. >> reporter: bruce helm's family has been in the oil industry for three decades. >> no blow-out preventers or nothing. when it came you had to run for your life. record are here at the museum there is a replica of the wooden oil derrick they used a decade ago. this is more than 100 feet high. but the oil was spewing more than 200 feet into the air. in fact, locals say on a calm day you could see black columns of oil mist one-half mile in the sky. back on the ground, you can still see remnants of the lake view gusher today. the oil turned the soil here basically into asphalt. at its peak, the lake view gusher spewed out 100,000- barrels of oil per day. that's more than five times the rate of the current gulf oil disaster. although the lake view gusher eventually slowed down, it lasted for a year and a half. >> it happened 100 years ago. and we're all still here, we are living and we are breathing, still driving automobiles. driving on the biggest oil slick in the world. that highway you drove on is a bigger oil slick than what's down there in louisiana. >> back then oil fill drilling and sa