"'Dig boy, dig', shouted the Canadian engineer, W L Lake, at his men as they watched elephants emerging out of the dense forest with oil stains on their feet".

Two events separated by seven years have become fused, but although neither is likely to be provable, such evidence that does exist appears sufficiently detailed to be credible.

Various web sites offer variations on the elephant's foot story, a consensus of which would be that engineers extending the Dibru-Sadiya railway line to Ledo for the Assam Railways and Trading Company (AR&TC) in 1882 were using elephants for haulage and noticed that the mud on one pachyderm's feet smelled of oil.

[3] Once the project had been approved, Lake assembled equipment, boilers, and local labour, and engaged elephants to haul the machinery to the site.

This continued until November 1890 when the well was completed at a total depth of 662 feet (202 m), and it was during this extended period of drilling that Assam Oil Company's magazine adverts placed the legend of Lake exhorting one or more of his labourers to "Dig, boy!".

The field was pushed to produce the maximum amount of oil with little regard to reservoir management; as a result, production started to drop almost immediately after the war.

The Earliest recorded to the existence of oil in India is found in the memories and dispatches of the Army Officers who penetrated the jungles of Upper Assam since 1825.

Mr. Goodenough of McKillop, Stewart & Co. Calcutta was the first in India to start a systematic programme of drilling for oil in November 1866, at Nahorpung about 30 miles (48 km) south east of Dibgoi, just seven years after the world's first commercial oil well was drilled in 1859, by Col Edwin L Drake in Pennsylvania, USA.

The Gandhi Movement of Congress for Indian Independence struggle; backed by labour rights and equality status was headed by Sardar Amar Singh Marwah.

Subsequently, a number of other major projects were undertaken by Assam Oil Division to further revamp and modernize Digboi Refinery.

People from various tribes such as the tea-tribes (brought in by the colonial planters as indentured labourers from the Chhota Nagpur plateau region), Bodos, Mishings etc.

Digboi is part of Dibrugarh constituency of the Lok Sabha which is represented by Sarbananda Sonowal of Bharatiya Janata Party.

It also lies in the Digboi Constituency of the State Assembly or Vidhan Sabha where it is represented by Suren Phukan of Bharatiya Janata Party.