It’s been left to a cultural resource in New Mexico’s flyover country to note the anniversary of an event so crucial to state history, it rivals the decision to site Project Y in Los Alamos.

On October 21, 1921, a “mile south of Aztec just west of what is now U.S. Highway 550,” the Midwest Refining Company drilled Ute No. 1. In a 1951 guidebook, Frank C.…