Dave Walsh 15 Jan ’16
The Indians called this Wonder “the great tar springs”, and it would become the first oil well drilled in Wyoming. You’ll find this historic piece of ground just east of Lander, Wyoming. It was here, centuries ago, that Indians native to the area first saw it seeping from the ground. White men found it here in 1824, it was the great explorer, Captain Benjamin Bonneville, who came upon it while trading furs in 1832. And 19th-century emigrants used it to grease their wagon axels, they used it in lamps, and as a balm for aching muscles.
The first drilling took place here, at what is known as the Dallas Dome Oil Field.
It was Wyoming’s first oil well, driven into this fertile patch of black gold. This very first oil well was driven into the ground five years before the first well was drilled in the much more famous and productive, Salt Creek Oil Field north of Casper.
The original Number 2 well would pump for more than a century, into the early 1990’s. The Dallas Dome Oil Field, the very first of its kind in the Cowboy State, and a Wonder of Wyoming.