Easter fell on the first day of April. Due to a blowing wind, which kept dust moving most of the day, few wore their new Easter bonnets. Methodist Church, South was typical of Easter zeal as five children were dedicated and twenty-seven people joined the church. Sunday school recorded 284 in attendance.
On Good Friday, the Bella Vista community walked into the school completely surprising the teachers, Mrs. Ruth Edwards and Miss Jane Martin, and all the pupils. The room was quickly transformed into a marvelous cafeteria followed by an egg hunt. Mrs. Edwards treated her students to candy, and Miss Martin gave her little folks Easter baskets, which she and her sister had made, containing candy eggs. The boys and married men played ball —19 to 7 in favor of the men.
The oil situation stabilized after four feverish weeks. The highest price that investors paid the last week in April was $800 an acre ($14,050 in today’s values) with a bonus agreement if oil was produced. After the Walker-Martin well south of Sayre was swabbed out, oil gushed over the derrick. One hundred barrels of oil sprayed out in twenty-five minutes! It settled into a steady production flow of 458 barrels every 24 hours.
Magnolia Petroleum Co. bought the Cousins farm two miles north of Willow, which adjoined the Wichita Falls & Northwestern railroad tracks. They planned this quarter section as a tank farm and began building two 55,000-barrel tanks. A loading track was to be laid, allowing the company to ship tank cars directly to their refinery at Burkburnett, Texas.
About fifty new oil and gas sites were roughed out during the last week in April. Thousands of autos and rigs flocked from across the United States to the monstrous oil pool! The Rock Island added allnight Pullman service between Oklahoma City and Sayre. Hotels and rooming houses were bulging with transients in Sayre and Elk City. Newspapers beseeched our residents to offer rooms in private homes to help make Elk City the headquarters for oil men.
An engineer assessed various projects to solve the ongoing water problem for Elk City. The situation had been critical for some time; while there was enough water for household purposes in the mornings, it usually cut off in the afternoon, and there was always the danger of fire.
Henry Jones died from burns he received at the Black Hotel. Mr. Jones had been out of town and stopped at the hotel rather than disturb his family at a late hour. The cigarette he was smoking set fire to the bed linens, and he awoke with his shirt aflame. His distress calls brought the hotel manager who dashed a pitcher of water on his burning clothes. The flames had nearly burned the shirt off him, but Mr. Jones donned his coat, hat and shoes and walked home before he realized the seriousness of his burns. Despite medical efforts, he died that same night.
Mrs. Docie Rowe entertained thirty guests at a surprise party honoring the 50th birthday of her brother, “Uncle Sid” Wingo. The hostess served baked chicken with dressing, boiled ham, fresh vegetables, pickles, fruit salad, and several kinds of cakes and pies including a beautiful birthday layer cake baked by Mrs. Orgain. Because “Uncle Sid” was blind, there were no candles on the cake; instead, it was frosted white with red sugar across the top saying, “Uncle Sid, 50 Years Today.” The afternoon was spent making “camera pictures” and listening to music on the Victrola. Mrs. Rowe showed several novelties made by “Uncle Sid,” among them a wooden chain made from one piece of pine, the links interlocking without glue.
Fred R. Hood of Erick earned the highest scholastic average of any student who ever attended the University of Oklahoma School of Pharmacy. He was the only student of 130 with a sufficient average to qualify for Rho Chi, the highest pharmaceutical scholastic honor obtainable at the university.
This article was written by Luanne R. Eisler and taken from items published in The Carter Express, The Elk City Press and The Elk City News-Democrat; these newspapers can be found on microfilm at the Elk City Carnegie Library. Heritage Quest and www.dollartimes.com provided supplementary information.
