Wyoming
Once Wyoming’s Premier Oil Patch, Midwest Has Nation’s Richest 80 Acres
MIDWEST — The richest 80 acres in the nation can be found just north of this central Wyoming town east of Interstate 25 between Casper and Buffalo.
It’s part of the 9-mile-long by 5-mile-wide Salt Creek Oil Field that during its boom days in the 1920s drew 17,000 people to Midwest alone. Add to that the other company-owned camps around it where people lived and worked, the area rivaled the size of today’s Casper.
The field during its peak produced more light crude oil than any other field in the world, earning millions of dollars for mineral rights holders and investors. It continues to send oil down its pipelines at a rate of 8,500 barrels a day.
Salt Creek Oil Field historian and Contango Oil and Gas Co. engineer tech Everett DeWitt has spent more than 40 years working in the field. Over a nine-year period starting in 2006, his role was to find every oil well that had ever been drilled in it. Digging into old Oil and Gas Commission records and BLM files has made him the expert on this oil field.
He recently hosted Cowboy State Daily for a visit at the Salt Creek Museum on C Street in Midwest, and was quick to point to a photograph of one of the many characters that make up the field’s history.
Cy Iba And The ‘Iba 80’
“Cy Iba was the first one to make authentic claims out here,” DeWitt said.
Iba staked his claims next to oil seeps in the late 1890s. Some historical accounts say Iba, who originated from Pennsylvania, had sought gold in California and Idaho prior to settling in Wyoming.
A Dec. 1, 1898, story in the Natrona County Tribune newspaper reported that Iba “went to Cheyenne last week to have a hearing in the United States term of court, regarding some oil land in Natrona County, returned home Friday evening, the case being put off until the next term of court.”
To make a claim, one had to dig a hole 6 feet square and 10 feet deep with a mineral in it, DeWitt said.
“He would dig a hole next to an active seep and, of course, he would have an oil claim,” he said. “The main ‘seep’ that he claimed was called Jackass Springs, and it is just northwest of town here. Jackass Springs was a spring of oil.”
Historical accounts say $100 worth of improvements had to be done to maintain the claim.
The Sept. 12, 1901, edition of the Natrona County Tribune reports that, “Cy Iba left last Saturday morning for the Salt creek oil country, where he intends to fix up the roads and do some other assessment work on his land.”
DeWitt said that in addition to other claims, Iba laid claim to 80 acres of land with title and deed, which has become known as the “Iba 80.”
“More money has been made off of that 80 acres than any other 80 acres in the United States,” DeWitt said.
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A photo at the Salt Creek Museum in Midwest shows a view of Midwest during its heyday. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) -
A photo at the Salt Creek Museum shows a North South train making its way with oil cars. The railroad brought a big boost to the oil field’s efforts from 1923-1935. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Legal Fights
Iba died in 1907 before he saw any great wealth from the claims because of legal wrangling after the Dutch Company hit a discovery well in the field in 1908. That well triggered a flood of oil seekers and companies to the region.
The potential for wealth led to claim jumping, legal fights and literal fights — sometimes armed.
A newspaper account from 1909 relates that Mary G. Iba, “executrix of the estate of Cy Iba,” was allowed to put a monument on her husband’s grave and could not spend more than $350. Other legal notices show her as a defendant in court property disputes with oil companies.
“The U.S. government withdrew this field from homesteading for a period of time and there were legal battles continuously,” DeWitt said.
The nation’s Homestead Act of 1862 allowed for homesteaders at least 21 years old to file for 160 acres of federal land. After five years, if the filer improved the land, he could claim ownership.
Eventually, claims were ironed out. Mary Iba had been able to hold onto the 80 acres, and when she died July 12, 1951, at the age of 99, she left an estate worth $500,000.
An article in the Dec. 9, 1951, Casper Tribune-Herald attributed her wealth to the “Iba eighty in the Salt Creek field” and stated that “in 1911, when the oil royalties began pouring in, Mrs. Iba built her home at 604 South David, and she and her family resided there.”
