Flaring off in the Turner Valley could be seen in Calgary 48 kilometres away where it lit the night sky to the south and west. The flares are said to have caused grass to grow and flowers to bloom year-round. Local farmers and ranchers claimed they could read newspapers and even hunt rabbits at midnight by their eerie light. Because natural gas was produced in such plentiful quantities, whatever was not sold to the local Calgary market was burned off in a gully, known as "Hell's Half Acre," where as many as 700,000 cubic metres of gas per day were flared off.
Shown here is the flare at the Okalta Well. Owned by W.S. Herron, Okalta Oils was one of the leading domestic producers in the Turner Valley. Other producers such as Home Oil, Model Oil, and Mayland also entered the field, and between 1925 and 1935 some one hundred wells were drilled in Turner Valley. Of these, Home Oil produced at its central Turner Valley Home No. 1 some 110 cubic metres per day in 1929 before the depression reduced demand markedly. To date, the Turner Valley field has yielded about 3.5 million cubic metres, but has realized only 10 per cent of its potential because of the severe loss of pressures from the depleted gas cap.
Courtesy: Glenbow-Alberta Institute, W.J. Oliver Collection (NB 16-601)
