Today, the 66-year-old Hamm is a multibillionaire who could buy the entire town several times over.

Read his story here.

Though most towns with presidential connections usually brag about that part of their history, it’s not so in El Dorado, Kansas. The grandparents of president Obama, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham lived in El Dorado before moving to Wichita where their daughter, Obama’s mother, was born. When asked about the the fact that there are no signs or displays around town noting the kinship to the president, a local merchant simply said, “It’s very Republican around here, so I’m not surprised.” (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

EL DORADO, Kan. – These days El Dorado is probably best known as the place where President Obama’s maternal grandfather grew up for a while. It’s less well known for its oil and gas museum.

The oil industry in Kansas is 152 years old, dating from a well drilled in 1860.  But it wasn’t until 1892-93 that a team of prospectors drilled the Norman #1 well and discovered a gusher in what became the large Mid-Continent field. The oil rush was on. Before long, Standard Oil had built a refinery in Neodesha and one company alone, belonging to I.N. Knapp, had more than a thousand operating oil wells around the town of Chanute and his own rail cars to ship the oil. By 1903 there were 100 oil companies operating in Kansas. New discoveries in late 1915 sparked another boom and the population of El Dorado grew to 7,000, seven times its size a year and a half earlier. Then it grew to 20,000 people within five years.  In 1916, the first of six refineries opened, one of which is still functioning and drawing crude from the big pipeline hub in Cushing, Okla.

The museum has photographs of early towns and encampments that bear a striking resemblance to what we saw in the oil sands boom town of Fort McMurray in Canada or the “Bakken boom” towns of North Dakota. A photo of Oil Hill taken for the Empire Gas & Fuel Co. shows rows of small, hastily-built flimsy houses in exact lines, much like the trailer parks in North Dakota these days. Pipe lay all over the dirt roads. In the early 20^th century, though, the drilling rigs stood even closer together, practically touching.  Conditions looked terrible and oil was spilled frequently. While people these days fret over a spill of 400 barrels along the pipelines, people back then could have used an EPA or pipeline safety administration. The Norma #1 spewed oil for many days before it could be capped and brought under control.

In 1918, the El Dorado oil field was the biggest producing field in the United States. Even today, Kansas ranks 10th in the nation among oil producing states and 11th in natural gas production. It also ranks 10th in wind energy production.

But the chaotic development of a century ago has faded – at least in Kansas if not in North Dakota.

The Keystone XL pipeline will go under the Big Blue River, which runs under the wooden bridge pictured here. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Jane Kleeb is a savvy activist who, Nebraska’s Republican governor once said, “has a tendency to shoot her mouth off most days.” A Florida native who moved to Nebraska in 2007 after marrying a rancher active in Democratic politics, she did as much as anyone to bring the massive Keystone XL crude oil pipeline to a halt last year.

James Goecke is a counterpoint to Kleeb. A hydrogeologist and professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, he has been measuring water tables in Nebraska’s ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region since 1970 and has shunned the political limelight — until now. He recently appeared in an ad for the pipeline’s owner, TransCanada, rebutting some of the arguments against the project and its new route.

Read more of this story.

Aug. 3, 2012 – Opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline gathered in Spalding, Neb., for a cookout to thank state senator Ken Haar for his work to reroute the pipeline away from Nebraska’s Sand Hills and portions of the Ogallala Aquifer. But in spite of this reroute, many of the Nebraskans at this event do not want to see the pipeline built at all. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

The Keystone XL pipeline, which President Obama rejected early this year because he said environmental issues could not be settled by a congressionally mandated deadline, would carry crude oil from Canada’s oil sands to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico coast of Texas. The pipeline owner, TransCanada, filed a new application in May.

The State Department, which is handling the permit because the pipeline would cross an international border, said it would consider a variety of issues, including air quality and noise, environmental justice, water resources, land use, recreation and socioeconomics.

Leading critics say the State Department should also weigh climate change because the extraction of crude from oil sands resembles strip mining and requires large amounts of energy. As a result, more greenhouse gas emissions are released during the extraction process than during the drilling of conventional crude oil.

“It is a tar sands pipeline that brings many risks but offers very little in the way of benefits,” said Anthony Swift, an international attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The climate emissions of this project are the equivalent of putting 4 million to 6 million more cars on the road.”

Bill McKibben, a Middlebury College professor who has led opposition among people worried about the greenhouse gas emissions, said, “The State Department has a lousy record of dealing with climate change. They struck out at Copenhagen. And they have nothing to show for their efforts regarding what is without doubt the most pressing problem the world faces.”

