THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING
PART ELEVEN - DE GOLYER

Chapter 28  -  The Artist as a Yong Man

In 1911 the University of.Oklahoma annual changed its name from '''The Mistletoe" to "The Sooner." In the 1909 Mistletoe, Everette Lee De Golyer listed the following activities:

Class football and baseball, '06, '07
Mistletoe Staff
Forum, '05
Class President, '05
Kappa Alpha

The picture of Everette in the 1909 Mistletoe is full length and shows a husky build that gives just a hint of his future chubby stature. He is wearing a hat pushed weIl to the back of his head and his winning smile is the same infectious one that won so many friends through the years. A number of biographers have De Golyer starting his college career in 1906 but as we can see the correct year is 1905.

Everette helped pay for his board and room by waiting on table at his fraternity house. For books and spending money, he had a job with the geology department, where his duties started as janitor and ended as student assistant. In his freshman year he was attracted to a student assistant in German. Everette was taking a course in German. Since from an early age De Golyer had adopted a policy of leaving as little as possible to chance. he soon met the assistant grading his German examination papers. When the assistant in German turned out to be a girl and a knockout at that, he asked her for a date. The fact that Nell Virginia Goodrich of Norman, Oklahoma, was a junior did not deter our hero for he was somewhat older than his classmates and after all he was President of his class even if he was a freshman. Everette borrowed his roommate's suit for his first date with this new girl friend. They had so much fun on their first date that Everette started saving his money so that he could buy a suit of his own.

Young De Golyer spent his summers working with the United States Geological Survey. The practical experience gained with the USGS was even more important to his geological career than the inspirited formal instruction within the University of Oklahoma, where his principal mentor was Charles N. Gould. The first summer found him working in central and southern Wyoming under the dean of reconnaissance geologists, Nelson Horatio Darton. Since all the field assistant jobs were taken, Everette hired on as camp cook, when his experiences in the restaurant business supplied him with the proper credentials. By July his ingenuity got Everette out of the cook-shack and onto the payroll as a field assistant.

In the summer of 1907, De Golyer was fleld assistant to EImer Grant Woodruff in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. During this season he won the friendship of both E. G. Woodruff and Cassius M. Fisher. While working in the Big Horn, Everette learned that the boss man, Chief Geologist C. Willard Hayes would shortly visit the party. He asked Woodruff to tell him about Dr. Hayes, his personality, his likes and dislikes. When Everette learned that the Chief Geologist had an unusual fondness for beer, he rnanaged to acquire a case of beer and stashed it away at a nearby spring. Drinking alcoholic beverages, even beer, was strictly prohibited within any USGS camp. Dr. Hayes, young De Golyer and a few others passed many a pleasant hour at the nearby well-spiced spring. C. Willard Hayes was duly grateful for the thoughtful gesture and he made a mental note that this young man, De Golyer, hed the makings of a fine geologist.

1907 was the year in which the Administration, Building at the University of Oklahorna burned to the ground and it was also the year in which Nell Goodrich received her B.F.A. degree in Music . In the fall of 1907, Nell began her graduate work in Fine Arts and she continued to date that handsome undergraduate, Everette De Golyer.

The summer of 1908 found Everette working as field assistant to Carl D. Smith in the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana and in the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. When he returned to Norman in September he found a new job awaiting him. The Oklahoma Geological Survey commissioned him to do field work in northeastern Oklahoma. He worked some week-ends and throughout the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays on this project.

In a letter dated November 5, 1908, E. G. Woodruff urged De Golyer to come to Washington to work toward obtaining permanent status with the USGS. It seems that a number of appointments in geology were about to be made. In December of 1908, Carl D. Smith wrote to Everette in the same vein and went on to say that De Golyer was needed as soon as possible to start work on the preparation of maps of the Montana and North Dakota areas worked the summer before. In compliance with the urging of both Woodruff and Smith, Everette discontinued his schooling at the close of the first semester. Toward the end of January, 1909, he reported to Smith in Washington and was put to work making maps. On June 23, 1909, De Golyer was appointed Junior Geologist in the USGS at a salary of $90.00 per month. In the summer of 1909 he worked under Willis T. Lee in the Crested Butte region of central Colorado.

When young De Golyer returned to school in September of 1909, he had scarcely settled down in Norman when a letter arrived from Mexico from his good friend Edwin B. Hopkins, saying that De Golyer could soon expect an offer to come to Mexico which he would not be able to refuse.

Dr. Willard Hayes, Chief Geologist of the USGS, has been requested by Sir Weetman Pearson early in 1909 to make an inspection trip to Mexico to look over the properties of the Mexican Eagle Oil Company. Although there were a number of fine English geologists on the ground, Sir Boverton Redwood, P. C. A. Stewart, the two Daltons, C. Jeffreys, Grinley, Moon, Madgwick and Laurie; they had never been able to come up with any prospects with substantial petroleum potential. All the oilfields so far had turned up only piddling production. Pearsen was impressed by Dr. Hayes and persuaded him to take over as Chief Geologist of Mexican Eagle on a part time basis. A few months later he was to resign his place with the USGS to devote all his energies to Mexico. Hayes first duty was the procurement of an American geological staff. Hayes first two assistants, put on during the summer of 1909, had been Edwin B. Hopkins and Chester W. Washburne. In October, Dr. Hayes had officially invited Everette De Golyer to join him in Mexico as an oil geologist. In November, 1909, De Golyer again quit school and took himself down to Tampico, Mexico, to join forces with Hayes, Hopkins and other geologists.

1910 was De Golyer's lucky year. On June 10, 1910, he married Nell Virginia Goodrich, who only a day or two before the wedding had resigned as the youngest member of the Fine Arts faculty at Oklahoma. Befere Everette had gone to Mexico she had obtained her Master's degree in music and had accepted a place on the university faculty. When Everette had returned in June from Mexico and had popped that all-important question, Nell had agreed to matrimony only on condition of a solemn promise on Everette's part to return to school and finish his degree.

Nell was with her husband in Mexico, two days after Christmas, when all their dreams started to come true. On December 27, 1910, Everette Lee De Golyer, aged 24, became a legend in his own time and a demi-god among geologists. On that date the Petrero deI Llano #4 weIl blew in, the biggest in Mexico; on which Everette had made the location. It was destined to produce more oil than any other single weIl in the history of the petroleum industry. An English geologist, G. Jeffreys, shared honors with De Golyer. Jeffreys found the field with a relatively small weIl, the Petrero deI Llano #1. After two more disappointing wells had been drilled, Lord Cowdray, who believed in luck in general and De Golyer's brand of luck in particular, assigned the young man to make a detailed study of the structure and recommend a better location for #4. De Golyer succeeded beyond anyone's fondest dreams.