Scott Heywood discovered oil in Jennings on September 21, 1901, starting a new industry for Louisiana. From the heart of Acadiana, oil fever spread north to Caddo and Pine Island, south to Hackberry and Cameron, east to Barataria and Lafourche, and into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil industry created a worker class in Louisiana that had not previously existed. Towns, complete with schools, churches, and grocery stores, developed in oil fields; in fact, cabins with clothes hanging on the line to dry were adjacent to derricks and open oil pits. Today, families proudly recount the number of their generations that have worked in the "oil patch," and workers continue to contribute to a current crude oil production of nearly 200,000 barrels per day. The legacy of Louisiana's first oil fields is evident in towns like Jennings, Evangeline, Oil City, Morgan City, Lake Charles, and Cameron, and the history of that once nascent industry is a permanent part of the culture of Louisiana.

From the hill country in the north to the marshy lowlands in the south, Louisiana and its citizens have long enjoyed the hard-earned fruits of the oil and gas industry’s labor. Economic prosperity flowed from pioneering exploration as the industry heralded engineering achievements and innovative production technologies. Those successes, however, often came at the expense of other natural resources, leading to contamination and degradation of land and water. In A Thousand Ways Denied, John T. Arnold documents the oil industry’s sharp interface with Louisiana’s environment. Drawing on government, corporate, and personal files, many previously untapped, he traces the history of oil-field practices and their ecological impacts in tandem with battles over regulation. Arnold reveals that in the early twentieth century, Louisiana helped lead the nation in conservation policy, instituting some of the first programs to sustain its vast wealth of natural resources. But with the proliferation of oil output, government agencies splintered between those promoting production and others committed to preventing pollution. As oil’s economic and political strength grew, regulations commonly went unobserved and unenforced. Over the decades, oil, saltwater, and chemicals flowed across the ground, through natural drainages, and down waterways. Fish and wildlife fled their habitats, and drinking-water supplies were ruined. In the wetlands, drilling facilities sat like factories in the midst of a maze of interconnected canals dredged to support exploration, manufacture, and transportation of oil and gas. In later years, debates raged over the contribution of these activities to coastal land loss. Oil is an inseparable part of Louisiana’s culture and politics, Arnold asserts, but the state’s original vision for safeguarding its natural resources has become compromised. He urges a return to those foundational conservation principles. Otherwise, Louisiana risks the loss of viable uses of its land and, in some places, its very way of life.

The development of the offshore petroleum industry is a remarkable story of inventiveness, entrepreneurship, hard work, and risk-taking that turned Louisiana's relatively isolated coastal communities into significant contributors to the United States and global economies. This industry emerged as local residents and returning World War II veterans applied skills, technologies, and can-do attitudes to overcome the many challenges of producing oil from below the ocean floor. Offshore workers initially came from Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, but soon people from throughout the United States were attracted to the Gulf Coast. This industry, born in the Louisiana marshes, has grown to have a key place in the modern world. Yet, it is little known, understood, or documented, and its dynamic economic role is virtually invisible.

The purpose of this project is to study, document and explain the history and evolution of the offshore oil and gas industry in southern Louisiana in an objective and comprehensive way. The geographic extent and complexity of the industry, the tremendous number of petroleum and associated service companies, and the vast array of impacts has required the identification and recruitment of hundreds of individuals with direct experience with the industry and its effects. University researchers have spent thousands of hours with people responsible for the offshore oil and gas industry in southern Louisiana. They recorded interviews, collected written documents, and obtained digital copies of photographs and video from the early days.