Oklahoma Journeys

Week of March 21, 2009

Wild Mary Sudik Revisited

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At 6:30 the morning of March 26, 1930, the exhausted crew of roughnecks drilling a well on the Sudik farm southeast of Oklahoma City, felt the rumbling and then ran in fear for their lives as the well erupted, blowing a geyser of gas then oil high into the early morning sky. It was the Mary Sudik Number One Well, and from that moment on known as the Wild Mary Sudik. That’s our story this week on Oklahoma Journeys from the Oklahoma History Center.

From the Oklahoma history Center, this is Oklahoma Journeys. I’m Michael Dean.

At about 6:30 the morning of March 26, 1930, the crew of roughnecks drilling a well on the property of Vincent Sudik paused in their work. The tired drillers had been waiting for daylight to continue their work. The location was at about I-240 and Bryant in present day Oklahoma City. It was just a few miles south of the location of the Oklahoma City Discovery Well Number One that in December of 1928 opened the Oklahoma City Field, the largest oil field in the state. Within weeks hundreds of drill rigs began searching for more oil under the capitol city. Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company, who had drilled the Discovery well, signed a lease agreement with the Sudik’s, a Czech family who had made the 1889 land run into the territory. The well was named for Sudik’s wife, Mary. Thus it was that early in the morning on March 26, 1930, the crew waiting for daylight to bring up the tools and send a new drill bit down the hole to continue drilling. They had drilled to 6,471 feet. The exhausted crew failed to fill the hole with mud, something that might have prevented what happened next. They didn’t know the Wilcox sand formation was permeated with natural gas under high pressure, and within minutes that sand under so much pressure found a release. The crew was caught off guard when a mixture of oil and gas came roaring out of the hole. Pipe stems were thrown hundred of feet into the air like so many tooth picks. First there was gas then the flow turned green gold and then black. Oil shot hundreds of feet into the air, and for the next eleven days, the Mary Sudik ran wild.

In those eleven days experts estimated she wasted more than 800,000 barrels of black gold. When the Mary Sudik was finally brought under control, crews recovered more than 200,000 barrels of oil from pits and ponds throughout the area. With a strong wind blowing north, the wild Mary Sudik’s oil spread as far as downtown Oklahoma City, and when the wind shifted to the south, oil was blown to Moore and Norman.

Newsreel photographers including Oklahoma City’s own Arthur Ramsey sent motion picture film to Hollywood, film that within a week appeared in newsreels in theaters around the country. When she was finally tamed, the Mary Sudik was the largest and most productive proved oil and gas well in the world through 1930.

Drilling continued with roughnecks working north along the east side of Oklahoma City, drilling in the middle of city blocks. Something had to be done, and it was then that the Oklahoma City council passed some of the first rules regulating how and where oil and gas wells could be drilled.

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Today you can see the valve that spilt in half and view from the newsreel film of the Wild Mary Sudik in the oil and gas and natural resources exhibit at the Oklahoma History Center, and you’ll want to explore the outdoor oil and gas park on the ground of the History Center, located on NE 23rd Street just east of the state capitol in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma Journeys is a production of the Oklahoma Historical Society, dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing our state’s past. I’m Michael Dean.