Qualla: Burning Springs Complex https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/j/burning-springs-complex-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Burning Springs Complex https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex Burning Springs Complex: Introduction https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex/ Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. On May 9, 1863, a Confederate cavalry brigade rode into the Little Kanawha River valley in what was then still Virginia. Their commander, Brigadier General William E. Jones, had been ordered to disrupt Union operations in the western theater however he could. He chose to do it by setting fire to an oil field. The field was at Burning Springs, in Wirt County, and at that moment it was producing roughly 100,000 barrels of crude per year - some of the earliest commercial petroleum production in the world. Jones burned the derricks, the storage tanks, the boats moored on the Little Kanawha. When he was done, an estimated 150,000 barrels of oil were on fire. The river ran black for days. It is the only major oil field in history to be deliberately destroyed by a military raid.

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Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/j/burning-springs-complex-wp/dnyj-burning-springs-complex-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Burning Springs Complex: Before Drake https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex/ Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. The conventional history of American petroleum begins on August 27, 1859, when Edwin Drake's well struck oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania. The Burning Springs Complex complicates that history. Indigenous people had known about the seeps in this part of West Virginia for centurie...

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Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/j/burning-springs-complex-wp/dnyj-burning-springs-complex-before-drake.mp3 0:06 2 full Burning Springs Complex: The Boom https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex/ Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Drake's success in Pennsylvania triggered a rush. Within two years, speculators and drillers were swarming the Little Kanawha. By 1862, Burning Springs had become what newspapers of the era called the second great oil field of the world. The Rathbone Wells and the Karns Wells - t...

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Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/j/burning-springs-complex-wp/dnyj-burning-springs-complex-the-boom.mp3 0:06 3 full Burning Springs Complex: Jones's Raid https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex/ Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. The Union Army was buying significant quantities of Burning Springs oil for use in its operations - particularly for the lamps and lubricants required in the increasingly mechanized warfare of the 1860s. The Confederate command saw an opportunity. William E. Jones, nicknamed Grum...

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Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/j/burning-springs-complex-wp/dnyj-burning-springs-complex-joness-raid.mp3 0:06 4 full Burning Springs Complex: After the Fire https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex/ Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. The field was rebuilt almost immediately. Oil demand kept rising through the Civil War and accelerated after it, and Burning Springs continued to produce - though never again at the dominant scale it had achieved before Jones rode in. By the 1870s the center of West Virginia oil ...

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Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/j/burning-springs-complex-wp/dnyj-burning-springs-complex-after-the-fire.mp3 0:06 5 full Burning Springs Complex: The Larger Story https://qualla.com/burning-springs-complex/ Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. The Drake Well in Pennsylvania remains the standard origin point of the American oil industry in textbook accounts. The Burning Springs Complex sits as a useful corrective - a reminder that the history of any technology is rarely as clean as the founding-myth version makes it sou...

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Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/j/burning-springs-complex-wp/dnyj-burning-springs-complex-the-larger-story.mp3 0:06 6 full