The provincial mining report for nineteen fifteen printed a letter from the manager of the Flathead Oil Syndicate’s operations. It is an operator’s account, reproduced by the government, rather than an independent production audit.

The manager reported that Number Three had reached nine hundred and seventy feet in badly broken bluish-grey limestone. He believed the drill was still in the overthrust formation, with more of that section below.

The drillers estimated two to ten barrels a day. The manager added four words that deserve to survive the century: “only test will tell.”

That test was a plan in the letter. The letter does not establish that the test achieved the estimated rate. It records what the operator wanted to determine.

The same letter describes Number Two, also called the Davenport well. This is a Flathead operation at Sage Creek. It is not Akamina Number Two, even though the repeated numbering makes the stories easy to mix up.

The crew was trying to shut off artesian water. While seating casing, the manager reported two surges of oil, gas and water powerful enough to force the drillers away from their work. Some oil was caught after the flow subsided.

The report then turns from excitement to equipment trouble. The available casing was described as light. Another water flow appeared after a little more drilling. The crew pulled the casing and tried to reset it. A bottom-hole packer failed to do its job. During another attempt to pull the casing, it separated.

The well was shut down pending heavier casing and another packer.

We can describe that as a reported uncontrolled flow during casing work. We cannot assign a measured pressure, claim a fire, add fatalities, or turn it into a sustained gusher. None of those details is established by this account.

The practical difficulty is vivid enough. Water entry complicated the evaluation. The equipment needed to isolate it was failing. Replacement material was not sitting on a nearby service truck.

The manager expected the pump, tanks and casing to reach Belton, then be freighted into camp after the first snow. The operation had stocked provisions, coke and horse feed to get through the seasonal period of bad roads.

Here, snow was part of the supply plan. A mechanical failure could be tied to an entire transport season. The well’s next decision depended on rock, steel, weather, money, and the condition of a trail through the mountains.

A driller could encounter a real show, recover real oil, and still have no commercial well. The task was to discover whether the seep was the edge of a substantial petroleum accumulation or the leakage from a much less useful system.