth, retorted hotly: ‘I’m no blanked fool to dig a hole 
for the oil to get away through the bottom.’ 
“Kentucky, the home of James Harrod and Daniel Boone, 
Henry Clay and George D. Prentice, was noted for other 
things besides backwoods fighters, statesmanship, sparkling 
journalism, thoroughbred horses, superb women and moon- 
shine whisky. Off in the southeast corner of Wayne county, 
near the northeast corner of a 6000-acre tract of wild land, 
David Beatty bored a well for salt about the year 1818. The 
land extended four miles westward from the Big South Fork 
of the Cumberland river, its eastern boundary, and three miles 
down the ork from Tennessee, its southern line. The well 
was located on a strip of flat ground between the stream and a 
rocky bluff, streaked with veins of coal and limestone. Five 
yards from the water a hole nine feet square was dug ten feet 
to the rock and timbered. The well, barely three inches in 
diameter, was punched 170 feet by manual labor, steam-en- 
gines not having penetrated the trackless forests of Wayne at 
that period. To the intense disgust of the workmen a black, 
sticky, viscid liquid persisted in coming up with the salt-water 
and a new location was chosen two miles farther down the 
ereek. Extra care not to drill too deep averted an influx of 
the disagreeable fluid which spoiled the first venture. Salt- 
works were established and flourished for years, a simon-pure 
oasis in the interminable wilderness. 
“The abandoned well did not propose to be snuffed out un- 
ceremoniously or to enact the role of ‘Leah the Forsaken.’ In 
its bright lexicon the word ‘fail’ was not to be inserted merely 
because it was too fresh to participate in the salt trade. Far 
from retiring permanently, it spouted petroleum at a Nancy- 
Hanks quickstep, filling the pit, running into the Fork and 
covering mile after mile of the water with a top-dressing of 
oil. Somehow the floating mass caught fire and mammoth 
pyrotechnics ensued. The stream blazed and boiled and sizzled 
from the well to the Cumberland river, thirty-five miles north- 
ward, calcining rocks and licking up babbling brooks on its 
fiery march. Trees on its banks burned and blistered and 
charred to their deepest roots. Iron pans at the salt-wells got 
red hot, shriveled, warped, twisted, and joined the junk-pile. 
Was not that a sweet revenge for plucky No. 1, the well its 
owner ‘had no use for’ and devoutly wished at the bottom of 
the sea?” 
Late in the ’50’s the real commercial importance of petro- 
leum began to present itself to the minds of influential men in 
eastern United States. This was particularly true with refer- 
ence to one George H. Bissell, who became so impressed with 
the idea that oil would be valuable commercially, if obtained 
in sufficient quantities, that largely through his endeavors a 
