The western and middle-western parts of the the county have also proven to be rich in oil and gas.  These rich and useful products have always been found, and are still being found in large quantities, and at an average depth of about five hundred feet, so that gas and oil wells that cost on an average of twelve hundred dollars here, cost as much as two thousand dollars in Crawford County, where oil and gas are being found and marketed in large and valuable quantities. The oil of Clark County is of a high grade and, is selling at about seventy cents a barrel at the wells. Drilling for oil and gas were begun at Oil Fields, in Parker Township, in a rude and unsatisfactory way, many years ago, and although wells were put down over twelve hundred feet, and gas found, the prospectors did not discover oil in paying quantities, although now Oil Field, as it was then and now called, is honeycombed with paying wells at an average depth of between four and five hundred feet. These early drillings were begun and prosecuted on the farm of Timothy R. Young in section 17, Parker Township, but although the ardent dreams of Mr. Young, the elder, were doomed to sore disappointment, his son, and daughter, Kimball and Nellie Young, who were wise enough to retain the property after their honored father's death, are waxing richer every day from the twenty or twenty-five good producing wells now being operated night and day on the same identical lands.  It now seems strange indeed that wells should have been drilled on these lands to a depth of eight and twelve hundred feet, and no oil in paying quantities discovered, when it is now being produced there in great quantities from wells of four and five hundred feet in depth.  The discoveries and productions of these oil and gas wells of Westfield, Parker, Casey, Johnson, Orange and Martinsville Townships have been far beyond the dreams of the most sanguine land owner, lesee or operator, reference to which will be more fully made in a special chapter devoted to the oil and gas industries of Clark county, further along in these histories. **To Be Continued**

Notes & Sources:
W. H. Perrin, History of Crawford and Clark Counties, O. L. Baskin & Co., 1883 Transcribed by L. K Ortman