One well, called Iba Six, initially came in at several thousand barrels a day, DeWitt said. When the well died back, operators would shoot it with nitroglycerin and it would ramp up back up. He said it is still producing 100 barrels a day.
The Roaring ’20s
DeWitt said that during its heyday in the 1920s, the Salt Creek Field had more than 50 operators with leases on acreage, some with 160-acre quarter sections or entire sections of the field. Each operator created his own camp where employees would live and work. Photos of the camps at the museum show derricks sprinkled between rows of homes.
In addition to Midwest Oil Co., which was formed by Colorado Springs man Verner C. Reed around 1909, there were Sinclair camps, Continental Camp, Consolidated Camp, Staley Syndicate the Scotch Camp, and more.
In Midwest, as in other camps, operators tried to lure married men with families to work the fields, which at the time were little more than derricks and desert. Houses in Midwest were built at a clip of five a day and the company poured money into giving families something to do.
“Those producing companies knew that a married man with a family was more stable than a young buck who would come in and work three days and get a paycheck and go drink it,” DeWitt said.
When the North South Railroad arrived in 1923, it helped transform the community by bringing building materials in and shipping oil out. It also helped transform Midwest into a place that became livable for wives and children.
There was a hospital, schools, electric plant, theaters, commissary, shops, bowling alley, shooting range and seven golf courses in the area, DeWitt said.
“Anything that you could get in New York or San Francisco, even down to fresh seafood, you could get in Midwest then,” he said.
DeWitt said by 1925, there were 1,980 wells sending oil to Casper down the first welded pipeline in the world. The pipeline was completed in 1922.
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A drilling rig south of Midwest is doing repair work on one of the Salt Creek Oil Field wells. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) -
Today, the Salt Creek Oil Field continues to produce oil at a rate of 8,500 barrels per day. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Dangerous Work
Working in the oil field brought its dangers.
Light oil is extremely flammable, and during his research, DeWitt has found original accident reports related to oil rig fires and explosions. One particularly deadly one happened in 1927 when the men had tried the nitroglycerin technique to stimulate production of the well.
“The hill where this well sits right now is called Dead Man’s Hill,” DeWitt said. “They shot it with nitro and they were trying to get a control valve on it. Well, something happened and it exploded. It caught fire shooting more than 100 feet into the air. Three men died immediately and two more died getting off the location. About a week later, another guy succumbed … (and) there were several others who were injured pretty bad.”
In 1932 as field operations matured, DeWitt said Midwest Oil Co. consolidated the field through agreements and buyouts. The field would be run by a single operator from then until today.
As the Great Depression arrived, the Salt Creek Field experienced a fall in demand and financial issues, just like the rest of the country. The railroad stopped running in 1935. DeWitt said oil was pumped, but if things broke there was no money to fix the equipment.
World War II changed everything and brought new life as the nation needed oil to fuel its war efforts.
In the 1960s there was another boom brought by the use of water-injection into the field to get wells flowing again. DeWitt said when he arrived in 1980, it was difficult to find housing. By the late 1990s, Wyoming’s familiar boom-bust cycle had busted again.
New Technique
When Anadarko Petroleum bought the field in the early 2000s for $265 million, a boom returned as it changed the field from water injection to CO2-injected fracking wells. When the company arrived, the field was producing about 3,500 barrels a day. The CO2 technique took it up to 15,000.
Two years ago, Contango Oil and Gas Co. bought the history Wyoming oil field and about 80 employees continue to keep its 2,000 producing wells operating.
DeWitt said the field continues the CO2 injection using a five-die pattern where the middle well is the injector and there are four corner producers. He said his research discovering the nearly 5,000 wells that have been drilled in the field during its history continues to pay off.
“The interesting thing about that is some of these wells that were drilled in 1918 and plugged in 1934, we have been able to go back in and make those a well again if they fit our five-spot pattern,” he said. “We can go back in and reactivate those wells, and that costs us about $400,000 whereas drilling a new well would be about $1.5 million.”
The Midwest that was the company town became incorporated in 1978. DeWitt said he didn’t like the place he moved to in 1980, but he has come to enjoy living in a community that boasts such a rich past.
