In 1986, Hogoboom writes:
"This picture was taken in June of 1926, 3/4 of a
mile south of the [present day] turnpike interchange at
El Dorado, Kansas. This Star (manufacturer's name)
drilling rig was used in the Oil Hill oil fields to drill
the 700 foot wells in this area. This machine is being
pulled down a muddy road, the main road going south out
of Oil Hill (2 1/2 miles north) to the Koogler and
Houston leases at the extreme south end of this oil
field. The picture was taken by the C. O. Boston Studio
of El Dorado, Kansas with one of the old-time cameras
that stood on a three legged tripod and Mr. Boston's head
covered by a black hood. The small house in the picture
at one time had been an oil field worker's castle and at
times a bootlegger place of business and at least one
skinner lived there for a short time. As I remember the
last bootlegger who did business there went by the name
of Toad Larkin. In dry weather, this was a 6 team (12
horse) load. But the mud was deep and this 20 horse team
(note back left wheel) was having a very tough time
getting down this road. I am the skinner standing in
front of the bald faced team with my sleeves rolled up.
The skinners from front to back are:
Carl (Runt) Rymer, Lester (Lep) Hickerson, Russel Poe,
Charles Phillips, Erwin Chaistain, Wayne King, Bert
Young, John Hogoboom, Fred Poe, Indian Tom (on the rig)
and Jack (Fat) Lindsey, the driller. The horses from left
all the way back are: Roudy & Charley, Nig &
Roudy, Blue & Chet, Cap & Buster, Bird &
Queen, Blue & Mage, Doc & Bird, Pat & Page,
Jerry & Doc and Dick & Chuck.
Also, there were about ten wagons
loaded with stem bits and bailers; the water tanks; the
forty-two foot mast; the rig house; the timbers and
casing rack; and last, the steam boiler that furnished
the power to run the tools. Of the ten two-horse teams, I
have at some time in my life have worked five of them out
of the transportation office at Oil Hill for the Empire
Oil and Gas Company.
With the exception of Wayne King,
who might still be living, I am the only man on this
earth who was there that day."
Click here to see
color photos of John Hogoboom and his team moving a newly
donated Star Spudder into place at the Butler County
Historical Museum and Outdoor Oilfield Museum in October,
1998.
Order
the Book
"The Long
Line Kansas Skinner"
From Chapter 2. "The Skinner in
the Oil Patch"
As I sit here in my easy chair on this cool August
morning in 1981 and look out my north door and see the
air-conditioned cars whiz by on a black-top road, I
wonder what I might have seen on this August day in 1926.
Now this road, in that year, was a
county road, with mud hock deep or dust, depending on the
weather. It was the main road to the oil boom town of
Midian (population at that time was 3,000), going west
out of El Dorado, county seat of Butler County, Kansas.
There is only one house left in the town (population 2).
What I would surely have seen if I
had looked out my north door would have been teams,
horses and wagons of every description. I might have seen
the mailman with his summer buggy, or the huckster with
his two old crow-baits, his spring wagon overloaded with
roasting ears, cabbage, onions and tomatoes or whatever
else he might be able to sell to the housewives who lived
in the hundreds of houses scattered throughout this huge
oil field on various leases. And I would surely have seen
a few teams of the rat-tail horses hauling loose hay, ear
corn and oats. This would be farmers hauling feed to the
numerous camps for the team contractors, whose teams kept
these oil rigs making holes in the ground. Next to come
by was a team of four good gray mules, hitched tandem to
a stake wagon, hauling coal and owned by the Powell Coal
and Feed Co. Their destination was the old standard
wooden rigs with fuel for their boilers .....
But look what's coming! The pride of
the oil fields, the Long Line Skinners. A long string of
them are coming from the supply yard at Oil Hill. As they
turn the corner, the long line seems to be endless --
their red tassels fluttering in the wind, white rings
shining, their big leather housing sitting high on the
hames. Each housing has the owner's name in brass letters
on them. These wagons are specially built. Nowhere else
in the country is this type of wagon used, only in the
oil field, with their bright red line stakes, their three
inch steel coupling poles, and sixteen foot engine beds.
Most of the wagons are Matt or Peter Shelter Wagons.
Their bolsters, front and back, are built up level with
the top of the wheels so that when pipe or casing was
being hauled, it would roll over the tops of the wheels.
The engine beds were three feet by sixteen, with a
two-inch floor and the rails are three by six oak. These
beds are easily moved by one good stout man -- just pull
the line stakes out of the front bolster and crow bars
out the back bolster and slide it off the ground. It took
a pretty good man to load it back on the wagon by
himself, but one good horse could and would do it, and
all you had to do was hook the chain (and talk to him).
As I sit in the shade of this old
tree today, I have tried to draw you a picture of what
you might have seen, had you been there fifty-five years
ago or more. But I would not have been there because I
was one of the Long Line Skinners in that long line of
toiling horses. Those horses range in size from 1400 to
1600 lbs. each. Once in awhile, you might see a 1900 or
2000 lb. horse, but about 90% of them were fat, slick and
well taken care of. Shod all the way around and usually
well matched, they moved down the road at about 2 miles
an hour, with an average load of about 3000 lbs. on each
wagon, unless the roads were very muddy or covered with
deep snow.
The long line skinner took very good
care of his horses and whether he owned them or drove
them for someone else, the horses ate before he did. You
could be a mule skinner, teamster, farmer, dray man, hack
driver or a dirt hand. All had one thing in common --
they all drove horses or mules to make a living. But the
Long Line Skinner, in the oil fields, was the most
respected and admired of all the teamsters. He was
usually an expert horseman and proud of his job, his team
and his know-how and ability to load any piece of heavy
equipment that it took to construct one of those Standard
Wooden Rigs ....
Skinners were the staff of life in
the oil field, for without the skinner and his
well-trained horses, there would have been no oil field.
First, he had to gin all heavy equipment off the railroad
cars, then haul it to many different wildcat locations
and over roads that were not even good cow trails. Next
he set the sills and ginned the heavier pieces for the
rig. In my estimation, there are at least 40 to 50 loads
of materials to be hauled, just to get one old standard
wooden rig ready to drill. Then there was load after load
of casing to haul, probably 40 loads and many tons of
coal -- all this to drill one well. Multiply this by 40
to 60 rigs drilling every day, not counting hundreds of
pumping wells that had to be serviced everyday. There
were hundreds of miles of pipe lines to be hauled and
strung, ditches dug and back filled. The horses help dig
a lot of these ditches and they back filled most of them.
To back fill these ditches, a small
contraption called a Mormon Board was used. It was made
of oak lumber with a steel cutting edge and a couple of
pieces of chain with two plow handles. The horses pulled
it forward, pushing the dirt into the ditch. The Skinner
tied a rope around his waist and onto the double tree to
help drag them back. (No time for a runaway!) Two men
pulled the Mormon Board back and set it over behind the
dirt; get up horses, whoa, back, forward two to eight
feet. (Get up, Whoa, Back), forward, backward, hour after
hour, day after day, nine or ten hours a day. It was nine
hours on the job, one or two hours to get to the job, one
or two hours to get home and another hour at least to
take care of your team. Sometimes it was cold, sometimes
so muddy you could not lift your feet, sometimes the dust
so bad you could hardly see your team. Wages were $3.50
for the skinner and $3.50 for the team. There might be a
half dozen reasons why a man would work at a job like
this, but I can only think of four: First, because you
didn't know any better; second, because you were crazy;
third, because you liked to eat; and fourth, because you
loved to work those damned old horses.