Supporters say that if the Keystone XL pipeline is blocked that Canada will still produce crude from its oil sands and simply send it elsewhere, to Asia for example, and that the extra emissions from tankers would be even worse for the environment. But McKibben said that building a pipeline to Canada’s west coast would also run into opposition from environmentalists and that stopping the Keystone XL would slow development of the oil sands.

Meanwhile, TransCanada said it would start construction this summer on the southern leg of the pipeline project. On Friday, it received the third and last permit it needed from the Army Corps of Engineers to build the portion of the pipeline that will run from Cushing, Okla., a major terminal and pipeline junction, to the Port Arthur area of Texas.

The company said that the environmental review completed last year “was the most comprehensive process ever for a cross border pipeline. Based on that work, TransCanada expects its cross border permit should be processed expeditiously and a decision made once a new route in Nebraska is determined. The DOS has indicated it expects to make a decision on the project by the first quarter of 2013.”

The statue of Chief Standing Bear stands proud as the lights of the Conoco-Phillips refinery glow in the dusk light less than 1000 yards away.

PONCA CITY, Okla. – In this town northeast of Oklahoma City, there is a statue of Standing Bear, who was chief of the Ponca tribe. Go there at night, and you can see symbols of seven tribes, a natural gas flame at the center of a faux campfire, and in the background the lights of an oil refinery.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, I had a drink with journalist Joe Starita, who wrote “I am a Man; Chief Stand Bear’s Journey for Justice,” which I later read. The book is a well-told, moving tale of how the Ponca tribe was forced by U.S. troops and an Interior Department agent in 1877 to abandon their traditional lands in northern Nebraska and march south to Oklahoma, which was then known as Indian Territory. This was done despite the fact that the Ponca tribe was a role model of what the United States government was trying to achieve with Native Americans. The tribe had signed four treaties with the United States government, given up much of its territory, settled into farming life, and built churches. During the forced march south, a third of the tribe died of disease and exhaustion.

The forced marches of Poncas and other Native American tribes are known as the “trails of tears” and I was struck by two maps in Joe’s book. One shows the Ponca lands in northern Nebraska; those lands sat alongside the Niobrara River, one of the key crossings for the Keystone XL pipeline. We drove over that river and photographed a family swimming and strolling on sand bars in the river. The second shows the Ponca Trail of Tears from May 16 to July 9, 1877. The trail – from the Niobrara over the Platte River through the town of Seward and crossing the Nebraska border near what today is Steele City — is almost identical to the proposed path of the Keystone XL pipeline through Nebraska and northern Kansas.

The scattering of Indian tribes makes it hard today to figure out which tribe has what rights, and when a construction project might stumble into an archaeological site or a traditional burial ground.

Whatever happened to Standing Bear?  He sued the U.S. government, despite the fact that the courts had not decided whether Indians were actually people and thus able to file suit. Starita recounts a dramatic courtroom moment when Standing Bear, in a Shakespearean echo, held up his right hand and said: “That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.”

Standing Bear traveled throughout the country to raise money for his legal battle. He dined at Chicago’s Palmer House with leading citizens of the city. In Boston, he met the mayor, the Massachusetts governor, a wealthy publisher and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow the poet. In New York, Josiah Fiske, the business titan, threw a dinner for the chief at Fiske’s spacious Fifth Avenue home and Standing Bear spoke to a thousand people in the city’s Steinway Hall.

Though Standing Bear won his legal battle, the Poncas remained mostly in Oklahoma. The legacy of forced removals has not been shaken. For tribes like the Poncas, the boundaries of their tribal areas can be unclear. The federal government’s policy gave Indians the right to buy private plots, or allotments. The tribe has some jurisdiction over some of those areas. Legislation also provides for the protection of historical sites of Native Americans.

For TransCanada, it means that Oklahoma can be a delicate place to work; it carries a heavy historical burden. Yes, there are many pipelines and tank farms and refineries and oil wells in Oklahoma on Indian territory (not to mention casinos).

And the tribes, and according to various treaties and U.S. legislation, are entitled to be consulted. Last December, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued order number 3317: “Government to government consultation between appropriate tribal officials and the Department requires Departmental officials to demonstrate in a meaningful commitment to consultation by identifying and involving Tribal representatives in a meaningful way.”

Thanks to Standing Bear the tribe can sue, too.

South Dakota rancher John Harter tried to stop TransCanada from securing the right of eminent domain over his land where they want to put part of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, but Harter recently lost his battle in court.