Boom

The Casper Star Tribune has an article in today's paper about the dedication of the dedication of a historic byway near the old Salt Creek oilfield in Natrona County.  Apparently two more such byways are in the works, one near Green River, and another near Sheridan, under the legislature's recently approved Historic Mine Trail and Byway Program.  In reading the article, what struck me as really remarkable was the impact the Salt Creek field had on the county and the town, in terms of population.

 Casper in 1893, from Wyoming Tales and Trails.

The Salt Creek field was, apparently, first exploited in 1908.  I'd actually thought it somewhat earlier, as there was oil exploration in the county prior to that time.  I've seen, for example, articles in the Natrona County Tribune concerning oil finds dating all the way back to the early 1890s.  Indeed, quite a  few such articles ran in that paper at that time.  However, as noted in a recent book on the history of Natrona County, it wasn't a truly economic resource at the time, as transportation costs were simply too expensive.  By the early 1900s, however, with rail lines fairly well developed, that apparently had changed.

 Casper in 1903, from Wyoming Tales and Trails.  Of interest to locals, this depicts the town as being exclusively on the south side of the North Platte River, which was undoubtedly correct, and mostly north of the railroad.

Anyhow, the Salt Creek field apparently had its first oil find in 1908.  Prior to that find, the Tribune states, the oil production for the county was a surprisingly low 50 barrels a day.  According to the article in today's Tribune, the population of Casper was about 2,000 people at the time.  The oil strike changes all of that.  The boom hit, the paper relates, in 1912, and the paper ran its story out through 1914, although in my view it would have made more sense to run it out through 1919.  Anyhow, the paper cites oil production in the country as climbing to 100,000 barrels a day in the 1912 to 1914 time frame, and the population of the county as having rising from the 2,000 above noted up to 20,000 by 1914, a stunning climb.  It should be noted, for what its worth, that another source claims the population of the county was 1,000 persons in 1906, which doesn't preclude the population of Casper being 2,000 by 1908.  That source also claims that the population of the county was about 25,000 by 1924, which might also be consistent with Casper's being 20,000 in 1914, given the ongoing boom, and the post World War One economic collapse. 

Downtown Casper in 1907, the year prior to the year the Star Tribune claims as the start of the boom.  From Wyoming Tales and Trails.  Note the very heavy presence of early overhead wire lines.

Nobody was native to Casper at that time, of course, but it must have basically converted the town from a very small ranching hub, albeit one that had extractive industry dreams from the start, into what was a regional oil and agricultural hub, but one with its eyes on oil.

What this must have meant in terms of living in the area is almost unimaginable.  Even today, areas that experience booms have quite a bit of difficulty adjusting to them. This has been the case, for example, in western North Dakota, which s undergoing a boom right now.  But in the era we're talking about, transportation was relatively primitive, social services virtually non existent, and the area still largely a frontier, even if the U.S. Census had proclaimed the frontier closed.

 Casper in 1912, from Wyoming Tales and Trails.  Some of the buildings depicted here are still there, notably the Wyoming National Bank Building, later the Tribune Building, which is only barely visible.  The church depicted in the foreground was an Episcopal Church which was subsequently torn down when the new St. Mark's Episcopal Church was built in 1924.  Many downtown Casper Churches were built in the late teens and early 1920s.

Some of the impact of that boom is fairly easy to find by reading histories of the locality, or biographies of Wyoming figures, from that time.  Money was being made hand over fist due to oil, and at the same time, partially due to national economic conditions, and partially due to World War One, the agricultural sector, which had dominated the region prior to oil, was booming itself.  We were in one of our full employment eras, with agriculture and mineral exploration doing very well.  People moved in and made fortunes.  Indeed, some of what we regard as "early" Wyoming figures that created economic dynasties in that era did so in this era.  While their industry cannot be begrudged, it can't help but be noted that they were coming in during a period in which the economic winds were blowing so favorably that their industry and enterprise found unnaturally favorable conditions to an extent. 

 Casper in the 1920s, from Wyoming Tales and Trails.  While quite a few of these buildings are no longer present, a large number of them are.  By this time, in spite of later changes, Casper had basically taken on a form that is presently recognizable.

Well, of course, it all slowed up after World War One.  The huge demand for oil, horses, and wool that had caused the boom dried up, as the U.S. economy slowed, and the nations of the industrial world stopped tearing themselves apart in Europe.  But the region was forever impacted, indeed forever changed.

As a side note to all of this, my wife's family, which was in the county already at this time, participated in the Salt Creek story, in that one of them was a freighter at that time.  That is, he operated his own freight wagons as a teamster, using large mule teams for that enterprise.  He hauled oilfield supplies and equipment to the Salt Creek field.