It was early evening in April 1951 when Bill Shemorry, managing editor of the Williston Press-Graphic, got a call from his editor. North Dakota had just changed forever.
For months, the Amerada Petroleum Corp. had been looking for oil on Clarence Iverson’s wheat farm, near Tioga, finding mostly nothing. By one account, the well had produced about a pint of unpolluted oil by January ...