Ghost Town 2: The Days of Gushers, Go-Devils, and Nitro Shooters

by Randy McNutt

In the second of his "GHOST TOWN" stories, Randy McNutt goes searching for the lost boomtowns of what was once America's largest oil field. In Wood County, Ohio, in the 1890s, "It was the day of the gusher!" as one historian wrote. Another said, "Girls! Booze! Gambling!" You could get even more at the European Hotel, where some mischievous oil workers once shot a cannon ball through the front wall for the fun of it. Blinky the piano player was the first to emerge, unhurt, but later he was blown to bits in a nitro blast. Shanty towns were explosive places that helped Standard Oil build its international reputation with a huge patch of derricks. Out in the flat countryside, between the derricks and ramshackle towns, you could hear massive explosions when nitro blew wagons and drivers to atoms. As one reporter observed, nitro was "death in bottled-up form." The towns were rough and tumble places where whiskey ruled and oil flowed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in now-ghost towns named Six Points, Oil Center, Bays, Galatea, Rudolph, Mermill, and others. All boomtowns, all dead now.

20 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 29, 2017