Richmond Oil Company

First you need to sit right back and listen to the Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song, (Youtube)  which is, The ballad of Jed Clampett, (Wikipedia)
Download and/or listen to the ballad from the Internet Archive, for Free

Steveston No.1  C-044-G   Latitude:  49.12447   Longitude:  -123.170838   NAD 83

Today the well head is located in an area of residential homes; unknown if it is visible, or what kind of shape it is in.    This was the first attempt, in the Lower Fraser Valley to drill specifically for oil and gas. A few holes had been drilled prior, but they were looking for coal.

    

              Unknown how correct this is, but I am sure that the actual well would not be far away  from here.

The Richmond Oil Company, was incorporated January 12, 1904, with a capital stock of $12,000, in $10 shares, with the purpose of drilling for oil at Steveston, in Richmond, B.C.
Followed a few months later by the, Steveston Land & Oil Company Limited, incorporated April 15, 1904.  With their capital stock at $250,000, in $1 shares.

1904 April 1  Richmond Oil company will begin drilling next Tuesday. Mr. Thomas Davis, of Beaumont, Texas in charge.
1904 April 10 raised share price to 11$. William C. Cameron, secretary.
1904 May 8

Two illustrations, from B.C. Mining exchange, April issue. Two experts Thomas Davis and Ferguson, from Beaumont, Texas, are in charge of drilling.
1904 May 17;    600 feet, small quantity of oil noticed.
1904 June 1;   10-inch pipe inserted to 700 feet, to shut-off quicksands. Below 700 feet there is 15 feet of very hard shale, then 5 feet blue gumbo, alternating between shale and gumbo as the depth increases.

1904 June 12. Victoria Daily Colonist.  This AD first appears

1904 June 17  Steveston Land and Oil Company.  British American Trust Company, C.E. Milne, local manager in Victoria.

Alfred Cornelius Flumerfelt, (1856-1930) he was involved in numerous speculative offerings through the years, some made money, some did not.
Robert William Riddell, (1865-1947); Homer Myles Galer, (1864-1930)
The British American Trust Company,  was incorporated in 1901. And in 1919 the company changed their name to British American Bond Corporation Limited, to better reflect their bussiness activities at that time.

1906 May19 Victoria Daily Colonist
Harold Mayne Daly, (1880-1965)   Harold was one of the fortunate few survivors of the sinking of the Lusitania  

So the, Richmond Oil Company, and the Steveston Land & Oil Company, were controlled by the same people.

1904 July 1.  Reports from Steveston are favourable to the prospects of striking oil. In such an event the Lower Fraser valley would experience a boom of unexampled character. Oil as a product of the soil is one in comparison with which strawberry culture becomes a waste of time. We would not in the meantime, however, advise farmers to disregard the possibilities of strawberries.

1904 July 1

Steveston oil drilling

Pressure of gas at the Richmond well forty feet to the square inch

Thomas Davis, manager of the Steveston Land & Oil Company, received a wire last evening from Vancouver stating that the pressure of gas at the Richmond well yesterday was forty-five pounds to the square inch. This in the opinion of Mr. Davis and the oil drillers at Steveston, is the strongest kind of evidence that oil will be reached so soon as the sandstone capping is penetrated by the drill. The pressure of gas is taken at the surface and this after passing through 925 feet of water, which fills the iron pipe casing.

Transcribed below:

1904 July 31 TheVictoria  Daily Colonist

   OIL AT STEVESTON

Most recent developments point to an early strike of the fluid.

A News-Advertiser representative received the intelligence yesterday of most welcome developments at the Steveston oil prospects. Mr. Ewen Wainwright MacLean, ⁽¹⁾ of the Richmond Oil Company, and Mr. Thomas Davis, of the Steveston Land & Oil Company, informed him that early in the afternoon the pressure became so strong at the boring, which is now down 925 feet, that the capping and plug at the mouth of the piping were blown clear from the opening and water shot up over 40 feet into the air. The water is up to within 15 feet of the top of the piping, the pressure of the gas in the pipe being 88 pounds to the square inch, and it is obvious that the pressure from the gas below must have been immense to cause such a phenomenon. The value of the occurrence lies in the fact that such extreme pressure is invariably found when oil is within measurable distance of being struck, the indications being almost identical with those at the big oil strike in Beaumont, Texas.
The Richmond Oil Company, on the land of which the boring is being made, is expecting new pipe and boring accessories daily to continue working to greater depth. At present, as already stated, the piping, which is 8-inch, is down 925 feet; now 6-inch pipe is to be driven through the bedrock and operations continued downward till oil is struck. The surface works, 80-foot derrick and so forth, are completely installed, and everything is in readiness for the expected welcome appearance of the precious fluid.
Mr. Thomas Davis, who is connected with the Steveston Land & Oil Company, is a well-known Texas expert, and his observations lead him to believe that the prospects at Steveston are extremely bright.

