Colorado's first commercial oil well was drilled in 1862 at Oil Spring, near Cañon City. Today the state's database holds 89,913 wellbores with a recorded spud date. Press play and each well appears on the map in the year it was spudded.
Each dot is a wellbore, placed at its surface location and shown from the year it was spudded. Older wells are dim copper and newer wells are brighter. Drag the slider or press play to move through time. The chart under the map counts wells spudded per year, and the tall bars are drilling booms.
A well stays on the map after it is plugged and abandoned, so the map shows every recorded well, producing or not. The pattern follows the state's drilling history: the Front Range anticlines, the Rangely field in the far northwest (developed during World War II), and the dense cluster between Denver and Greeley.
The first ninety years look nearly empty. Drilling was sparse, and the state database has few wells before about 1950, so the early Florence and Boulder fields appear in the map notes rather than as dots. After that, each boom fills a different part of the map. D-sand and J-sand wells spread across the eastern plains in the 1950s. Wattenberg, between Denver and Greeley, grows dense after 1970. Coalbed methane wells fill the San Juan and Raton basins from the late 1980s. The Piceance Basin around Rifle fills in during the 2000s. After 2009, horizontal drilling concentrates new wells in Weld County, with fewer wells and longer laterals.
Each dot is a well from the public well-spot database of the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (formerly COGCC), downloaded June 2026: one dot per wellbore with surface coordinates and a recorded spud date, 89,913 in all. Locations that were permitted but never drilled are excluded. The database has few wells before about 1950, so the earliest fields (the hundreds of holes at Florence, the 1901 Boulder field) are described in the map notes rather than shown as dots. Historical milestones are drawn from the Colorado Encyclopedia, USGS, and contemporary accounts.
Before a well is drilled today, the operator has the title examined to find who owns the minerals and who will be paid from production. That work covers severed estates, old deeds, leases, pooling and royalty math. This site explains how it is done.
Start learning mineral title →