“In Midwest, we’re stable. Some of the people who live here work in the field, and some in Casper,” he said. “I love it here. I am one hour away from anything I want to do. Prior to moving here, I was an over-the-road trucker and I thought, ‘Who would want to live in a place like this?’ Now you couldn’t drive me out with a big old stick.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
Rich Renner always knew he had pretty good neighbors, but he found out just how good when his new rescue dog from California got himself lost in a Wyoming whiteout.
Renner had taken the goldendoodle named Charlie out ahead of this past week’s storm to relieve himself. There was some snow on the ground at the time, but Charlie wasn’t having a thing to do with that strange, cold, white stuff on the ground.
At least not at first.
“I had taken him out to the barn, but he was staying under the overhang,” Renner said. “He wouldn’t go out to the snow.”
Given the dog’s reluctance, Renner decided to shovel a path from the barn to the house to make it a little easier for the pooch to get around.
While Renner was doing that, the dog finally decided maybe the snow wasn’t so bad after all.
“He kind of got the zoomies,” Renner said. “So, he was running around and went around the corner, out of sight. I had boots on, so I followed after him.”
By the time Renner turned the corner, there was no sign of Charlie.
A California Dog Meets His First Wyoming Whiteout
At first, Renner wasn’t too concerned. It wasn’t the first time the dog had done a little bit of exploring around the house.
Normally, he came back on his own.
But this time was different. There was a huge snowstorm expected later in the day, and the forecast was for temperatures in the range of 25 degrees.
Charlie is a rescue dog fresh from California, which means the goldendoodle didn’t have much in the way of fat stored in his body. Nor was he yet acclimated to the cold.
Renner followed his dog’s tracks down to a forested edge, and there saw what had captured Charlie’s attention.
“There were deer tracks all over,” Renner said. “Boom, he was gone.”
Renner was at first more worried about the deer than the dog.
He’d just put an AirTag on the dog’s newly arrived collar right before they went outside that morning. The collar also had the couple’s names and phone numbers.
“An hour later, that AirTag pinged at a neighbor’s house about a half mile away,” Renner said. “So I zoomed down there on a four-wheeler and I saw tracks, but no Charlie.”
Renner roamed around on his four-wheeler for about an hour, looking for and calling for Charlie. Then he had to go to work.
“My wife, Barb, stayed home all day and worked off and on and looked for him some, too,” he said.
A Long, Cold Night
Once Renner returned home, he and his wife did more searching until about 10:15 p.m. that night using a headlamp to see.
“I thought I’d see his eyes somewhere with that headlamp,” Renner said. “But to no avail.”
By this time, a sick feeling was growing in the pit of his stomach.
He was thinking about how the dog had chased after an animal three times his own size and how sometimes deer had charged, unafraid, at the couple’s older husky.
Maybe Charlie had been hurt. And Wyoming’s famous winter winds were picking up.
Was his California pooch stuck somewhere outside in this Wyoming whiteout, where the temperature was just getting colder and colder?
“It had snowed all day,” Renner said. “It was just a lot of snow.”
That snow covered the dog’s tracks, making him impossible to track.
The AirTag was proving next to useless as well, suggesting the dog had gone somewhere very rugged, some place with little to no data to transmit a signal.
Tuesday night, Renner could barely sleep thinking about Charlie, lost in this heavy snowstorm, with temperatures forecast to get into the lower 20s that night.
“Since we didn’t find him, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s not going to survive the night,’” Renner said. “I kept waking up a lot and thinking about him. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s he experiencing right now? Where’s he at? Did a mountain lion get him?’”
The next day, Renner and his wife were both exhausted but had not lost hope they would yet find Charlie.
They were looking, their neighbors were all looking. They even hired a drone company to come look for Charlie using an infrared camera.
Neighbors Rally As Storm Deepens
The Renners had been putting messages out on Facebook and social media about Charlie, asking for the community’s help to find him.
Renner was amazed at how his neighborhood sprang into action.
It seemed that everyone he knew — and even some people he didn’t know yet — were looking for his pet, who he feared was too skinny to survive another night out in the cold, much less the cold, wet snowstorm that continued into Wednesday.
