Back When? 1908 Oregon's Black Gold Rush

In the summer of 1908, Cen- tral Oregon was abuzz with a black gold rush. On the west slope of Grizzly Mountain, where golden wheat once waved in the breeze, a team from the newly formed Madras Oil and Gas Company began drilling what they believed would be the region’s first successful oil well. Local newspapers reported enthusiastically that petroleum had indeed been pulled from the well, and that samples of “good commercial oil” were on display in Madras. Coal and water were also reportedly struck, adding to the optimism. With the Harriman railroad line under construction — there was real hope that the railroads would become eager customers for a local oil source. Several Prineville- area entrepreneurs jumped on board as investors, betting that the Madras company was onto something big.

But the well never quite delivered. The oil find was real — just not in quantities worth commercial extraction. After a few more months of effort, the operation was quietly shut down and the well capped. The site became known as “Oil Well Flat,” a name that serves more as a footnote than a legacy.

Grizzly Mountain wasn’t the only place in Oregon where oil fever flared. In 1927, the Clarno Basin Oil Company stirred excitement in Wheeler County, sinking a well near the mouth of Pine Creek. Shares sold for $10 apiece and investors were promised that “One Good Speculation is Worth a Lifetime of Saving!” The company spent an estimated $300,000 and drilled to a depth of 4,800 feet. Onlookers came in droves on Sundays to watch and hope. What they got was natural gas — and another dry hole.

A well on the Morrow Ranch was repeatedly drilled and re- drilled by multiple companies. It never made it past 3,300 feet and was officially abandoned in 1971.

Oregon remains one of the few states never to produce commercial quantities of oil. Still, for a moment on Grizzly Mountain, and again in Clarno and Morrow, hope sprang eternal—as the lure of oil stirred the ambitions of pioneers looking to stake a new kind of claim.