Wildcatters, Rockhounds, and Doodlebugs: Extractive Methods, Buried Truths

Petroleum histories often place oil hunters into opposing camps: the rational, honest geologist (also called rockhound) versus the occult, unscrupulous doodlebugologist (oil diviner) either or both of whom work for the rugged, individualistic wildcatter (independent oil operator). However, this paper argues that framing doodlebug-rockhound relations as a dramatic showdown between occult practices and the scientific method misses the many spatial and rhetorical similarities between the two approaches to petroleum prospecting. Rather than focusing all attention on the line between true versus false subsurface methods, I argue that wildcatters, rockhounds, and doodlebugs work together to shift the stratigraphy of truth (scientific, mythic, and divine) from heavenly heights to hidden depths. Thinking doodlebugology with, rather than against, geology demonstrates the ways both fields help usher in a respatialization of truth as something buried, and value as that which comes from correctly locating and extracting this hidden substance.