Gas, helium and a fallen derrick at the Arbon well, 1926

In 1926 the Gem State Petroleum Company's well beside the Central school at Arbon had its most hopeful year. The company's office was in Pocatello, and the Pocatello Tribune reported on the well often, mostly from what its officers said. The earlier post on the well follows it from 1923 to 1929; this one looks closer at 1926.

Hikers and visitors

In October 1925 a new Pocatello hiking club, the Skyline club, chose the fossil beds of Arbon Valley for its first trip. The hikers would visit the well and then be guided to the beds by H. C. Harris, the company's geologist. People from Twin Falls, Burley and Paul meant to come, and the Tribune added:

All the fossil caves of Arbon valley have not so far been explored and it is the intention of this expedition to attempt to reach them.

Forty signed up for Sunday, October 25. No account of the day has been found, and the papers do not say where the caves were. Another trip to the fossil beds, planned for April 1926, was called off when its sponsor and leader, Jones of the Gate City Business College, fell ill.

By mid-February 1926 the hole was about 2,200 feet deep in hard sandy lime. Pocatello men found the roads from Pauline to the well "almost impassable," but stayed to see the well bailed out; part of the bailer's load was dumped on the derrick floor, where oil left "peacock colors" after the floor was swept. In early March, with oil in the bailer, the officers shut down to wait for a control head, a steel fitting of more than 700 pounds tested to 2,500 pounds pressure to the square inch. It sat in front of the company office drawing passersby before it went out to the well. The company advertised that drilling would start again at eleven o'clock on Sunday, March 21, so that stockholders and the public could inspect the control head; stock was a dollar a share.

Within days the paper reported "a tremendous amount of gas" and said "hundreds of people" had visited. After accidents that Sunday, which it did not describe, the company fenced the rig with barbed wire and ended public inspection of the well after March 27. The head driller had spent three days in town after a jack handle flew up and cracked his jaw.

Gas, helium and mud

The crew had placed a bridge, a plug of fill, down the hole. On April 14 the gas broke through all forty-five feet of it:

The roar of the gas could be plainly heard even with the control head shut for a distance of two or three hundred feet.

A new bridge was built. Heavy casing came from Youngstown, Ohio, and late in April Herb McCain was hauling it out to the well. On Sunday, April 25, a Tribune writer reported, so many motorists had come that any horses at the valley's log store were hidden among the cars:

About thirty-five miles from Pocatello is the city of 'Arbon Valley' which presents the motion picture idea of the western town with its log building which bears the sign 'store' across the front.

"Confidence in the oil well waxes high among those living in that district," the writer added.

In May Harris told the Tribune the gas contained helium. It would hold a half-pound weight suspended in the hole, he said, which natural gas would not do "unless it was heavy with helium," and two small samples sent away had been reported to produce it. No later report of the tests has been found. On May 23 the gas broke the float plug in the bottom of the packer and threw water and mud with oil twelve to fifteen feet above the casing, with a loud double report. People living a short distance from the well arrived one after another, "thinking that the well had 'blown in.'"

The derrick falls

Drilling out the bridge began in mid-June; it proved more than a hundred feet thick, and the gas kept coming. On Saturday afternoon, June 26, the derrick fell with five men on its floor, among them the secretary-treasurer, S. G. Baker, and the head driller, D. J. McPherson. None was hurt.

The new derrick took two weeks to build. When the first try at raising it failed, the crew hired teams and brought a log more than two feet thick down from the mountains, and the derrick went up on the evening of July 15. By late August the drill was making six to ten feet a day, and the driller was "very optimistic."

Receivership

On September 9 receivers were appointed at Pocatello for the company on an application by N. R. Dingman. In late November J. M. Bistline was temporary receiver, the court had continued the hearing, and a settlement out of court was expected; many Pocatello people held stock. On November 23 a Spokane man advertised for bids on hauling drilling machinery from Arbon Valley to Schiller station, without naming the company, so whose machinery it was is not known. By December the stockholders were working to reorganize, and, as the earlier post tells, drilling went on into 1929.

The 1926 reports name no one as living in the valley; they speak only of neighbors near the well. The other men on the derrick floor, E. W. Coon, Albert Hansen and R. B. Wilson, are not identified, and no report found confirms Harris's helium.

On this site: the Gem State oil well, 1923–1929; the first oil well; Lila Wade, who taught next door to the well; the Evans family, on whose place the well was probably drilled; and the Arbon and Pauline and West Fork histories.

The article as printed

Pocatello Tribune, June 27, 1926, page 7. Transcribed from the page scan.

DERRICK BROKE AT ARBON WELL
Five Men Narrowly Escape Fatal Injury in Accident
Saturday afternoon the derrick on the well of the Gem State Petroleum company in Arbon valley suddenly collapsed. On the derrick floor at this time were S. G. Baker, secretary-treasurer of the company; D. J. McPherson, head driller; E. W. Coon, Albert Hansen and R. B. Wilson. The derrick seemed to tremble a moment and then fell with a loud crash. It would seem almost impossible for it to fall in such a confined space without some part of it hitting at least one of the five men. Yet not one of the men received a scratch and a small puppy asleep in one corner of the derrick house came crawling out from among the timbers with its tiny mouth open in a lazy yawn.
The driller held to the brake lever until the timbers had all fallen before he left his post and dodged behind the belt wheel. Work was immediately started to clear away the debris and it was found that only the lower part of the derrick was damaged. The head driller believes the accident was caused by some faulty bolts at the base of the derrick. When they gave way this allowed the timber to spread and the crash followed. The damage is inconsequential and work will start immediately to erect a derrick with new timbers. One hundred and six feet of bridge had been removed and a short distance had been drilled into the formation with heavy showings of oil and gas when the accident occurred.