Old News Features

Calgarians Use Oil Stocks for Wallpaper

Saturday, 31 May 2008 19:00

Calgarians in 1913 and 1914 were gripped for months by oil fever as a "wildcat" well drilling in the Rocky Mountain foothills at Turner Valley, 50 kilometres southwest of the city, teased speculators with tantalizing indications that this could be Alberta’s first real oil field. When a flow of oil was finally struck in mid-May, 1914, the Albertan newspaper was even more gushing than the well. "It was the wildest, most delirious, must uproarious, most exciting time that had ever entered into human imagination to conceive," the Albertan reported.