OIL: We’re pretty impressed with Dr. Frederick Young’s memory, as he shared with us stories of his life in Bradford.
He remembered hearing of the Hindenburg explosion on the radio, and remembered when an oil well of the Dorn family struck a gusher.
“On the afternoon of August 24, 1937, just before I started first grade I was playing in our front yard when a string of cars came out of the driveway across from our house. They were the cars of the Dorn family, driven by some of the older children, chauffeurs, gardeners, cooks, etc. I asked my dad what was going on and he said that Mr. Dorn had a sleepless night because people from his Niagara Oil Company had called him several times to tell him there were large amounts of oil sprouting from the ground at their new drill site and they could not dig holes fast enough to contain it.
“He thought his callers were playing tricks on him as there had been no new gushers in the Bradford Oil Field for many years. The new gusher in McKean County surprised many, including the company that drilled it. Later in the evening the cars came back all covered in a mixture of oil and mud commonly called by drillers ‘BS’.
“In 1937 crude oil was worth about $1.18 per barrel. At Music Mountain there was more than one million barrels per acre and Guy B. Mayo, a Smethport attorney who bought 50 acres at the Treasurer’s tax sale suddenly became very rich. By the year 2020 no more gushers had been found in the Bradford Oil Field.”
Still more to come.
