Oil Fever Strikes Kennewick as Claims Blanket Rattlesnake Hills
Kennewick residents are swarming the Rattlesnake Hills, staking hundreds of placer claims in hopes of striking it rich as oil fever takes hold of the county.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The oil fever, which first manifested at the county seat, has spread to Kennewick and is now raging with unabated fury. The prairie along the base of the Rattlesnake Hills in the vicinity of the natural gas well has begun to resemble a country graveyard, with a stake on each of the four corners of every 20-acre tract. The first Kennewick victims of the fever included K. C. Gifford, D. M. Williams, E. C. Tripp, and L. H. Marks, who—armed with stakes and legal impedimenta—invaded the unexplored oil fields. More than a hundred claims have been filed with the county auditor, with names ranging from the poetic 'Glendale' to the cynical 'Stung Again.' While officials from Clark Brothers Klein have remained quiet about their intentions, the local ardor remains undampened, and filings continue as long as there is unplacered land.
“To date more than a hundred claims have been filed with the county auditor and the names are like a fancy collection of race horse autographs.”
Speculative booms in Eastern Washington, from oil in the 1910s to modern-day energy and real estate rushes, have consistently driven land-use changes. This 'fever' captures the classic intersection of small-town desperation and the get-rich-quick promise that defined the early 20th-century frontier.
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