On this date in 1953, the American Oil Company held groundbreaking ceremonies for a new refinery in Mandan. Oil had been discovered on the Clarence Iverson farm two years earlier, triggering a boom in the state’s oil industry. The refinery was dedicated in October 1954; Governor C. Norman Brunsdale attended and was presented with a series of crude oil and distillate samples, which he gave to the State Historical Society of North Dakota a year later.

The American Oil Company later commissioned a contemporary American illustrator, Charles McBarron, to do a series of historically accurate paintings of the American West. One of these was a gouache titled “Lewis and Clark at Mandan Village, 1804,” which American Oil presented to the state of North Dakota in 1962.

This text and audio may not be copied without securing prior permission from North Dakota Public Radio.