OKLAHOMA OILFIELD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 4

OKLAHOMA OILFIELD.

AMAZING DEVELOPMENT

The remarkable development of the oilfields at Oklahoma was described by a special correspondent to the London "Times." , " At the beginning of December, 1928, Oklahoma City was a quiet and pretty market town, with placid villas, each in its garden, covering the slopes to the north of the business district. To the south was a stretch of rolling country with deep green vegetation on a red soil. On December 4 the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company drilled) some miles south of the city, the first oil well in the district. From that day to this oil development has swept across the country like a tidal wave. They found oil on the municipal golf course, and the golf course was swallowed up in the oilfield. Next to go was the isolation hospital, now abandoned among a forest of derricks, and the oilfield was still spreading. It reached the edge of the town, and now there arc derricks in the middle of the city garbage-dump. Some poor Mexicans and Indians who owned patches of swampy ground near tha garbage dump suddenly became wealthy and mingled uncertainly in the lobbies of -the hotels with the throng of drillers, engineers, royalty owners, geologists and speculators from all over the country. Several of them were married out of hand by determined white women, who had learned of their unexpected fortune.

"The oilfield kept on spreading. By the summer of last year there were already more than 60 wells inside the city limits. The whole skyline of the city has been changed, in a few months; skyscrapers have been built and are still going up. The main streets ring all day with the noise of hammering and riveting. The ehug?hug of the oil pumps and the roar of th" es'/aping gas from the field go on day and night."