P.O. Box 250
Oil City, LA 71061
318-995-6687 tbgusherpres@gmail.com
Oil City, LA 71061
318-995-6687 tbgusherpres@gmail.com
OIL CITY, LA
THE TREASURE HAS BEEN FOUND!!
Click HERE to view the 1996 GUSHER DAYS SOUVENIR EDITION brochure.
Click HERE for SHINE and SHOW Flier.
Click HERE to view the 1996 GUSHER DAYS SOUVENIR EDITION brochure.
Click HERE for SHINE and SHOW Flier.
“Everything Old is New Again"
Gusher Days 2013
Oil City Gusher Day is May 18. We are having our annual Shine and Show car show on that date. We have the perfect locations for a car show; plenty of room to keep people off your rides, payment parking to show off your entry, restrooms and port-a-jons, tons of food, next to band stand, lots of freebees, gift bag….. all proceeds go to our Visit from Santa for the kids and our 8,000 egg Easter egg hunt. I am attaching Shine and Show information and you can also register on line, the day of the event or you can stop by “Pickers” (@ the red light), or at the Town Hall on Allen Street. Navigate through our site for more Gusher information. If you have not been to a Gusher Days festival or not been in a while you have missed out. Please give me a call if you have questions on my cell 318-773-2418. I hope to see you in Oil City on May 18th.
Mayor Chip Dickey
Saturday, May 18th, 2013
GUSHER DAYS presents a unique opportunity for Oil City and the surrounding communities in northern Caddo Parish to come together and celebrate our unique oil industry heritage. Long before "Dollar Stores" dotted Highway 1 North of Shreveport and the I-49 corridor, Oil City was a vital, business oriented town full of invigorated, faith based people eager to take advantage of oil business opportunities here. Thriving shops and stores lined Land Avenue in the downtown area, and parking spaces were at a premium on Saturday nights. GUSHER DAYS celebrates this vital piece of history and looks to our people to continue the cherished tradition of planning for the future, respecting the past, and bringing the best to our community. In 2013 GUSHER DAY will be Saturday, May 18th . Please navigate to our "Events" page for a complete listing of the year round GUSHER DAYS activities.
Early on, most settlers were fishermen, trappers, and farmers. Others took part in the timber industry, and another group harvested fresh water pearls in Caddo Lake after they were discovered in mussels in 1909. A dam was built in 1914, which caused the water levels to rise, killing the mussels and the pearl industry.
In 1904 Savage Brothers and Morrical drilled the first oil well. After the discovery of oil in 1905, the flag stop was destined to become a boom town. Three years later a man named Hughes (Howard Hughes father) convinced the government to locate a post office in Oil City. He is also given credit for changing the name to Oil City.
By 1910 the oil business was on its feet, with Gulf Oil drilling the first off-shore well in that year. Land sales went from fifty-cents an acre to $500 an acre within a year. 25,000 people populated the city, and all the land had been leased. The men in the oil field camps generally worked twelve-hour shifts each day, seven days a week. They slept in tents at the camps. Usually their families did not accompany them. The community supplied the well workers with meals and housing. Passenger trains, operated by Kansas City Southern Railroad, ran between the oil fields and Shreveport.
Oil City had wooden sidewalks and muddy streets with hitching posts for horses. Even the hotel in town was a tent for a while. There was a modest store that also was a billiard parlor, a post office, and sometimes an auditorium. The passenger and freight stations, along with the Kansas City Southern Railway telegraph office were housed in freight cars. The town became the first “wild cat town” in the Ark-La-Tex, as tough characters and a shack-covered red light district known as Reno Hill gave the town a rough-and-tumble atmosphere.
In the center of town was a lone tree, which law enforcement officials used to tie up drunks while they sobered up. A restaurant, gambling houses, saloons, and the Stag Hotel stood across the railroad tracks on the east side, and a two-story house in Reno Hill served as a dance hall. The sheriff of Oil City closed Reno Hill in 1917.
Oil City was described as being so wild that the crew on the passenger trains was advised to pull the window shades on the train cars to keep the women and children from seeing the fights and murders that occurred on the streets.
Warehouses, stores, hotels, and a movie theater eventually moved into the town. Fire destroyed twelve buildings in 1917, and fires in the 1920’s and in 1938 destroyed the subsequent buildings.
The Trees City Office and Bank Building, built in 1910 as the headquarters and bank building of the J. C. Trees Oil Company, was moved in 1983 to its present location at 200 S. Land Avenue in Oil City. The three-room wooden building is one of the few remaining in the state that has an association with the oil industry. The structure is now maintained by the Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum. Across Land Avenue is an oil derrick donated by Texaco.
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