An Unrecorded Oil Map of Texas & Oklahoma, &c.
This exceptional wall map presents a detailed illustration of oil wells and pipelines in Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.
The map locates different types of oil and gas installations, including Producing Wells, Gas Wells, Dry Holes, and Abandoned Wells, alongside broader classifications like Oil Fields, Gas Fields, and Potash Areas. At the top left is an index to the roughly 200 Oil Fields shown.
The map is color-coded to show the vast network of pipelines and the diversity of wells and fields. The color key includes entities including:
- Gulf Pipe Line
- Gulf & Magnolia Pipe Line
- Houston Pipe Line Co.
- Humble Pipe Line
- Illinois Pipe Line Co.
- Magnolia Pipe Line
- Oklahoma Pine Line Co.
- Prairie Pipe Line
- Sinclair Pipe Line
- Southern Crude Oil Purchasing Co.
- Texas Pipe Line
- Ozark Pipe Line
Mid-Continent Oil Field
The Mid-Continent Oil Field, a cornerstone in the history of American petroleum industry, emerged through a series of landmark discoveries from the late 19th to early 20th century. The first commercially successful well in this region was the Norman No. 1, drilled near Neodesha, Kansas, on November 28, 1892. This pioneering venture set the stage for subsequent notable discoveries, each reinforcing the region's oil-rich potential.
In 1897, the Nellie Johnstone No. 1 well in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, marked another significant find, further asserting the region's oil prospects. This was followed by the famous Spindletop strike near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901, a monumental event that triggered the Texas oil boom and substantially altered the global oil industry.
Another key discovery was the Ida Glenn No. 1 at the Glenn Pool Oil Reserve in Oklahoma in 1905. This well, alongside others, cemented the area's status as a major oil-producing region. As exploration and drilling intensified, numerous other oil fields and pools within the Mid-Continent were uncovered, varying in size but collectively contributing to the region's prominence in the oil industry.
Rarity
The map is unrecorded. We note only this example, which was purchased at auction in June 2023.
Blueprint & Blue Line maps (Cyanotype Printing)
Blueprint and blue line maps were among the most popular means for the swift printing of maps for which there would be a limited demand. A blueprint or blue line map could be made and/or revised much more quickly than a lithograph, cerograph, or other printing method, and at a much lower cost.
This method of printing was invented in 1842 by John Herschel, a chemist, astronomer, and photographer. A cyanotype process, one starts by drawing on semi-transparent paper, weighted down by a top sheet of paper. The paper would be coated with a photosensitive chemical mixture of potassium ferricyanogen and ferric ammonium citrate. The paper would then be exposed to light, wherein the exposed portions turned blue and the drawn lines, protected from exposure, would remain white.
The cyanotype printing process was an improvement on the expensive and time-consuming method of hand-tracing original documents. The technique was particularly popular with architects; by the 1890s, a blueprint was one-tenth the cost of a hand-traced reproduction. It could also be copied more quickly.
Blueprint and blue line maps began to appear as early as the 1850s and 1860s, but they really began to become the standard for mining and similar limited-purpose maps by the 1880s. The ability to create these maps quickly and at a low cost made them the standard for short-run prints, ideal for mapping mining regions in the West and for similar purposes.
The method still exists today, but in a very limited fashion. In the 1940s, diazo prints (whiteprints or bluelines) became more popular, as they were easier to read and faster to make. The blue lines on a white background of these prints are now what most people call blueprints.