Residents gathered around the Town Well.
1920’S OIL BOOM
Writer / Beth Wilder, Director, Photography Provided
Almost 100 years ago, Jeffersontown experienced something quite unexpected - an oil boom. Of course, no one thinks of oil rigs when they think of Jeffersontown. There is a good reason for that, and a rather amusing story behind it all. Jeffersontown once had a community well at the corner of Watterson Trail and Taylorsville Road, located under the right turn lane near the current location of the Jeffersontown Chamber of Commerce. The well had been dug in 1817 at a cost of $50, levied from the town’s first property taxes. In 1824 a bucket, bail and chain were purchased for the well, and a roof was added to keep children from falling into it. By 1914, the health board had condemned the town’s water wells as unsanitary, so they mainly served to provide water for uses other than drinking. Varying legends exist regarding how the oil
was first discovered. Mildred Anderson, the granddaughter of Dr. Wells, who owned a pharmacy at the corner where El Nopal restaurant now stands, was twelve years old at the time of the oil boom, and she recalled Mrs. L.A. Blankenbaker detecting the scent of oil as she passed by the town well one day. Most other accounts, however, suggest that in 1920, a car passing through town had overheated and stopped at the well for water to pour into the radiator. When the water was brought up from the well, the scent of gasoline was so noticeable that the owner of the car decided to put some in his gas tank. Sure enough, the car ran just fine from whatever happened to be in the well. Most of the townspeople became extremely excited at the thought that they had struck oil, although a few levelheaded people tried to explain that it was not oil but gasoline they were smelling, and that gasoline had to be refined from oil. Chances are that it was coming from a leaking gas tank nearby. Logic did not prevail, however, and the
boom was on.
Several local men leased the town well, formed an oil company and began selling stock. These same men - John E. Anderson, G.A. Simpson, Dr. J.R. Shacklett, and Louis C. Coe - enclosed the well with a rectangular fence and put a tent atop it, then they took turns staying with the well and pumping gas from it. The product of the well was then transported across the street to the garage of Louis Coe, where it was sold to the public for 25 cents per gallon. Then things really got crazy. People came from all over the county to see Jeffersontown’s well. Local residents not only started drilling for oil on their own properties, but prospectors also began rushing into town, offering to buy or lease land so they could drill for oil. The drilling lasted for about a year, and some oil was found in 1922, but the more practical townsfolk still insisted that there was a big difference between oil and refined
6 / MIDDLETOWN MAGAZINE / MARCH 2021 / atMiddletown.com