“Before, I lived in Cheyenne for a lot of years, and you didn’t even hardly know your neighbors,” he said. “You maybe said ‘hi,’ to them when there’s a snowstorm and you’re shoveling your snow at the same time.
“But other than that, we didn’t even know our neighbors.”
Mountain Meadows, though, proved to be a different kind of friendly — the kind that doesn’t smile and wave in passing; the kind that shows up on the doorstep and asks, “How can I help?”
“There were probably six different vehicles or side by sides at different times looking for him Tuesday night,” Renner said. “And then people were passing the word on through Facebook and emails and everything.
“And just everyone was praying for him. I mean the number of prayers that went up for Charlie is just amazing.”
A Blind Date, A Snowy Hike, And A Lost Dog
While a small army of neighbors continued to search for Charlie with drones and side-by-sides, a newlywed couple the Renners had never met were on a surprise date.
Jada, a Laramie native, and Collin Szymanski, from Utah, are newlyweds.
Since Collin is new to Wyoming, Jada has been making a point of showing him some of her favorite places.
That day, she’d decided on a literal blind date, complete with blindfold, to one of her favorite places in Curt Gowdy State Park — Hidden Falls.
The falls are a couple miles from where the Renners live as the crow flies, and maybe 10 miles or more away in twisting, winding, dog-chasing-a-deer miles.
By the time Jada and her husband arrived at the Hidden Falls Trail, snow was picking up speed and Jada was starting to question the idea of hiking that afternoon.
“There was, like, snow everywhere,” Jada said. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I thought it was going to be a little less snow than this.’
“So I unblindfolded him and I was like, ‘Should we still go?’”
The couple are young and in love, so of course the answer to that question was, “Yes!”
As they hiked into the thick carpet of new snow, they soon found themselves with a new-but-stand-offish friend.
“All of a sudden we see this little dog running around,” Jada said. “We’re thinking, ‘Oh well, his owners must have decided to go on a hike in the snow, too.’”
The Sound Of Loneliness
When they got to the end of the trail, though, there were no owners around.
That was when Charlie began to howl, a haunting, lost sound.
“You could tell he was so sad,” Jada said. “So we were trying to get to him, but he was a little scared of us.”
Once Jada managed to get close enough to see Charlie’s collar, things changed. The second she said his name, the dog immediately calmed down and came over to them.
It was remarkable, given that Charlie had only had that name for about four weeks. But it clearly meant everything to the dog to hear that one word.
These were friends, Charlie decided, because somehow they knew his name.
An Answer To A Prayer
By noon, with no further sight or sign of Charlie, the Renners’ hopes were dwindling.
Their property backs up to some very rugged country with deep draws and thick timber. It’s a maze of places to get lost.
It’s also a maze full of obstacles and dangers much larger than Charlie — mountain lions, deer, moose. Then there are box canyons easier to get into than out.
Their skinny California dog, chasing a deer in a full Wyoming whiteout, could easily become lost, trapped, or hurt. More and more, it seemed like that’s what had happened.
Just as they were about to give up and call it a day, Renner got a phone call from a man he didn’t know.
“Hey, are you guys missing a dog?” the man asked.
Relief flooded through Renner at those words as the man told him he’d just found a golden-colored dog at Hidden Falls in the box canyon.
Thanks to the collar, which had the Renners’ number on it, he’d been able to immediately call from the canyon.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Renner said, noting that calls from the canyon are usually impossible to make.
It felt like a minor miracle.
Charlie had spent all day and night Tuesday in a snowstorm that got down to about 25 degrees, and had somehow managed to bump into what were the only other hikers on the Hidden Falls Trail, somehow none the worse for his adventures.
Soon, Renner and his wife were headed in their cars to go pick up Charlie from the Szymanskis, meeting halfway between their home and Hidden Falls.
For Rich, who describes himself as a person of faith, all these details add up to something bigger than coincidence.
“I know that God makes things happen,” he said.
Jada felt that as well, considering how things happened.
“Their whole neighborhood had been looking for him,” she said. “He told us he had just been praying so hard. We felt like we got to be the answers to those prayers.”
