[All-Gorge] 🛢️ Uncovering an Oil Well Mystery - Special Investigation

In 1949 someone drilled for oil just west of Beacon Rock, and the state's record never says the hole was sealed. Open Gorge is using public records and 1950s aerial photos to find it, and next heading to Klickitat and Dufur. Here's how you can help.

In This Episode

• A 1949 oil test well near Beacon Rock
• Why old wells matter for water and air
• Tracks in 1950s aerial photos
• 17 old test holes in the six Gorge counties
• Next up: Klickitat and Dufur
• How to share memories and records

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• The Gorge Well Record project page: https://opengorge.org/gorge-oil-well-record
• Become a member: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/#/portal/signup
• Why plugging matters: Curtis Shuck on orphan wells

Stay Connected with the Gorge

The Skamania Dispatch and The Klickitattler are community-led projects of OpenGorge.org.

To stay updated on local news, governance, and community events across the region, you can sign up for both newsletters at SkamaniaDispatch.com. For real-time updates and to join the conversation, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/OpenGorge.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey neighbor, welcome back to a special Open Gorge podcast. It starts today with my gratitude and a very important update. This is a community-driven newsletter. We receive no grants, posts, no ads. Any financial support we receive to keep the basic costs of the newsletter running comes out of the pockets of the Open Gorge team and from readers and listeners like you. When you support this newsletter, you enable us not only to keep up with all of those public meeting summaries for more than 30 different agencies across two counties and our state, but you actually help us grow and show the power of what locally grounded public records reporting can do. In that vein, I am so excited to share with you an update on one of the many homegrown investigations we currently have running under the hood that we're now able to take on thanks to subscribers. And our story today starts, as many good ones do in this Halloween season, with a mysterious hole in the ground. In 1949, a company called the Columbia River Oil Company drilled a test well just west of Beacon Rock. At 250 feet, they found a little oil. At 750 feet, they hit water under so much pressure it flowed up on its own. Washington still has that record, so we pulled it. That well is called Katy Olson, number one, and the record's last word on it is drilled. Nothing about what happened after, and no record that anyone ever sealed it. So why does that matter? An old well is a deep hole. If it was never sealed, gas or oil can leak up, and water can move between layers underground, including the water people drink, that waters our crops, or flows into the rivers and streams where we fish. Sealing a well is routine work. There's public money to pay for it. Groups like the Well Done Foundation, what a great name is that, do all this work all over the country. In Oklahoma, they plug dozens of old wells in a wildlife refuge. Their chairman, Curtis Shuck, put it simply: quote, doing nothing is not an option. The hard part is knowing exactly where it is because some of those records, they try their best, but they're kind of imprecise. So honing in on that final location, that's the part that neighbors can do. Here's what we found so far. We saw that the 1949 public record points to one 10-acre square of public land. We pulled aerial photos from the 1950s and did a special kind of analysis that helped us combine them and line them up with today's map. And I have to tell you how cool that was seeing all these old pictures of the gorge taken on film. It's like a time machine. And in all three years that we looked at, the same pale tracks lead right into that square. Maybe that's the old road to a drill site. Maybe it's a logging road or an old homestead lane. Going out into the field and finding out is going to be our next step. Zoom out, and the records on both sides of the river hold 17 old oil and gas test holes across six gorge counties. Katie Olsen is the only one inside the National Scenic Area. And we're not stopping there. Next, we're excited to take the same investigation to three wells drilled in 1931 near the town of Clickitat. Those tapped carbon dioxide, not oil, for a dry ice plant. And next to the wildcat wells drilled west of Doofer, Oregon, from 1907 to 1919. So here's where you, the listener, come in. Do you remember somebody talking about, quote, the old oil well out by Beacon Rock or anything near Clickitat or Doofer? Maybe you've got old newspapers, letters, or a family story about working in these industries. Or maybe the names Katie, that's K-A-D-Y, or Olson, O-L-S-E-N, sound familiar to you. We'd love to hear from you. Please email us at schemania dispatch at gmail.com. One asked though, please don't go looking for them on your own. Field visits will happen only with all the right safety and compliance checks in place, and nobody digs or touches anything. You can see the maps, the old photos, and the whole story on the Gorgewell record at opengorge.org. And a quick word on how this all happens. OpenGorge is a neighbor-built and neighbor-run project. Digging into public data like this and connecting it 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 that helps us with analysis to records fees to supplies that help us safely get out into the field to do special investigations like this one. If that sounds worth supporting, you can become a member at Scamaniadispatch.com. I actually dream of a time when we can ensure that it's easier to clean up a mess in the gorge than it was 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 so much. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, the home of the Schemania Dispatch and the Click a Tattler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to schemania dispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.comslash opengorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.