PETROLEUM NEWS
A CALIFORNIA* "GUSHER." At eight o'clock on Monday night, March 14, 1910, the Lake View gusher announced its arrival with a rush of gas, followed by a shower of oil, which was estimated at 1-8,000 barrels for the first.''' 24 hours. ,
On Tuesday night something happened at the bottom of the well; the How of oil stopped for a few seconds, and its place was taken by a torrent of rocks, sand and gas. After that nobody ever got very close to it. Oil rained on everything for miles around. Other wells were left unfinished, fires put out in all the boiler plants, and hundreds of men and teams were rushed to the scene to build dams to hold the oil.
Fears were entertained that the casing would be worn out with the cutting sand, and the well become a crater. An hour's work brought four and five dollars, but men did not seek the job at that price in the drenching rain of oil and suffocating gas. All kinds of hoods were .put over it, but the oil ate its way through timber a foot thick, and went on playing the biggest, blackest fountain of oil the world ever saw. The largest output was fiS.OOO barrels in one day. In six months 5,000,000 barrels of oil was stored in makeshift reservoirs.
The most wonderful thing was, the drillers received the order to stop, but the order was not promptly obeyed, and the drill, going a few feet further, broke into the gusher sand.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19110708.2.66
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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 12, 8 July 1911, Page 6
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256PETROLEUM NEWS Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 12, 8 July 1911, Page 6
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