Celebrity Life On A Leash
Back home, Charlie acts as if nothing miraculous has happened at all.
“He’s happy to be home for sure,” Renner said. “He spent yesterday in the barn, and he’s in the barn today.”
But he’s not going outside any more for a while without a leash, Renner said, as he remains just a little too fascinated with Wyoming wildlife, particularly moose, which are 100 times heavier than he is.
Renner is looking into electric fences to keep Charlie and his moxie corralled so that the pooch’s future adventures won’t be quite so harrowing.
“We’re chuckling now, because he’s like a celebrity,” Renner said.
For all the worry and all the searching, what’s really sticking with the Renners is how his Wyoming neighbors were there when needed, crawling the snowy hills in their trucks and side-by-sides, looking for a California pooch with no idea what a Wyoming whiteout really means.
“That’s the real story,” Renner said. “It’s the community, the neighborhood, how everyone just rallied behind this to help.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
CASPER — Discarded rocks thrown outside the geology department at an upstate New York college in the 1920s became gems in the eyes of the boy who picked them up.
They were also stepping stones to a career and life that led to 68 years of leading the growth of Wyoming’s — and America’s — mining industry.
Politics and philanthropy also helped John Wold earn accolades like Wyoming Man of the Year in 1968 and Oil/Gas and Mineral Man of the 20th Century in 1999.
But the longtime Casper resident left that century behind and kept going to work in his downtown office, pursuing new ideas and enterprises nearly until his death on Feb. 19, 2017, at age 100.
Peter Wold, 78, remembers his dad as a man who was “driven” and focused, but who always made time for his wife and children.
As he co-leads the oil and gas business started by his father back in 1950, Peter said his dad’s portrait on the wall reminds him of the principles and “purpose” that guided his life.
“I think that he motivated me, and I would say the same for my brother and my sister,” he said. “We’ve all tried to stay engaged in community activities and philanthropy and be good fathers and a mother.”
He not only contributed to the evolution of Wyoming’s energy industries, his financial generosity endowed a geology chair and two chairs of religion at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
He also endowed the Centennial Chair of Energy at the University of Wyoming and his lead 1994 donation to Casper College became the Wold Physical Science Center.
U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, who characterized Wold as a “legend” when he died in 2017, said even though nearly a decade has passed since then, his legacy is all over the Cowboy State — even if younger generations now don’t recognize his name.
“As a professional geologist, John’s contributions to the mining industry revolutionized the way our nation extracts minerals today,” Barrasso said. “Casper College students continue to benefit from John’s generosity and are reminded of him every time they walk through the Wold Physical Science Center.
“John passed on his love for Wyoming and his energy expertise to his family,” the senator added. “He would be so proud of how his children and grandchildren carry on the family business and his tradition of giving back to the state and people he loved so much.”
Big Into Rock
Peter Wold said his dad’s successes in part came from his education, continuous learning and ability to compartmentalize and head for the goal — something he loved to do on the hockey rink as well.
Born in New Jersey, John Wold grew up on the Union College campus where his father, Peter I. Wold, was a distinguished physics professor. The family lived on campus.
While growing up, a young Wold became fascinated with the excess rocks being tossed out by the college’s geology department and started his own mineral collection.
Following graduation from high school, the Eagle Scout attended Union College and became an exchange student at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
While at Union College, he played on the hockey team, and he graduated with a bachelor of arts in geology and went on to Cornell University to earn a master’s degree in geology as well.
Prior to World War II, Wold worked in Oklahoma and Texas for an oil company, but in 1941 he volunteered to help the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordinance researching magnetic mines.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he was sent to Midway Island as a physicist involved in degaussing or demagnetizing submarines to protect them from magnetic Japanese mines.
Navy Man And Inventor
Although he never officially attended Navy officer training school, Wold was given a commission and went on after his Midway assignment to serve as a gunnery officer and executive officer on destroyer escorts.
Peter Wold said his dad’s wartime ship assignments did not involve any significant battles.
It was while in the Navy that Wold had an idea to improve the masks of divers while watching them work.