⁽¹⁾   Ewen Wainwright MacLean, (1863-1923)  Short biography here.   Also a biography in Volume IV, page 708  of,   British Columbia, Earliest times to the present. By: E.O,S, Scholefield

Ewen Wainwright MacLean

Transcribed below:

1904 August 14

    MAY STRIKE OIL SHORTLY

Strong and steady pressure of natural gas at Steveston.

The pipe that the Richmond Oil Company has been awaiting a long time will arrive over the C.P.R. tomorrow, says the Vancouver Province, and the drilling operations that have been suspended for the last week or more pending its delivery, will be resumed on Monday.
Mr. H.C. Fritts, superintendent of operations for the company, is in the city today, and stated that he lighted the gas last night for a test, and that he had a flare nine feet in width by eighteen feet in height, which was plainly seen in Westminster. The company is now down nine-hundred and twenty-three feet and he says the pressure of gas is enormous. A half-inch taps the big ten-inch casing at the top of the derrick eighty-four feet from the surface of the ground, and runs fifteen feet higher up. The gas is lighted from the escape end of the small pipe.
Mr. Fritts, says he is absolutely assured of the existence of oil. The deposit of gas invariably precedes oil, the only thing to make an operator doubt where he stands being when the gas comes for a short time and then plays out. A steady flow of gas has continued ever since it was first struck some three weeks ago, at an average pressure of seventy pounds to the square inch, and the existence of great quantities has been proved.

1904 august14: Henry C. Fritts waiting for pipe. Henry lighted the gas creating an 18 feet high, by 8 feet wide flare.  Well is down 923feet,  with 70 lbs pressure.

1904 November 2:  drilling 50 feet per week on average, cutting through the capping at the present time, well nearly 1,100 feet in depth, and the gas pressure is very strong.

A small portion of  Fraser River Delta, British Columbia; Johnston, W A. Geological Survey of Canada, Multicoloured Geological Map no. 1965, 1923 .  Drilling site shown as a red + symbol

Geology of Fraser River Delta map area; Johnston, W A. Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 135, 1923    [ The map above is part of this Memoir ]

Excerpt from the above memoir that describes the drilling:

The Steveston well was drilled by Mr. Henry C. Fritts, to whom the writer is indebted for the following information regarding the well. A rotary drilling rig was used and a 13-inch hole was carried through sand to a depth of 700 feet, at which point a large boulder was encountered.
The boulder was drilled into for 6 feet and the 10-inch casing set. A 10-inch hole was carried to a depth of 860 feet, where the first shale bed was encountered and a flow of gas obtained. A gas pressure of 88 pounds to the square inch was obtained on bushing the 10-inch pipe to ¼ -inch and using a steam gauge. From 860 feet to 1,000 feet, where the first hard shale was encountered, the formation varied from fine sand to shale.
The 8-inch casing was set at a depth of 1,000 feet. Drilling was continued with a 6-inch stem to a depth of 1,200 feet when operations ceased because of lack of capital. A part of the casing still remains in the hole.

- 30 -

So they ran out of money, and the only people to make money would have been the stock brokers, and the real estate salesmen.  Not sure if the British American Trust Company was involved in this later speculative venture  which  covers the same patch of real estate in Richmond.

Nothing ever became of this highly speculative venture either.

The first seriously drilled oil well, the first of over fifty that have been drilled in the Fraser Valley throughout the years.  Download this Google Earth Kml file to see where the well are located, all failed to bring their investors what they wished of them.
I am  gathering up information on the other wells, and will eventually post it all here. It  interesting how many of these wells from times long ago are now inside residential communities, and it is unknown how they were sealed off, when the speculative ventures failed.  We may have over 50 potential accidents, just waiting to happen, all of the wells, had some gas in them, that is normal.

