🛢️ Uncovering an Oil Well Mystery - Special Investigation
In 1949 a company drilled for oil just west of Beacon Rock, and it may be still uncapped and leaking. We're using public records and old aerial photos to find it (and other orphaned wells in the Gorge) and we'd love your help.
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When you support this newsletter, you enable us to not only complete our public meetings summaries, but allow us to grow and show the power of what locally-grounded public records reporting can do. I'm excited to share with you an update in one of the many homegrown investigations that we have running behind the scenes. We're now able to take these on thanks to our subscribers.
And our story starts, as many good ones do, with a mysterious hole in the ground...
In 1949, a company called the Columbia River Oil Co. drilled a test well just west of Beacon Rock. The well was called Kady-Olsen No. 1. At 250 feet they found a little oil. At 750 feet they hit water under enough pressure to flow up on its own.
Washington's oil and gas well file still holds that record, and the state printed it in a 1958 survey of oil and gas exploration. Its last word on the well is "Drilled." There's no record that anyone ever sealed it.
Why that matters.
An old well is a hole drilled deep into the ground. If it was never sealed, gas can leak up, and water can move between underground layers, including the water we drink, that waters our crops, or flows into the rivers and streams where we fish. Sealing one is routine work, and public money exists to pay for it. Groups like the Well Done Foundation do exactly this. At Oklahoma's Deep Fork National Wildlife Refuge, they've plugged dozens of century-old wells that were leaking methane. As their chairman Curtis Shuck put it: "Doing nothing is not an option." (Watch him explain the work.)
The hard part is knowing exactly where the well is, so it can be reported and plugged. That's the part neighbors can do, and where we decided to dig in.
What we've found so far.
The 1949 record points to one 10-acre square of public land. We pulled aerial photos from the 1950s, did a special kind of analysis to combine them and line them up with today's map, and found the same pale tracks leading into that square in all three years. They could be the road to the drill site. They could also be an old logging road or homestead lane. Finding out is the next step.
Zoom out, and Washington and Oregon's records hold 17 old oil and gas test holes in the six Gorge counties. Kady-Olsen is the only one inside the National Scenic Area.
What's next: Klickitat and Dufur.
We're excited to take the same investigation to three wells drilled in 1931 near the town of Klickitat, which tapped carbon dioxide instead of oil for a dry ice plant, and to the wildcat wells drilled west of Dufur from before 1907 to 1919.
How you can help.
Do you remember "the oil well" out by Beacon Rock, or near Klickitat or Dufur? Do you have old newspapers, letters or family stories about drilling here? Or deeds under the names Kady and Olsen? We'd love to hear from you at skamaniadispatch at gmail dot com.
Please don't go looking on your own, though. Field visits will happen only with the right safety preparations, and nobody digs or touches anything.
See the maps, the old photos and the full story on The Gorge Well Record:
Why we can do this.
Open Gorge is neighbor-built and neighbor-run. This kind of investigation, connecting public data to real issues that affect people and land here, is what paid community memberships make possible. Memberships help cover the costs behind projects like this one, from software services that let us do this level of analysis, to records fees, to the supplies needed to ensure this unique kind of investigation can happen as safely as possible. If that sounds worth supporting, consider becoming a community supporter.
And if you are a free subscriber, that's just great too. Your support is tremendous, whatever form it takes, and we're so grateful.
I dream of a time when we can ensure it's easier to clean up a mess in the Gorge than it is to make one, when we can keep the promise of our home being a safe and healthy one to live, work, and grow up. It begins with transparency-driven, community-led projects like this one, that we get to go out and do together. Thank you!