“The most
disappointing oil pool in the state was developed in Granger and Allen townships in northern Allegany County in 1906 and 1907. It was known as the Short Tract pool, named for a hamlet a mile away that had been an important station on the
underground railroad that housed, fed, and transported escaping negro slaves on their way to Canada.
The discovery well
was drilled on the Van Nostrand farm in Granger Township, in September, 1906. The derrick stood on the bank of Rush Creek, a stream that flowed from the Granger hills to the Genesee River.
The well was located by George Raymond, a geologist and mining engineer from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who drove stakes for two productive wells and three dry holes. When the bit was ten feet in the sand, the well made three
flows over the top of the derrick, and put 40 barrels of a light amber, 44-gravity oil in the tank on the first day. The sand was the gray-green Nunda formation, and the elevation of the
casing head was 1450 feet above sea level.
The Van Nostrand farm
lease and discovery well were owned by William Crandall and Charles Ricker of Fillmore, Leonard Bennett of Short Tract, and John Fay of Wellsville. The sand was tapped at 518 feet, and
drilling ceased when the bit was 11 feet in the sand. Six more wells were drilled on the farm, and the deepest was bottomed at 775 feet.
Newspaper reports of
the strike attracted many oil scouts, producers, and speculators; and the hotels in surrounding towns were crowded with strangers. One chemist brought a microscope and a bottle of acid in
which he dissolved two ounces of the sand. In a period of a few months, 45 wells were drilled - 25 producers and 20 dry holes. As fast as the oil wells were completed, they were shut in to
await the building of a pipe line. The discovery well was pumped for a short time and the oil shipped in tank cars from Fillmore.
In the spring of
1907, the outlook appeared to warrant the building of a pipe line, and three producers formed a partnership and laid 13 miles of two-inch wrought-iron pipe from a field pump station to a
loading rack on the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railroad at Belfast. The oil was shipped in tank cars to a refinery at Wellsville. The Producers Pipe Line Company was incorporated November 25,
1907, for $20,000, to own and operate the completed line. With a market for the oil, the shut-in oil wells were rigged up for pumping, new locations were staked, and the land owners looked
forward to receiving royalty checks for oil. Within a fortnight, however, one well after another began to pump salt water instead of oil, and the gas pressure faded away. It suddenly
dawned on the operators that Short Tract was not an oil pool, but a reservoir of salt water -the first salt water oil pool in the state.
During the winter of 1907, John S. Minard, a pioneer surveyor, was employed to make and publish a map of the newly discovered oil area which was designated
as the Northern Allegany Oil Field. The map embraced Allen, Granger, Hume, and Caneadea townships, and showed farm boundaries, highways, villages, streams, railroads, the abandoned Genesee
Valley canal, the oil wells completed, the wells drilling, and the dry holes.
Before the wells and
pipe line were abandoned, a test well was drilled to a depth of 2000 feet in search of a lower oil sand. Following completion of the well, which was a dry hole, the pipe line and wells
were junked. Due to the difficulty and expense of pulling the drive pipe, much of it was abandoned in many of the holes.
The Producers Pipe
Line transported 2,999.35 barrels of the oil, and 500 barrels of it were shipped by tank car, making a total of 3,499.53 barrels of oil produced from the Short Tract wells. The oil was
sold at an average price of $1.78 a barrel, making a total return of $5,338.82 to the well owners. In other words, every barrel of oil marketed cost the producer more than thirty dollars!
The discovery well was neither drilled through the sand nor shot until after it was decided to abandon it. Careful tests made when the lower ten feet of sand
was drilled, showed only one foot of productive oil sand. The other 19 feet were saturated with a heavy, gummy grease. One of the drillers described the sand as "sticky, like light brown
sugar." A geologist who examined the formation, expressed the opinion that ages ago the Short Tract sand may have been heavily impregnated with oil and gas from top to bottom, but he
could not explain its migration.
The leading operators
in the pool were Crandall, Ricker & Co.; the Gibson Oil Co.; Argue, Hall & Stearns; the Van Nostrand Farm Oil Co.; Tait & Thornton; Morian & Co.; Erie J. Wilson; Bellamy & Ricker; John
Fay; and the Cuba Oil Co.
This was neither the
first nor last attempt to find oil in Granger and Allen townships. In 1880, Charles Snyder of Fillmore drilled the first two test wells along Rush Creek, a mile northeast of the Van
Nostrand discovery well. The first well had a light showing of oil and gas-the second was dry. In 1901-2, William Crandall of Fillmore and his associates incorporated the Short Tract Oil
& Gas Company, and drilled three wells on the Holliday farm and one well on the Bennett farm, in Granger Township. There was a light show of oil and gas in two of the Holliday wells. A
250-barrel tank was filled with oil but it was not marketed. Farmers carried the oil away in pails to light wood fires and to lubricate machinery. The Bennett farm well was drilled to a
depth of 1400 feet and had a light showing of oil and gas. Some years after the Short Tract pool was abandoned, Pennsylvania operators drilled two wells on the Luzon Van Nostrand farm and
found just one foot of pay sand nine feet from the top, just as they had been told they would. The contractor bailed 50 barrels of oil, stored it in a tank, and presented the oil and tank
to the farm owner when the wells were abandoned. The thrifty farmer retailed the oil at $4.20 a barrel, and was the only man to make a profit in Short Tract oil.”
(From “Empire Oil” by
John P. Herrick, 1949-Dodd, Mead & Co.)
