Lets spent a a few moments this morning to discuss the wild history of Volcano, West Virginia.
Volcano seems like an appropriate name for a town that briefly burned hot and then met a fiery end on this date in 1879.
Volcano, West Virginia sat right along the border of Wood and Ritchie counties in the White Oak oil region; about 20 miles east of Parkersburg and 12 miles west of Ellenboro.
Volcano holds a legendary place in West Virginia’s energy history for several reasons. After the oil discovery in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, Volcano was a hub for several major developments in oil extraction, transportation, and industrial technology.
The Endless-Cable System was first used in Volcano in 1874. Perfected and patented by W.C. Stiles Jr., it featured a central steam engine connected to a series of wooden wheels, belts, and iron cables that allowed a single operator to run up to 40 different oil wells at once, an amazing achievement at the time.
Volcano was also the home of West Virginia’s first oil pipeline in 1879, running right from the oil fields to the refineries in Parkersburg. At its peak in the 1860s and 1870s, the field at Volcano produced over 2.3 million barrels of oil. The crude extracted from Volcano was heavy, high-viscosity oil that required minimal refining, perfect for factories, trains, and heavy machinery.
With the oil flowing, the town of Volcano was growing. At its peak, counting the temporary oil rig workers, transient laborers, teamsters and others, as many as 10,000 once called Volcano home. Volcano had its own opera house, a bowling alley and not one, but two newspapers. Volcano’s Main Street had hotels, churches, schools, a post office, and several fine homes for wealthy oil barons who made quick fortunes in our relatively young state.
But, it didn’t last.
The initial boom in the 1860s was driven by relatively shallow wells between 300 to 400 feet deep and a little more than a decade later, those wells were producing less oil. Wildcatters moved on to bigger and deeper wells in the northern panhandle and beyond, migrating away from Volcano’s mature shallow fields to new areas where new drilling technologies were emerging.
That brings us to today’s anniversary, August 4th, 1879.
In the early morning hours on that day, after two earlier failed attempts to burn down the town, arsonists succeeded. After the night watchmen retired around dawn, a fire broke out in a central structure and the blaze spread quickly. Storage tanks brimming with oil ignited and burst open; thousands of gallons of burning, molten crude poured into the streets, setting fire to everything. By mid-day, downtown Volcano was gone, reduced to soot and ash. An arrest was made after a Pinkerton investigation, but the suspect was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
After the fire, the Laurel Fork & Sand Hill Railroad which connected to the B&O, carrying oil out and bringing supplies into Volcano, was dismantled rather than rebuilt.
Volcano, West Virginia; which got its name from the hundreds of glowing “yellow dog” amber oil lanterns and natural gas flares, which at night looked like a a giant erupting volcano on its brightly lit hillsides, flickered out.
Gone now for nearly a century and a half since that fateful fire, we remember Volcano, West Virginia this morning, not just for the ending to its brief but colorful existence, but for its fascinating role in the post-Civil War Industrial Revolution.