The evolution of a petroleum geologist after the Scopes Monkey Trial

— If it hadn't been for a famous trial 90 years ago next month, John Scopes might never have embarked on a 35-year career as a petroleum geologist.

But whatever Scopes' track record was at finding oil and gas, history has kept mum — because his stamp on the world came not from hydrocarbons but as the defendant at the center of what became known as the "Scopes Monkey Trial(opens in a new tab)" in Dayton, Tennessee that began July 10, 1925, and pitted the Bible against the theory of evolution and highlighted the science-versus-religion debate which flourishes to this day.

Scopes — a math, physics and chemistry teacher and football coach earning $150 a month at a Dayton public high school — was accused of teaching evolution to students. That violated the then-recently passed Butler Act which prohibited teaching in Tennessee public schools that man descended from a lower order of animals.

Ironically, Scopes, an admitted agnostic, only substitute-taught biology briefly during the regular instructor's illness and had merely assigned readings from a state-required textbook. He was convicted although the case was later overturned on a technicality.

The event was much-ballyhooed and said to be the first US trial to be broadcast on the new-fangled technology called radio, via Chicago's station WGN, which is still in existence. A chimpanzee named Joe Mendi, who wore a plaid suit and fedora, was seen about town, serving as mascot for the proceedings in the minds of many.

Post-trial, Scopes was offered a new contract at the Dayton school. He later said he might have accepted but hesitated because of his notoriety. Meanwhile, the teacher realized the trial had stirred his love of science, and he decided to study geology in graduate school at the University of Chicago. A scholarship fund created by expert witnesses at the trial paid for two years of study — but was insufficient to finish his Ph.D. So Scopes decided to go to work.

He was offered a job with Standard Oil of New Jersey but instead signed on for a three-year offer of work for Gulf Oil of South America as a geologist. As he explained in his 1967 memoir, "Center of the Storm," his consent to work overseas may have stemmed from a desire to "flee to a foreign country where I would be just another man instead of the Monkey Trial defendant."

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Scopes ended up in Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo as an assistant field engineer. But illness and danger conspired against fulfilling his full three-year term there. Unfortunately, although Scopes' book details his colorful Venezuelan adventures, including a bout with malaria and blood poisoning and near-clashes with tigers, tapirs and indigenous jungle people, it says little about his work in one of the most prolific oil basins in the world.

The Barroso No. 2 well in Cabimas in 1922, around Lake Maracaibo, launched Venezuela's modern history as a major producer. The discovery captured worldwide attention and attracted many foreign companies to the country, which was the world's leading oil exporter by 1928. Cabimas is still a sizable oilfield and produces about 31,000 b/d of 12- and 21-degree API crude under a joint venture between Venezuelan state PDVSA and local company Suelopetrol, according to Suelopetrol's website. But any mention of Gulf Oil’s fields or Maracaibo's astonishing productivity, which must have been apparent to Scopes every working day while there, is absent from his book.

In 1933, as the Depression raged, Scopes took a job at the United Production Corporation, later known as United Gas Corporation. There he first worked as an oil scout out of Beeville, Texas, then in the company's Houston office until 1940 and later in Schreveport, Louisiana, where he stayed until he retired in 1964. United Gas(opens in a new tab) merged into the former Pennzoil in 1968.

"In the general office I was in charge of reserves and appraisals," he wrote of his company. "As the department expanded, I was involved in petroleum engineering, taxes and all phases of oil-industry economics, working with every other department of the company as well as regulatory agencies of the state and federal governments." Scopes reported that he enjoyed the work.

The "monkey trial" was an occasion for its participants’ grandstanding. The biggest was a clash of two great figures of the day: William Jennings Bryan, three-time US presidential candidate and ardent populist, supporting the prosecution's case and championing Biblical creationism; and famed Chicago defense lawyer Clarence Darrow, who defended Scopes and argued on behalf of freedom of ideas and scientific inquiry.

The trial also advanced the purposes of other participants. For his part, Scopes claimed it was never clear to him whether he had actually taught evolution, but he agreed to be the straw man in the case — to “furnish the body” as he later put it — after some Dayton civic boosters urged him to do so. Their aims appeared to be publicity for the town and were motivated by the American Civil Liberties Union’s search for a teacher willing to test the Butler Act in court and had agreed to finance the defendant.

To his credit, Scopes did not capitalize on his fame after the trial; he gave no public appearances or speeches, lent his name to no causes. He claimed to have been offered $50,000, then a sizable sum, to lecture on evolution in vaudeville but said he didn't know enough about it. He downplayed his role in the trial and tried to avoid publicity, although he did consent to media interviews that dogged him for the rest of his life.

In 1930 Scopes married an American woman he’d met in Venezuela whose father was a construction contractor in Maracaibo and even took Catholic instruction so he could marry in that church, but did not practice the religion.

According to a memoir Scopes wrote in 1965, the Dayton courtroom was not the first time he and William Jennings Bryan had crossed paths. In 1919, Bryan had delivered the commencement address at the Salem, Illinois high school where Scopes was graduating. In a historic coincidence, Bryan had been born in Salem and often returned to his hometown to lecture. It was clear Scopes admired Bryan, but also remained a lifelong friend of Darrow.

The Butler Act remained a Tennessee law until 1967. Bryan died just days after the trial, while still living in Dayton — a picturesque town nestled in the east Tennessee Appalachian mountains. Darrow died in 1938; Scopes in 1970. The courthouse(opens in a new tab) where the case was tried is now a national historic landmark and contains a small museum about the trial.

The Scopes trial inspired a 1960 movie “Inherit the Wind(opens in a new tab),” starring Frederic March in the William Jennings Bryan role, Spencer Tracy in the Clarence Darrow role and Gene Kelly in a stylized character based on H.L. Mencken, a real-life reporter for the Baltimore Sun who covered the trial and whose newspaper contributed money toward the defense.

However, the movie, based on a play written in the 1950s as a parable of McCarthyism, which had swept through the country some years before, is not precisely factual(opens in a new tab): the characters' names were changed and many scenes in the movie never took place in real life.