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The Beginning of Montana's Short-Lived Oil Boom.
This rare early 20th-century oil field map was compiled and drafted by Ira C. Craft, County Surveyor, and published by The Roundup Record in Roundup, Montana. The map shows the township and range grids, marking well locations, drilling activity, producing wells, and geological domes.
The Devil's Basin oil field, located on the Central Montana Uplift, was the first wildcat oil discovery in Montana, proving the presence of commercial oil in the Mississippian Heath limestone and sparking a statewide land rush. The discovery was made in December 1919 by the Van Dusen Oil Company's well No. 1, located in Section 24, T. 11N., R. 24E, illustrated on the map, and was drilled near the top of the Devil's Basin anticline, a large surface structure. Central Montana’s shallow Heath-sand pools proved disappointingly small, and by 1937 Devil's Basin was shut-in, producing only intermittently thereafter.
The verso features a separate map displaying the shaded lease blocks of the Mosby Unit Royalty Company (incorporated December 1920). Though the venture never became a major producer, the conspicuous tract illustrates the speculative optimism that swept Central Montana’s first oil boom, transforming Roundup and inspiring a host of similar home-grown syndicates at this formative moment in the state’s petroleum history.
