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 Titusville, PA Posted by:  vhasler
N 41° 37.597 W 079° 40.615
17T E 610213 N 4609166
Titusville - where the first well in America was drilled for oil exclusively.
Waymark Code: WM9RC6
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 09/24/2010
Views: 15
Per the guidebook,
TITUSVILLE (1,174 alt., 8,055 pop.) on a suffocating afternoon in August 1859, witnessed the birth of a new industry and a new era. In 1857 an advertisement for Kier's Rock Oil - depicting a derrick over a salt well from which oil was obtained as a by-product - attracted the attention of George H. Brisel, part owner of a tract near Titusville. Brisel's property stretched along Oil Creek - long covered with an oily scum that the Indians had used in mixing war paints - and he determined to seek the source of the oil. For this purpose the Seneca Oil Company, a Brisel's syndicate, employed "Colonel" Edwin L. Drake, a middle-aged railroad conductor whose chief qualification seemed to be the interest he had shown in oil obtained from a spring in that section.
During the summer of 1858 Drake sank several wells by means of pick and shovel, meanwhile working out a method of drilling. Although one of his shallow wells struck a deposit of oil, another encountered an underground spring that filled the shaft so quickly that some labors were nearly drowned. This persuaded Drake to try drilling. He hired "Uncle Billy" Smith, a Tarentum blacksmith who had experience with salt wells, and Smith's two sons, and in April 1859 began drilling a shaft through solid rock, alongside the creek near Titusville. Idle villagers, discussing the proceedings with amusement, dubbed the project "Drake's Folly".
On August 28 Uncle Billy and his son Sam saw a dark brown liquid bubbling near the surface after they raised the bit from an approximate depth of 70 feet. They used a pitcher-pump to fill several barrels, and then Billy mounted his mule in a triumphant half-mile ride into Titusville, rousing the townspeople with the cry: "Stuck Oil! Stuck Oil!"
Joseph Murray, oil historian, says that this episode: "The news of Drake's discovery was like a clarion call that roused from centuries of sleep or lethargy a mighty giant ... The discovery was timed to a physchologial moment ... as though ... the well had sprouted a flame that illuminated and dazzled the world, which was ready and waiting for new light." This was the first well in America drilled for oil exclusively.
The drowsy village soon became a boom town of shady characters, hard life, easy philosophy, and rough democracy. Other towns mushroomed throughout the section as thousands of wells were sunk. Oil gushed from the pitted earth. An endless chain of wagons splashed over deep-rutted roads to the nearest railroad. Hundreds of flatboats, their barrel-stacked decks awash, moved down Oil Creek. Railroads extended spurs in all directions. In 1865 a four-mile pipe line was built near Titusville by Samuel Van Syckel, and this was the signal for the first of a series of bloody skirmishes between the oil men and the teamsters who saw their means of livelihood threatened. A pipe line across the Allegheny Mountains to tidewater was begun in 1878.
For 30 years Pennsylvania oil men declared that they would "drink every drop of oil found west of the Ohio River." Pennsylvania's production peak was reached in 1891,w ith 31,424,000 barrels. By 1920 the output had declined to 7,438,000 barrels, and the State had dropped from first to tenth place in production. Under pressure, certain fields were rejuvenated and production rose in 1931 to 11,892,000 barrels, about 1.5 per cent of the national total. This volume and percentage have remained nearly constant (1940).
The romance of its early days has departed from Titusville, leaving a typical western Pennsylvania industrial city linked to the past chiefly by the high level of stock ownership among its residents. Fires in 1880 and 1892 destroyed most of the boom-day structures. The population, considerably less than in the 1860's, is supported largely by oil refining, and toolmaking and other metal products plants. The wealthy oil men who rubbed elbows with grimy drillers have long since left the scene, though a number of mansions remain, overlooking rows of brick and frame houses, many of them is need of repair.
---- Pennsylvania: A Guide to the Keystone State, 1940
The fifth paragraph above is where the American Guide writer waxed poetic to paint a picture of a boom town. (It also demonstrates why oil is measured in "barrels".)
Titusville now has a population around 5,700 with a steady decline from 7,300 in the 1970 census. Gone are the oil refiners and iron plants. The major employers are the branch of the University of Pittsburgh and a local hospital. The mansions appear to be in good state, but the frame houses still vary in their state of needing repair and paint. The last building permit for a new home was issued in 2005.
Book: Pennsylvania
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 582
Year Originally Published: 1940
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