Who Was Fielding Yost?

Several years before he passed away, the inim­itable Mike Rowady told me that the famous University of Michigan foot­ball coach, Fielding Yost, lived in Winchester for a time.  Mike asked if I could find out what he was doing here.  Unfortunately, he could not remem­ber any dates.  Not know­ing any­thing about Yost, I looked him up. Turns out he was a Hall of Fame foot­ball coach—more on that later—but he took a year’s leave of absence from Michigan in 1924.  Thinking per­haps that was the year Yost came here, I went through the whole year, issue by issue, of the Winchester Sun on micro­film, but found no men­tion of Yost.  That’s because it turns out Yost spent his off-sea­son in Winchester in 1917, not 1924. 

I nev­er doubt­ed Mike’s sto­ry.  Since back issues of the Sun are now online. I decid­ed to take anoth­er look. Voila. The February 19, 1917 issue of the Sun pub­lished a sto­ry under the head­line “America’s Greatest Foot Ball Coach Locates Here.”

“F. H. Yost of Nashville, Tenn., one of America’s fore­most foot­ball coach­es, has tak­en up his head­quar­ters in Winchester where he will look after his inter­ests in the Estill coun­ty oil fields.”

Yost took up offices in the McEldowney Building adjoin­ing attor­ney Smith Hays.  His wife and son joined him in June.  They resided on French Avenue.

Fielding Harris Yost (1871−1946) grew up in Fairview, West Virginia.  After col­lege in Ohio, he went to work in the West Virginia oil fields.  In 1895 he enrolled in West Virginia University law school and became a stand­out play­er on their foot­ball team.  After earn­ing his degree, Yost coached foot­ball at five dif­fer­ent schools, com­pil­ing a 33−6−2 record, before being hired to head the University of Michigan pro­gram in 1901. 

During Yost’s first five sea­sons at Michigan, his mir­a­cle years, he won 56 games with­out a loss.  His first team outscored oppo­nents 550–0 on the way to an unde­feat­ed sea­son and a win in the first Rose Bowl.  His Michigan teams won four straight “myth­i­cal” nation­al cham­pi­onships from 1901 to 1904 (and two more in 1918 and 1923).

In those five sea­sons under Yost, Michigan outscored its oppo­nents 2,821−42.  They became known as the “point-a-minute team,” and the coach earned the nick­name “Hurry up Yost.”  By the end of the 1916 sea­son, Yost had record­ed 126 wins against only 18 losses.

At that time foot­ball sea­son usu­al­ly last­ed only two months (October and November).  The rest of the year coach­es were essen­tial­ly on vaca­tion and free to pur­sue oth­er enter­pris­es.  In 1917 Yost used his vaca­tion to get into the oil busi­ness in Kentucky.  His focus was the Estill County oil field.

Excitement in the Estill County field began in 1915, when a well drilled on Cow Creek pro­duced oil at a depth of only 200 feet.  The fol­low­ing year near­ly a thou­sand wells were drilled in the area, and fore­cast­ers pre­dict­ed more than a mil­lion bar­rels would be pro­duced in 1917.  Most of the reserves were found in the Irvine field north­east of Irvine and the much small­er Ravenna field south­east of the city.  The pools resided at shal­low depths and pro­duced a high qual­i­ty crude.

Yost came to Winchester as vice-pres­i­dent of the Melick Refining Company that was search­ing for a place to erect a $1,000,000 oil refin­ery.  He also held posi­tions with com­pa­nies leas­ing lands and drilling wells in Estill County:  pres­i­dent of Kentucky Producers’ Oil Co. and Delta Oil Co. and vice-pres­i­dent of Ken-See Oil Co.

In September 1917 Yost returned to Ann Arbor to coach Michigan to an 8–2 sea­son.  That December found him back in Clark County as head of the O. K. Oil Co. formed by Yost and his broth­er Ellis in Winchester.  He spent time in Winchester on and off until 1920.

The Estill County oil boom last­ed only a few years, while pro­duc­ing over 100 mil­lion bar­rels of oil.  One refin­ery did get built, by the Oleum Refining Co., at Pryse, Estill County.  There were for­tunes made dur­ing the boom, as well as for­tunes lost.  It’s uncer­tain how Yost made out in his oil field ventures.

However, we know for cer­tain how Yost fared at Michigan, where he retired from coach­ing after the 1926 sea­son.  He had led Michigan to eight unde­feat­ed sea­sons.  In his 28 sea­sons as a head coach, Yost’s teams nev­er had a los­ing record.  He fin­ished his career with an over­all record of 196−36−12.  He was induct­ed into the College Football Hall of Fame in its inau­gur­al class of 1951.