The Boulder Oil Field was an
oil field
A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations.
Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...
, in the area of
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...
.
Some history
Ute Indians
Ute () are the Indigenous people of the Ute tribe and culture among the Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. They had lived in sovereignty in the regions of present-day Utah and Colorado in the Southwestern United States for many centuries un ...
were the first to discover
oil, in Colorado.
The
McKenzie Well still stands, near Boulder, and Isaac Canfield found it in 1901,
by
dowsing,
first producing oil, on February 5, 1902.
The McKenzie Well was found, on the ranch or farm, of Neil McKenzie. It is highly unusual, extraordinary, that the original site of the discovery of Boulder Oil Field remained the last producing oil well.
Of note, before the McKenzie Well was found,
Florence oil driller Canfield noticed Boulder's
topographic features resembled those of Florence; in Boulder area there were
oil seeps
A petroleum seep is a place where natural liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons escape to the earth's atmosphere and surface, normally under low pressure or flow. Seeps generally occur above either terrestrial or offshore petroleum accumulation stru ...
, odors.
The McKenzie Well was the first
oil well
An oil well is a drillhole boring in Earth that is designed to bring petroleum oil hydrocarbons to the surface. Usually some natural gas is released as associated petroleum gas along with the oil. A well that is designed to produce only gas may ...
sunk in what is now a vast
oil and
gas producing area, the
Denver-Julesburg basin.
In
Fremont County, Colorado, the
Florence Oil Field was the first oil field west of the
Mississippi River. From 1901, the Boulder Oil Field became the second,
and, the Boulder Oil Field was discovered the same year as
Spindletop
Spindletop is an oil field located in the southern portion of Beaumont, Texas, in the United States. The Spindletop dome was derived from the Louann Salt evaporite layer of the Jurassic geologic period. On January 10, 1901, a well at Spindleto ...
, in
Texas.
Locally, close to 200
oil wells have been drilled in Boulder, but barely a trace remains. The area produced about 800,000
barrels
A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, u ...
of oil, from
Cretaceous Pierre Shale,
and the oil field's maximum production was in 1909, with 85,000 barrels of oil.
See also
*
Denver Basin
*
Green River Formation
*
Niobrara Formation
*
Piceance Basin
*
Wattenberg Gas Field
File:Boulder oil fields, Gas and Oil Company well.jpg, Boulder oil fields, gas and oil company well, 1910.
File:Boulder Oil Field, great oil basin.jpg, Boulder Oil Field, 1902
File:Oil from the McKenzie well, misspelled.jpg, Oil from the McKenzie Well, misspelled ''McKinzie'', 1902
References
External links and references
One linkHistory, in Boulder, ColoradoA photo
Petroleum production
Oil fields
Oil fields of the United States
Geologic provinces of Colorado
{{oilfield-stub