COPLEY, W.Va. — In a quiet meadow along the upper reaches of the Sand Fork of the Little Kanawha River, it’s hard to imagine that there was ever more hustle and bustle than the crow of a rooster.
The village of Copley today is a quiet place, but, as with much of West Virginia, one might be hard-pressed to imagine that things were not always as they seemed.
On September 22, 1900, drillers along the little stream upriver from Glenville, West Virginia, struck what soon proved to be West Virginia’s largest-producing oil well.
More than 7,000 barrels a day blew out of the rig that day on the formerly pastoral Copley Farm, and another 4,800 barrels continued to bubble out daily for many days afterward, sending workers with the South Penn Oil Co. scrambling to contain the flow.
Dams were constructed downstream on the Little Kanawha River, but even at that, the oil soon reached the Ohio River at Parkersburg, West Virginia, more than a hundred miles away as the river winds.
The Copley Farm soon became a hub of activity, and the quiet little valley was quickly filled with the noise of industry and enormous oil tanks.
Today, the two-lane road that leads along the fork between Glenville and Weston has returned to its scenic state and provides for a peaceful afternoon’s drive. A historical marker stands in a little meadow and designates the site, and only a few dozen feet off stands a capped well — a mute reminder that all in West Virginia is not what it once had been.
The site is relatively easy to find. From Weston, follow U.S. 19 south five miles to a right turn onto Copley Road, then follow the latter nine miles.
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