He applied for a patent in July 1946 for his improved “underwater goggle.”
“The purpose of this invention is to provide an efficient underwater goggle, simple of manufacture, which is of such form that it will fit with water-tightness the contours of most faces without alteration or tailoring by the wearer,” he wrote on the application.
Wold wrote that the design was meant to be flexible enough that it could be worn “across or below the nose of the diver with equal water-tight integrity.”
The inventor received his patent in Casper on Oct. 3, 1950, and it was something he was always proud of.
Peter Wold said he kept it framed on his office wall during his business career.
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John Wold loved Wyoming and enjoyed fishing, skiing, and outdoor activities. (Courtesy Peter Wold) -
John and Jane Wold on parade during his political career. (Courtesy Peter Wold) -
John Wold served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and worked demagnetizing submarines as well as serving as an officer on destroyer escorts. John Wold and his wife Jane in their later years. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
The Oil Field Calls
After the war, John Wold married his wife, Jane, and worked for Barnsdall Oil on the Gulf Coast.
By 1949, Peter was born, and that winter the Wold family was sent to Casper to establish an office for Barnsdall Oil.
The family drove from Houston to Denver and found the roads north had been blocked by the infamous blizzards of 1949 for the previous two weeks.
Peter Wold said his dad liked to tell the story of how he only had enough money for one night in a Denver hotel.
The next day, his dad said it was like a “miracle” and the road opened, allowing them to reach Casper. The highway shut the next day and stayed closed for two more weeks.
In 1950, Wold launched his own firm, Wold Oil Properties, as a consulting petroleum geologist, and never looked back.
A search of Wold in old newspapers shows his progression of accomplishments in both his business life and Republican politics in Wyoming.
Ahead Of His Time
In 1953, in addition to growing his new business, he was a member of the Natrona County Republican Party Executive Committee.
He ran for and won a state House seat in 1956. In 1960, he became the state Republican chairman, as well as a member of the nation’s Republican National Committee.
In 1964, he was the Republican nominee for Wyoming’s U.S. Senate seat to run against Sen. Gale McGee.
His political office high point culminated in his election as Wyoming’s U.S. House representative in 1968 as Richard Nixon was winning the White House.
He was the first professional geologist ever elected to the U.S. House. While there, he authored and sponsored the National Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970.
That legislation was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Wyoming’s and the nation’s mining industry.
It directed the U.S. to develop a stable domestic mining industry that’s economically sound and encourages private investment. It also called for standards to dispose of and reclaim mining waste and land to mitigate environmental impacts.
While he was proud of his time in Congress, the scientist and businessman who liked to get things done was stymied there.
“He recognized that he was one of 435 congressmen and that frustrated him,” Peter Wold said. “He said, ‘I’m going to go for the Senate.’”
In 1970, he took on McGee again and lost, as Republicans took a beating in the Nixon midterm election.
Peter Wold said his dad never ran for office again but stayed interested in politics.
On the business side of his life, John Wold excelled and was able to use his geology, chemistry and economics savvy to see opportunities that others might miss.
He also could see when those opportunities were turning south.
During his lifetime, Wold started companies that got involved in pursuing coal, uranium, trona, and coal gasification. But each of those sectors came at different times of his life and career.
“When he focused on something he focused primarily on that project,” Peter Wold said. “He was active in the coal business, in the uranium business. But he did those separately, compartmentalized.
“You have to be really good at what you are doing.”
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John and Jane Wold at their ranch property. (Courtesy Peter Wold) -
John Wold poses with his extended family. (Courtesy Peter Wold) -
John and Jane Wold left a legacy that continues through the next generations of the their family. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
Business Ventures
A joint venture with Peabody Energy and Consolidation Coal Co. (now CONSOL Energy) put Rocky Mountain coal in the spotlight.
In 1973, he started Wold Nuclear Co. and was a co-discoverer of the Christensen Ranch uranium ore deposit in the Powder River Basin.
He also became the principal in the development of the Highland uranium mine in Converse County, which once was the largest uranium production operation in the U.S.
