In March 1968, a wildcat drilling rig owned by ARCO and Humble Oil hissed and shuddered in the sub-zero wind of Alaska's North Slope. They hit it. The Prudhoe Bay No. 1 well tapped into a reservoir that would ultimately yield over thirteen billion barrels of crude. Many wrote the region off. Crews worked in minus forty-degree weather where steel drill pipes shattered like cheap glass. Heavy grease froze solid. But the black gold kept flowing, eventually forcing the federal government to overhaul native land claims to pave the way for a giant pipeline.

The historical ripple effects of this single mud-caked wellhead go far beyond oil barrels. To get the oil to market, the US had to build the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, a project that rewrote the map of the state. Congress acted fast. They passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971 to clear the pipeline's path, settling indigenous land rights with 962 million dollars and 44 million acres. So, Alaska's entire modern economy grew out of this gravel pad. Just a pipe in the cold. But it reshaped geopolitical power balances during the 1970s energy crises.