C'est Vari: No water, just mud

Some St. Martin Parish plantation owners were trying to drill a well to irrigate their rice crop in 1902 and got really upset when the doggoned well kept producing oil and gas. They drew a crowd after tossing a match into the gas, but still couldn’t draw water for their rice.
The Weekly Messenger gave the full report in its edition of Nov. 29, 1902.
“When the Messrs. Stailey, Satteheld & Co. undertook a rice crop on the land they had recently purchased, just about one mile west of St. Martinville, they decided to sink a deep well to irrigate their crop of rice, but while drilling the well they found gas in such quantity as to make the drilling very difficult, and after the well was completed their pump could not draw the water.
“Some advanced the theory that the water was there but the gas interfered with the pump, and was the cause of the well not producing the water that was required. … If a match was applied to the water as it came out of the well the large quantity of gas coming out with the water would burn.”
The plantation owners followed the advice and the gas did catch fire “[making] it look as if the well was [producing] a stream of fire,” which, of course, was useless as a source of irrigation.
It did, however, attract “a large number of people from every section” including oil experts who “were very favorably impressed … and many [of whom] tried to secure options on these lands.”
The plantation owners turned down the offers and “in their anxiety to save their rice crop” drilled a second well, and again struck gas.
Still “they persisted in going deeper after water,” and drilled a third well until “deep in a gravel bed, they found a huge supply of water.” But, once again, “the quantity of gas, coming from over two hundred feet, [was] undiminished.”
That was enough. Messrs. Stailey, Satteheld & Co in November leased part of their land to the Southern Pacific Railroad, which promised to begin drilling for oil by the middle of December. According to the Nov. 29 Messenger report, SP representatives “were here during the week to look over the situation.”
According to the newspaper, “During the next few days the people of St. Martinville will be able to be on the spot every day to witness the progress made by the drilling, and many will do it, because our people are vastly interested in the exploration of our oil resources.”
The search for oil “means much to the property holders of the entire parish” the report continued,” because the indications of oil are everywhere in the parish, and one place, apparently, [is] as good the others. If oil was to be found where the indications are, and where drilling is now in progress, St. Martin parish would be the greatest oil producing country in the world.”
The newspaper reported two days after Christmas that drilling had begun and that “the drillers have a contract with the railroad company to make a hole two thousand feet deep.”
On Jan. 17, 1903, we find the report that drillers struck “a mud gusher” at about 400 feet and that “the indications at this well are very favorable, and nothing less than a first class gusher is expected.”
But then, on February 28, The Messenger reported that drillers had hit another gusher, not at the Southern Pacific site, but at the Anse le Butte salt dome near Breaux Bridge, and a few weeks later that the Heywood brothers, who had drilled Louisiana’s first successful well near Jennings, pronounced this new find a winner.
After that I find no mention of Southern Pacific’s mud gusher that had held such promise. It appears that Messrs. Stailey, Satteheld & Co got neither water for their rice nor oil for their trouble.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.