Sarnia is a city in Lambton County, Ontario, Canada. It had a 2021 population of 72,047, and is the largest city on Lake Huron. Sarnia is located on the eastern bank of the junction between the Upper and Lower Great Lakes, where Lake Huron flows into the St. Clair River in the Southwestern Ontario region, which forms the Canada–United States border, directly across from Port Huron, Michigan.
Lambton County is a county in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is bordered on the north by Lake Huron, which is drained by the St. Clair River, the county's western border and part of the Canada-United States border. To the south is Lake Saint Clair and Chatham-Kent. Lambton County's northeastern border follows the Ausable River and Parkhill Creek north until it reaches Lake Huron at the beach community of Grand Bend. The county seat is in the Town of Plympton-Wyoming.
Petrolia is a town in southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is part of Lambton County and is surrounded by Enniskillen Township. It is billed as "Canada's Victorian Oil Town" and is often credited with starting the oil industry in North America, a claim shared with the nearby town of Oil Springs.
The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation, and marketing of petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline (petrol). Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic fragrances, and plastics. The industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream, and downstream. Upstream regards exploration and extraction of crude oil, midstream encompasses transportation and storage of crude, and downstream concerns refining crude oil into various end products.
Southwestern Ontario is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario. It occupies most of the Ontario Peninsula bounded by Lake Huron, including Georgian Bay, to the north and northwest; the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and Detroit River, to the west; and Lake Erie to the south. To the east, on land, Southwestern Ontario is bounded by Central Ontario and the Golden Horseshoe.
The Drake Well Museum and Park is a museum in Cherrytree Township, Pennsylvania that chronicles the birth of the American oil industry in 1859 by Colonel Edwin Drake. The museum collects and preserves related artifacts. The reconstructed Drake Well demonstrates the first practical use of salt drilling techniques for the extraction of petroleum through an oil well.
The St. Clair Parkway, historically referred to as the River Road, is a scenic parkway in the Canadian province of Ontario. It travels alongside the St. Clair River from west of Wallaceburg to Sarnia, a distance of 41.8 kilometres (26.0 mi). It formed a portion of the route of Highway 40 until it was bypassed by an inland route that opened in the mid-1970s. The St. Clair River Parkway Commission maintained the route from 1966 until 2006, when it was disbanded and responsibility over the parkway transferred to Chatham-Kent and Lambton County, both of which designate the route as County Road 33. The communities of Port Lambton, Sombra, Courtright, Mooretown, Corunna and Froomfield are located along the parkway, all early settlements of the 19th century.
James Miller Williams was a Canadian-American businessman and politician. Williams is best known for establishing the first commercially successful oil well in 1858 and igniting the first oil boom in North America. Williams is commonly viewed as the father of the petroleum industry in Canada.
Pithole, or Pithole City, is a ghost town in Cornplanter Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania, United States, about 6 miles (9.7 km) from Oil Creek State Park and the Drake Well Museum, the site of the first commercial oil well in the United States. Pithole's sudden growth and equally rapid decline, as well as its status as a "proving ground" of sorts for the burgeoning petroleum industry, made it one of the most famous of oil boomtowns.
King's Highway 40, commonly referred to as Highway 40, is a provincially maintained highway in the southwestern portion of the Canadian province of Ontario. The 91.4-kilometre (56.8 mi) route links Chatham and Sarnia via Wallaceburg, following close to the St. Clair River. The southern terminus is at Highway 401 south of Chatham, while the northern terminus is at Highway 402 in Sarnia. The portion of Highway 40 between Highway 401 and north of Wallaceburg is within the municipality of Chatham-Kent, while the portion north of there is within Lambton County.
Oil Springs is a village in Lambton County, Ontario, Canada, located along Former Provincial Highway 21 south of Oil City. The village, an enclave within Enniskillen Township, is the site of North America's first commercial oil well. It is home to the Oil Museum of Canada.
The Canadian petroleum industry arose in parallel with that of the United States. Because of Canada's unique geography, geology, resources and patterns of settlement, however, it developed in different ways. The evolution of the petroleum sector has been a key factor in the history of Canada, and helps illustrate how the country became quite distinct from her neighbour to the south.
While the local use of oil goes back many centuries, the modern petroleum industry along with its outputs and modern applications are of a recent origin. Petroleum's status as a key component of politics, society, and technology has its roots in the coal and kerosene industry of the late nineteenth century. One of the earliest instances of this is the refining of paraffin from crude oil. Abraham Gesner developed a process to refine a liquid fuel from coal, bitumen and oil shale; it burned more cleanly and was cheaper than whale oil. James Young in 1847 noticed a natural petroleum seepage when he distilled a light thin oil suitable for use as lamp oil, at the same time obtaining a thicker oil suitable for lubricating machinery. The world's first refineries and modern oil wells were established in the mid-nineteenth century. While petroleum industries developed in several countries during the nineteenth century, the two giants were the United States and the Russian Empire, specifically that part of it that today forms the territory of independent Azerbaijan. Together, these two countries produced 97% of the world's oil over the course of the nineteenth century.
John Henry Fairbank was variously a surveyor, oilman, inventor, banker, politician and fire chief in Lambton County, Ontario. Fairbank is best known for his invention of the jerker-line pumping system, which quickly spread across the world its introduction in the mid-1860s. Fairbank Oil, established by Fairbank in 1861, is the oldest continually operating petroleum company, and the company's property, known as the "First Commercial Oil Field", is included in the List of National Historic Sites of Canada in Ontario.
Caesars Windsor is a casino hotel located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It is one of four casino resort hotels in the Detroit–Windsor area and was opened in May 1994 as a temporary casino on the waterfront of the Detroit River. The current, permanent resort opened on July 29, 1998. Owned by the Government of Ontario, it is operated by Caesars Entertainment. Both the 1998 Casino Windsor and 2008 expansion were designed by WZMH Architects.
The Drake Well is a 69.5-foot-deep (21.2 m) oil well in Cherrytree Township, Pennsylvania, the success of which sparked the first oil boom in the United States. The well is the centerpiece of the Drake Well Museum located 3 miles (5 km) south of Titusville.
William Henry McGarvey was a Canadian business magnate, entrepreneur and politician. McGarvey is best known for his exploits in Galicia, where he operated a highly successful petroleum company. McGarvey was one of the most successful "foreign drillers" of Petrolia, becoming a multimillionaire before the outbreak of the First World War destroyed his business.
John Shaw was an American oil driller, businessman and photographer. Shaw is best known for striking Canada's first oil gusher at Oil Springs on January 16, 1862. Shaw's oil gusher marked the beginning of the first oil boom in Enniskillen Township, as speculators rushed to Oil Springs seeking similar fortunes.
The International Drillers is the name given to the more than 500 drillers from Lambton County who worked in oil fields across the world between December 1873 to the mid-1940s. Many of the International Drillers grew up learning the oil business in Enniskillen County and provided the skilled labour, expertise and technology necessary for the development of the global petroleum industry.