 ♬ ... And up through the ground came the bubblin crude...♬

Coal train derailment in Burnaby

I gathered up a few bits of information about this mess; rolling the dice in these increasingly high density living areas.
Heavy rain may have caused CP train derailment in Burnaby.

From what I saw of the videos, photographs the rail bed was definitely eroded by the stream, and the inevitable happened.

Coal train derailment a real concern says Corrigan

The Canadian Pacific Railway train was using Canadian National Railways tracks to move metallurgical coal from the East Kootenay coalfields to the Neptune Terminals in North Vancouver.

The coal itself  will hopefully not do too much long-term damage to the environment, but it is an incident that should not have occurred in the first place if the CNR staff had sent someone along the tracks before hand to check on the integrity of their rail bed.

A concern that I have is I was wondering if the same chemical, ( 4-methyl cyclohexane methanol, CAS# 34885-03-5 )  had  been previously used on the coal, to remove the sulfur, that  is causing so much concern right now in the USA, where a large spill of it occurred, see the discussion HERE.

 Blue Circle is highlighting the area of the derailment, beside "Silver Creek" ( Which is a local name, not a gazetted name )

Learn where the safety placards are on trains

And what the Class designations mean on the placards

And while you are at it learn some of the cryptic numbers that are used to identify some of the commodities carried through our communities. Luckily some of the chemicals are listed in plain english, and painted onto the tanks, the smaller tank cars are usually the most dangerous, sometimes they also have a frame around them.

 Frequently you will also see something listed with the designation,  CAS and a number.
CAS, stands for Chemical Abstracts Service, sadly this is a pay to use service; no sense of safety with them, just money. More frequently seen in use on smaller amounts of chemicals, but the commodity chemicals also have their CAS numbers too.

Harrison Lake Murder

I was searching using the term "Silver Creek" which is the older naming of todays Widgeon Creek, at the foot of Pitt Lake, and came across this news item:

Transcribed here:
The Daily Colonist 24 September 1909

Harrison Lake Murder

The chase of the provincial police engaged in the solution of what has come to be known as the Harrison Lake murder mystery after the Indian "Cultus Charlie," accused of the killing of Howard Wade, continues without result as yet. Although on several occassions they have had the irritable satisfaction of "just missing" their man. The Indian is, like the majority of aborigines, an expert woodsman, and as he has taken to the hills and has the sympathy of his race, it is probable that it will be long before he grows careless and falls into the hands of the law.


The news item piqued my interest...

The Daily Colonist 26 September 1909

Provincial Constable Wilkie came into New Westminster Thursday for supplies and returned to Harrison, where he is proceeding with the search for the Indian accused of the murder of Howard Wade, the logger, at Silver Creek, during the latter part of August. the whole countryside and all the shores of Harrison Lake are being carefully searched in an effort to find the Indian, but so far all efforts in this direction have met with no success.

[ Today Silver Creek is known as, Big Silver Creek  ]
Constable Wilkie was on the chase

A small picture of  Private Otway John James Wilkie taken from a,
Collage of Boer War soldier portraits. - ca. 1899, he was about 38 years old in this photo.

Cropped photo of, Otway John James Wilkie,(1861-1945)     1884
    Van. Archives  A34436

        Wilkie was born in Howth, Ireland on October 4, 1861 and came to Canada in 1878, settling in Langley, British Columbia. In 1887 he joined the Provincial Police Force. He resigned from the police in 1896 in order to take the position of assistant manager of the provincial asylum. In 1899 he went to South Africa as part of the Canadian contingent in the Boer War and he received the Queen’s Medal with four bars. He returned to B.C. on New Years eve of 1900. He was appointed as the Chief of the Provincial Police for the District of New Westminster and the Fraser Valley. Wilkie resigned from the police in 1912 and started a real estate business. He was a member for two years of the Langley town council. Wilkie was a member of L.O.L. No. 1150 in New Westminster.

B.C. From the earliest times to the present, Volume 3 – 1914.


The Daily Colonist 9 April 1910

INDIAN TAKEN ON MURDER CHARGE

August Charlie arrested at Pemberton Meadows on suspicion of having caused the death of Howard Wade.

