Historedia
Episode 1 of 1

First Commercial Oil Strike

When
15 April 1897
Where
Caney River bank
Part of
Nellie Johnstone No. 1 oil strike near Bartlesville in Indian Territory

The Nellie Johnstone well struck oil on April 15, 1897, near Bartlesville in Indian Territory, described by the Bartlesville passage as Oklahoma's first commercial oil well.

The well discovered oil along a bank of the Caney River near Bartlesville. The strike occurred on Osage reservation lands where the Bureau of Indian Affairs had granted a request in March 1896, stipulating that the lessee pay the Osage tribe a 10% royalty on all petroleum sales produced on the reservation.

Sources

  1. Bartlesville, Oklahoma Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-08
  2. Osage Nation Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-01

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.