Lakewood as the developing "City of Beautiful Homes" had to be defended back in 1914, the year of the big gas-well boom during which more than 200 derricks pockmarked our community.
Although the presence of natural gas improved the desirability of many parcels of land here, unrestricted drilling, with its rigs, blemished the beauty of the landscape and was too noisy.
The first concerted opposition came as a complaint to the court on June 27, 1914, from householders in the vicinity of Clifton and Thoreau. They contended that the brine from the wells was destroying trees and shrubbery.
On Feb. 9, 1915, Lakewood City Council passed an ordinance -- the first of its kind in Cuyahoga County -- requiring drilling permits, halting loud, sleep-disturbing work at night, and prohibiting operations within 100 feet of homes.
However, as it happened, Mother Nature also was on the side of the home owners. Within a year or two of the big strike, most of the wells petered out, and the city once again returned to concentrating on its prowess as a residential community.
The majority of our area wells in 1914 were north of the Norfolk and Western tracks between West 104th Street and Rocky River. They were drilled in Clinton sandstone at a depth of about 2,500 feet.
The history of gas here, however, goes back to the last century. In 1860, an early settler found the fuel escaping from a section of ground in the Rocky River valley.
Someone ignited it, and it burned for many weeks, lighting the whole district. But it was left unharnessed because no one knew how to utilize it profitably.
In 1870s, Ezra Nicholson, son of the first permanent settler on Detroit Road, dug a test well for gas on the east side of Rocky River about a half-mile from Lake Erie.
When it was abandoned in a short time for being too far away to pay for itself, Ezra drilled a second one just west of his old homestead at Detroit and Nicholson. From it he laid a pipe to Cove Avenue and invited his neighbors to tap into the line at no charge.
Later, Henry Beach, who had settled here in 1864, made use of local gas to supply his 17-room house on Detroit at Beach Avenue as well as his 10-suite Beach Terrace.
To attract tenants to the terrace, he advertised unlimited light and heat from three wells on his property. Subsequently, these sources also furnished gas for numerous apartments in Clifton Prado.
In 1883, a gas well was bored for H.A. Mastick, a member of the pioneer family for whom Mastick Road was named.
In 1912, two years before the boom year, National Carbon and Winton Motor companies each acquired an area gas well with a daily output of one million cubic feet.
In 1913, the Lakewood Gas Co. was formed, and new wells were sunk on Nicholson farm property and on Giel Avenue.
Although those and most other gushers that followed in 1914 were short-lived, at the time they put our suburb among the top natural gas production centers in the Midwest.
Today, there are still a few viable wells in our community, according to Lakewood Fire Marshal Jack Henderson.
One on the west parking lot of Rego's Detroit-Bunts Supermarket was repaired in April and is again being used to some extent.
In the past, the well provided the store with heat as well as the energy to operate its air-conditioning equipment.
An old city-owned well in Lakewood Park, which once warmed the swimming pool and some of the buildings on the property, is not now being used, but it still has the potential, Henderson said.
This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post July 20,1989. Reprinted with permission.