The Central Power Unit

In the early days of the Kansas oilfields, central power units pumped oil wells, with one unit able to pump as many as eighteen different wells, some up to half a mile away. In the 1950s, producers began replacing central powers with beam pumping units, though a few locations in eastern Kansas still use them. A central power unit had four main parts: a band wheel, whose long spokes multiplied engine power and whose eccentric gears changed circular motion into the reciprocating motion needed to pump a well; an engine, a two-cycle, twenty-five-horsepower natural-gas engine with a single cylinder and one large piston that turned the band wheel; a belt, usually made of rubber over woven cord, that transmitted power from the engine to the band wheel and was sometimes patched after breaking; and an idler, which adjusted inward or outward to keep the belt tight. In operation, the engine turned the belt, which turned the band wheel; the eccentric gears at the base of the band wheel moved in and out, changing rotary motion to straight horizontal motion; rod lines attached by clamps to the eccentric gears ran through the sides of the building to pump jacks on the wells; and the pump jack converted the horizontal movement of the rod line into vertical pumping motion that pumped oil from the well. This central power unit came from the Cities Service oilfields in northern Butler County. Virgil Hughey recognized its importance and preserved it at Oil Hill until it could be moved to the Kansas Oil Museum. Its band wheel, twenty-four feet in diameter, was manufactured by the Reid Gas Engine Company of Oil City, Pennsylvania, about 1923, and its engine was manufactured by the Titusvile Iron Works Company of Pennsylvania about 1925. The building is an authentic recreation of a typical central power building of the 1920s.

El Dorado, Kansas · United States