Historic Oil Field
Caddo-Pine Island sits in the northwest corner of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, and is one of the oldest oil fields in the state still on production. Brothers J. S. and W. A. Savage completed the discovery well on March 28, 1905, at 1,556 feet, and within five years the boomtown of Oil City anchored the first wildcat district in the Ark-La-Tex. More than a century later the field is a dense network of shallow stripper wells, and the mineral ownership beneath it has been divided through five or six generations of Louisiana successions.
The Savage brothers found an oil-producing formation at 1,556 feet on March 28, 1905, in the pine country north of Shreveport. The strike opened a district that grew quickly: by 1910 roughly twenty-five thousand people worked in and around Oil City, making it the first true wildcat town in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas region, and Standard Oil of Louisiana had completed a pipeline linking the field to its Baton Rouge refinery. The leasing rush of those years created the fine-grained pattern of mineral servitudes and royalty reservations that Caddo Parish conveyance records still carry.
Caddo-Pine Island is best known for what happened on the water. In 1911 Gulf Refining Company erected Ferry Lake No. 1 on a platform in Caddo Lake; the well bottomed at 2,185 feet and produced about 450 barrels a day. It is often called the first over-water oil well in the world, and that claim deserves a caveat — submerged production had been carried on in Ohio as early as 1887 — but the Caddo Lake platforms were the first sustained offshore-style drilling program in the Gulf Coast region, and the engineering lessons carried directly into the modern offshore industry.
The field’s later history is one of long, slow decline rather than reinvention. The shallow Nacatoch and chalk pays were largely drained by the middle of the twentieth century, and Caddo-Pine Island passed from major companies to small independents who make a living on wells producing a few barrels a day. Published cumulative figures for the field vary widely and should be treated as estimates. What has not declined is the ownership complexity: interests here have passed through a century of Louisiana successions, and it is common to find heirs holding fractions no one in the family has tracked since the 1940s.
Caddo-Pine Island produces from shallow Upper Cretaceous rock on the northern flank of the Sabine Uplift, principally the Nacatoch sand and the Annona Chalk, with pays commonly between about 1,500 and 2,500 feet. The discovery well found production at 1,556 feet, and Ferry Lake No. 1 bottomed at 2,185 feet, which gives a fair sense of the depth range. Shallow, low-pressure reservoirs of this kind are cheap to drill and cheap to work over, which is exactly why a 1905 field can still support hundreds of low-rate wells rather than being plugged.
There is no famous flood at Caddo-Pine Island. The field has been produced largely by primary depletion, and its longevity comes from low operating cost rather than from injected fluid. Operators have run waterfloods and secondary projects on individual leases over the decades, but nothing on the scale of a Permian CO2 unit, and no field-wide tertiary program. Owners should read that plainly: there is no pending flood that is likely to lift a Caddo-Pine Island royalty back to boom-era levels. Value here rests on how long shallow stripper wells stay economic, not on an engineering turnaround.
A Caddo Parish royalty in this field is usually small, old and shared among many heirs, and the checks reflect stripper-well economics rather than a growing asset. That does not make it worthless, but it does mean the honest questions are how long the operator keeps the wells alive and whether your title is clean enough to convey. Louisiana adds its own wrinkle: mineral rights are a servitude here, and an unused servitude can prescribe back to the landowner after ten years. We work through that record before quoting, and we buy minerals and royalties in Caddo Parish and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Yes, at stripper-well rates. The shallow Nacatoch and chalk pays were largely drained decades ago, but low drilling and workover costs mean wells making a few barrels a day can still pay their way. Independent operators run most of the field. Whether any specific lease is currently producing is best confirmed from Louisiana records for that tract, and we check that before making an offer.
It is widely described that way, and Gulf Refining did erect it on a platform in Caddo Lake in 1911, bottoming at 2,185 feet and producing about 450 barrels a day. The strict claim to being first is contested, since submerged production had been carried on in Ohio as early as 1887. What is not contested is that the Caddo Lake platforms taught the industry how to drill over water at scale.
Usually the original deed or mineral reservation, the succession record for each generation since, and a recent check detail or division order. Louisiana handles inherited interests through successions rather than probate, and interests this old frequently have a generation where no succession was ever opened. We identify those gaps at our expense and explain what curing them takes before any offer is finalized.