August Charlie, and Indian, for whom the Provincial police have been searching for three months past, has been arrested at Pemberton Meadows on suspicion of having caused the death of Howard Wade, a rancher of the Harrison Lake district. The body of Mr. Wade was found in Harrison Lake, with the skull battered in, presumably with an axe. Foul play was suspected and indications pointed to an Indian, under the influence of liquor, having been instrumental in the crime. the attention of the Provincial police was directed to the movements of August Charlie, an Indian of the vicinity, who was known to have been in the neighborhood at the time of the supposed murder. He got wind of the suspicions and fled. For the last three months, practically since the time of the crime, the chase has continued, the Indian finally being caught at Pemberton Meadows. He has been taken to Vancouver and will be charged with the murder, according to a report just received by Superintendent Hussey. The Provincial police are understood to have important evidence which will lead to his conviction.

 

Frederick Stephen Hussey, ca.1893.

photo: John Savannah,(1868-1925)    BC Archives  A-02238

The Daily Colonist 22 April 1910

The hearing is proceeding at New Westminster of the Indian August Charlie, who is charged with the murder of the rancher Howard Wade, at Harrison Lake.


The Daily Colonist 26 April 1910

August Charlie, the indian suspected of the murder of Howard Wade, of Harrison Lake, has been formally committed for trial.

Transcribed here:

The Daily Colonist 28 April 1910

EYE TO MAIN CHANCE

Took Indian charged with murder and also staked mineral claim.
To capture a man wanted for murder and to stake out a mining claim at the same time is the unusual accomplishment of Joe Cole, of Upper Sumas. Cole was looking for August Charlie, wanted in connection with the murder of Howard Wade, on the shores of Silver Creek last August.
He located him camping on the Lillooet River, deep in the woods, and placed him under arrest.
But Cole had an eye to business and even though he was after a desparate man he did not like to pass a good thing. And so when he found indications of gold along the Lillooet River he promptly staked out a claim which he has since registered at New Westminster.
the claim is situated on the south bank of the Lillooet River and on the east bank of Twenty-Five Mile Creek and contains eighty acres, more or less. The area is an hydraulic low-grade placer mine.



[ Twenty-Five Mile Creek is today known as, 25 mile, or, Jim creek this is above Pemberton, possibly not correct. Nothing appears to have come out of this "find", I could find no records.

Joseph Cole died at Mission 24 March 1929, 65 years of age.
Joe was married to Annie Barton in 1896 New Westminster, she died the following year  in September 1897, at Surrey Centre, at the age of 23.   ]


The Daily Colonist 3 June 1910

A new trial has been ordered in the case of August Charlie, indicted in the assize court at New Westminster for the murder of Howard Wade, the trial jury being unable to agree.

The Daily Colonist 4 June 1910

The retrial of August Charlie for the murder of Howard Wade, takes place in New Westminster at the close of the present assize term.

The Daily Colonist 9 June 1910

...August Charlie charged with the Howard Wade murder at Harrison Lake, secured an acquittal.

Map of reserve and Silver Creek is on 92H  Hope, B.C., I used a cropped section of the map to create this.

Skulkayn; Skowkale; Chilliwack IR 10/11, Skowkale First Nation


So we have a dead man Howard Wade,  listed date of death as August 29, 1909 at Silver Creek. 35 years old. I could not find where he is buried, or any relations of him.

August Charlie, meanwhile lived a full life and died 22 January 1946 Skulkayn Reserve,Sardis. age 100 estimated. He was married to Josephine Aikalh, in 1918, she died 13 May 1936, Skulkayn IR. age 88.

So I guess that this is still an unsolved murder?
 And the only reason that this is here on the web is because I was looking for Silver Creek, and the outcome was interesting, many would have thought that August Charlie, would have been found guilty and hanged. But justice prevailed, probably due to the lack of solid evidence, not the first time that I have seen this in my researching of the Province; moral: everything is not like the movies.
This crime will never be solved because at the time we had  our own British Columbia Provincial Police, who were disbanded in 1950, when the RCMP took over, and all the previous records were destroyed in utter ignorance of their value.

First post

Here I will place some of the numerous bits of flotsam and jetsom that I collect as I do research on other things historical, with a primary focus on British Columbia; hang on it will be quirky.