School's name honors oil field
Use of 'doodlebug' helped build Edmond
By Dawn Marks
Staff Writer

Saturday, July 22, 2006 Edition: CITY, Section: MY EDMOND/MY METRO I, Page 1D          

Inside the old black lunch pail hides the secret of the West Edmond Field. Charlie Young, 69, still keeps a doodlebug inside the lunch pail as a memento of his grandfather’s days of helping discover oil in the West Edmond Field, where Edmond’s newest school — West Field Elementary School — is nearing completion.

In the early 1940s, James Monroe Young used a doodlebug, which is a metal cylinder hung from a chain, to find oil beneath his land west of Edmond and make Edmond history, Charlie Young said.

“Because there was no scientific credibility to what Granddad did, most people laughed and said it was just good luck,” he said. “Through the years, he made a reasonable living on good luck.” The school district purchased the land for West Field Elementary School from the Young family, and school officials named the school in honor of the oil field that was once considered one of the most productive in the nation. The school is being built at 17601 N Pennsylvania Ave.

James Young worked with Ace Gutowsky, the man credited with discovering oil in 1943. Charlie Young said his grandfather sat in the back seat of a car using his doodlebug while someone drove the section lines of what would later become the West Edmond Field.

“This was his technology of the day,” he said, as he held out the cylinder that’s about six inches long. “Both ends are plugged up with lead and what’s inside, nobody knows.

“If it swung back and forth, why there was no oil there,” he said. If it began to swirl, that’s when James Young knew there was oil, and he could use a stopwatch to determine the depth, Charlie Young said.

“He could tell you mathematically what it would produce,” he said. James Young traveled the country using his doodlebugging skill, and Edmond city officials also later called on him to find the city’s water lines that were not platted, Charlie Young said.

Edmond began to change after the discovery of oil on the land where James Young had farmed and on the farms surrounding it, Charlie Young said.

“Edmond at that time was very different. Well, it was just one big family,” he said. As more and more wells were drilled, small housing camps started popping up, Charlie Young said. “Housing was a real problem because they weren’t prepared for that,” he said. People rented rooms in Edmond and in Oklahoma City, Charlie Young said. Businesses boomed and places like the old Wide Awake Cafe stayed busy, he said. Oil workers often frequented the business to hear about new rigs.

“That was a good place to go look for a job,” Charlie Young said. Eventually production slowed, and for many years, the area where the school is under construction — the northeast quarter of the section — was just an empty field.

Soon it will again be part of Edmond’s future.
 

Used with permission.  Copyright 2006, The Oklahoma Publishing Company
 

Photos taken at the July 14, 2006 interview with Mr. Charlie Young, grandson of J. M. Young,
former owner of the land the school now sits upon.

Student submits winning name
By Dawn Marks
Staff Writer

Saturday, July 22, 2006 Edition: CITY, Section: MY EDMOND/MY METRO I, Page 1D          

The West Edmond Field, with its oil wells and activity, was a family legacy for Taylor Roberts and part of Edmond’s history.

What better name for a school? The 12-year-old submitted the name West Field Elementary School when school officials asked for suggestions from the community last year. School board members selected Taylor’s suggestion in honor of the oil field where the school is now under construction at 17601 N Pennsylvania.

“I was really excited. I went and told my friends and they didn’t believe me,” Taylor said.Taylor’s family connections to the field led to her suggestion, she said. The Roberts family drove daily by the empty field, where the school is now under construction, as they went to their home in the Fenwick housing addition, she said. When Taylor, who will be in the seventh grade at Cheyenne Middle School in August, decided to submit a name suggestion, she asked her grandfather, Patrick Young, what was there before.

Young told her the area was filled with oil wells. In fact, his family moved to Edmond so his uncles could work in the West Edmond Field, and Patrick Young worked there with them when he got a little older.

Taylor, the daughter of Julie and David Roberts, said she thought about it and decided that would be a great name for the school if it were shortened to West Field.

“I can remember hundreds of pumping wells out there,” Patrick Young said. “I’m proud of all that hard work.” Young said he often worked to remove the large, concrete well bases that were left behind when wells came up dry. “At the time, they built these stand derricks,” Young said. Some of the bases were up to 48 inches thick, and workers often drilled holes in them so that they would fill with water that would freeze and crack the concrete in winter. A faster — but also illegal — way was to blast them with dynamite, Young said.

Now, the family’s connection with the West Edmond Field continues as the school Taylor named nears its opening in August. “Some day I’m going to drive by with my kids and I’m going to tell them, ‘I named that school,’ ” Taylor said.
 

Used with permission. Copyright 2006, The Oklahoma Publishing Company