Development of the Salt Creek Oilfield accompanied the nation’s changing view of the West from romantic wilderness to a source of mineral wealth. Placer oil claims began in the Salt Creek area in 1883, before Casper was founded and before Wyoming became a state, but ownership was often loosely handled, with overlapping, abandoned, and “jumped” claims that led to decades of costly lawsuits once major oil strikes and great wealth were at stake. Natural oil seeps had revealed the area’s promise to early residents and explorers, and prospectors filed countless claims despite lacking the capital to drill wells and build transportation infrastructure; among them, Cy Iba became the best known and most successful, though notorious for long and often unfounded lawsuits and appeals. Corporate involvement began when P.M. Shannon, representing Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Company, drilled the region’s first producing well, Shannon No. 1, in the adjacent Shannon Pool in 1889, and the company later built a small refinery in Casper in 1894 and hauled oil there fifty miles by wagon trains pulled by string teams of twelve to eighteen horses. Those investments laid the foundation for later success at the much richer Salt Creek field itself, whose wealth remained hidden for another decade. Beginning in 1903, European capital entered the region’s oil industry, followed by investment from New York, California, and Colorado, and in 1908 Dutch drilling in Salt Creek proper brought in a spectacular gusher that drew thousands of prospectors and job seekers and created Wyoming’s first oil boom. Salt Creek then helped shape Wyoming’s economy and politics, contributing to regional prosperity, Casper’s growth, education funding, roads, and community services through oil taxes. Midwest Oil Company, organized in 1911 with Colorado and French backing, became the most diplomatic and successful early corporate venture there, building storage tanks, expanding Casper refineries, constructing pipelines and the first gas plants, establishing employee camps, and developing Home Camp into a company town later known as Salt Creek and now Midwest. By 1914 Midwest had become the field’s largest operator through purchases and mergers, though it controlled only about one-third of operations. The Oil and Gas Leasing Act of 1920 replaced placer claims with federal mineral leases, ending most ownership feuds and allowing Midwest to begin unitizing Salt Creek in 1935 by operating the whole field, managing the various companies’ wells and properties, and distributing portions of profits to other owners. This reduced competition, improved infrastructure decisions for the entire field, made Salt Creek one of the first unitized oilfields in the U.S., and helped establish Wyoming as an energy state contributing oil and other energy resources to the nation.