Peter Wold said his dad used a technique with paper cups and a tiny piece of film on the bottom of each cup that would be buried for a few days on potential uranium lands.
While he did not invent the technique to detect radon gas, he used it on a huge scale.
“They wanted to see what radiation penetrations there were,” Peter Wold said. “They laid thousands of those cups all over Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas.
“With that information they were able to determine there were uranium ore bodies.”
Wold’s holdings of potential uranium lands in south Texas led to an unforeseen talc mining opportunity, so he created American Talc Co., which became one of the largest talc operations in North America. It was sold to Daltile in 2017.
Wold’s interest in trona mining in the southern Green River Basin led to patents on solutions-based mining processes that he worked to create and develop with a Colorado firm.
But several years of work and roadblocks led him to sell the reserves he bought. The technology he helped develop, however, helped transform the trona industry.
Wold also bought a coal gasification idea during the first decade of this century and became chairman and CEO of GasTech.
The company sought to develop gas from deep layers of coal in the Powder River Basin through pumping oxygen down into the beds and setting them on fire.
He worked with an Australian company that had pioneered a similar concept in Australia.
A demonstration plant never came to development.
Peter Wold said his dad’s efforts to develop coal and coal gasification in Campbell County came from his understanding that the coal, natural gas, and oil in the county held more BTUs of energy than all of Saudi Arabia’s oil.
During his life, John Wold’s expertise was sought by many companies that recruited him for their boards.
Hole In The Wall Ranch
Outside of energy, Wold enjoyed Wyoming’s outdoors and sports.
In 1977, he bought the Hole in the Wall Ranch southwest of Kaycee where the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang left their hoofprints fleeing the law.
Peter Wold said his dad did not buy the land because of the history.
“It was because of the fishing,” he said. “The Hole in the Wall Ranch has the Middle Fork of the Powder River as it comes out of the Bighorn Mountains and it runs through the ranch. And it is really good fishing.
“Dad loved to recreate and he loved fishing and one thing led to another and he said, ‘We ought to buy this place,’ so we did.”
While his dad was not that interested in cattle ranching, Peter Wold is.
Today, the ranch runs 600-800 head of Black Angus cattle.
Wold also was key to the development of the Hogadon Basin Ski Area on Casper Mountain and helped support the building of the Casper Ice Arena, where he coached young hockey players.
As he grew older, macular degeneration, a trait that ran in his family, started to take Wold’s eyesight.
Peter Wold said his dad’s loss of vision frustrated him. Even though he couldn’t see well, he kept driving a car into his mid-90s.
“He didn’t like being dependent on someone to take him to the grocery store or bring him down to the office,” Peter Wold said. “The macular degeneration was very discouraging to him.”
Before he died, John Wold put money toward finding a cure for his blindness that became the Wold Family Macular Degeneration Center at Oregon Health & Science University’s Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health and Science University.
The institute touts the center as a “central hub” for ongoing research and clinical care efforts as well as a “catalyst for further discovery and innovation by having research, clinical care and clinical trials all in one place.”
Throughout his life, the former college athlete never stopped moving and working to stay fit.
Wold would do leg lifts and stomach crunches before getting out of bed. In his 90s, he was still running down his street even on ice and snow.
He continued to challenge himself mentally and never retired.
Legacy Of Giving
As Peter Wold and his brother Jack continue to work in the oil business started by their father, they and their sister, Priscilla Longfield, also continue the legacy of giving launched by their parents.
Peter Wold said the family foundation donates about $3 million a year.
The foundation’s directors include his brother, sister and himself, but John Wold’s eight grandchildren are now involved in choosing who the benefactors will be as well.
While his dad could be a “taskmaster” who wanted his children to have purpose and goals, Peter Wold said he also instilled a desire for them to make a difference in their time.
Peter Wold agrees he feels a “weight” and responsibility that flow from his dad’s accomplishments, and he thinks about that.
“How can I live up to his expectations? What should I be doing that would have him proud?” Peter Wold said. “He left a wonderful legacy that our whole family is proud of.”
When John Wold died at 100, the Casper Star-Tribune dubbed him Wyoming’s “citizen of a century.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
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