Related Research Articles
Titusville is a city in the far eastern corner of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,262 at the 2020 census. Titusville is known as the birthplace of the American oil industry and for a number of years was the leading oil-producing region in the world. It was also notable for its lumber industry, including 17 sawmills, as well as its plastic and toolmaking industries. It is part of the Meadville micropolitan area.
Oil City is the largest city in Venango County, Pennsylvania, United States. Known for its prominence in the initial exploration and development of the petroleum industry, it is located at a bend in the Allegheny River at the mouth of Oil Creek. The population was 9,608 at the 2020 census, and it is the principal city of the Oil City micropolitan area.
Edwin Laurentine Drake, also known as Colonel Drake, was an American businessman and the first American to successfully drill for oil.
The Drake Well Museum and Park is a museum that interprets the birth of the American oil industry in 1859 by "Colonel" Edwin Drake along the banks of Oil Creek in Cherrytree Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania in the United States. 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. A historic site, the museum is located in Cherrytree Township, 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Titusville on Drake Well Road, situated between Pennsylvania Routes 8 and 27. The museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
Burning Springs is an unincorporated community in Wirt County, West Virginia, United States. It takes its name from the natural gas which bubbled up through the spring and would burn when lit.
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.
Oil Creek State Park is a Pennsylvania state park on 6,250 acres (2,529 ha) in Cherrytree, Cornplanter and Oil Creek Townships, Venango County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park is adjacent to Drake Well Museum, the site of the first successful commercial oil well in the United States, that was drilled under the direction of Colonel Edwin Drake. Oil Creek State Park follows Oil Creek, between Titusville and Oil City, and is on Pennsylvania Route 8. While the creek is the park's main recreational attraction, it also contains the sites of the first oil boomtown and much of Pennsylvania's original oil industry. The park contains a museum, tableaux, and trails to help visitors understand the history of the oil industry there, and an excursion train.
A wildcatter is an individual who drills wildcat wells, which are exploration oil wells drilled in areas not known to be oil fields. Notable wildcatters include Glenn McCarthy, Thomas Baker Slick Sr., Mike Benedum, Joe Trees, Clem S. Clarke, and Columbus Marion Joiner; the last is responsible for finding the East Texas Oil Field in 1930.
Oil Creek is a 46.7-mile (75.2 km) tributary of the Allegheny River that is located in Venango and Crawford counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States.
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 19th 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-19th 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.
Petroleum Center is a populated place and ghost town in Cornplanter Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania, United States. In the 19th century, the name was also spelled "Petroleum Centre". The town today is almost deserted.
The oil rush in America started in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in the Oil Creek Valley when Edwin L. Drake struck "rock oil" there in 1859. Titusville and other towns on the shores of Oil Creek expanded rapidly as oil wells and refineries shot up across the region. Oil quickly became one of the most valuable commodities in the United States and railroads expanded into Western Pennsylvania to ship petroleum to the rest of the country.
The Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad is a tourist railroad that runs from Titusville to Rynd Farm north of Oil City in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The Oil Creek and Titusville Lines is the designated operator of the railroad, as well as the freight carrier on the line.
The Drake Well is a 69.5-foot-deep (21.2 m) oil well in Cherrytree Township, Venango County in the U.S. state of 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.
Oil Region National Heritage Area is a federally designated National Heritage Area in the northwestern portion of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The national heritage area commemorates and promotes the region surrounding Edwin Drake's oil well of 1859 near Titusville, which gave rise to the modern oil industry.
The Oil Creek Railroad Company (OCRR) was a railroad in western Pennsylvania.
Robert Wesley Criswell was an American humorist, journalist, and newspaper editor. He was known for his popular essays and books under the pen name Grandfather Lickshingle. After working at newspapers in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, he joined the New York World, and later became editor of the New Yorker newspaper. In 1905 he was arrested for criminal libel after publishing an article allegedly impugning Alice Roosevelt, daughter of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. While awaiting trial for libel, and also under suspicion of defrauding subscribers, he was struck by a New York City subway train in an apparent suicide.
The Pithole Valley Railway was an ephemeral short line railroad in Venango County, Pennsylvania, constructed as a result of the Pennsylvania oil rush. The railroad was originally constructed in 1865 between Oil City, Pennsylvania, a local oil transportation hub, and the boomtown of Pithole, Pennsylvania. Constructed under the charter of the Clarion Land and Improvement Company, it was informally known as the Oil City and Pithole Branch Railroad. Although it was generally supported by the broad gauge Atlantic and Great Western Railway, it was built to standard gauge. Conflict with the Warren and Franklin Railway over the right-of-way along the Allegheny River led to a lawsuit which, in 1866, declared that the Oil City and Pithole had no right to operate along the river from Oleopolis, Pennsylvania to Oil City. That part of the line was sold to the Warren and Franklin, leaving the Oil City and Pithole with a 7-mile (10 km) line running north from Oleopolis to Pithole along Pithole Creek.
Frederick H. Copenspire (1868–1908) was a Washington State pioneer, politician, and businessman who lived in South Bend. Copenspire was one of the first Pacific County assessors, and one of the few Democrats elected to this position at a time of Republican popularity. Copenspire also served as mayor of South Bend for several years. His house was added to the list of the landmarks in the city's historic tour.
The Pennsylvania Petroleum Railroad was a railroad in Pennsylvania originally chartered in 1871, during the Pennsylvania oil rush. Intended to provide an additional outlet from the Pennsylvania oil fields to Erie, Pennsylvania, it graded about ten miles of line in 1872, but was then caught up in the collapse of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, which halted the project. The company was foreclosed and reorganized under new names many times, but accomplished relatively little. It laid a short segment of line in 1890 in Titusville, Pennsylvania which was leased to a subsidiary of the New York Central to be used as a siding to a tannery. Further construction took place in 1913 with the idea of opening it as an electric railway to Cambridge Springs, but this, too, was never completed.
References
- ↑ "About Us". Titusville Herald. Retrieved 2020-06-12.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hilburn, Jessica (2019-07-17). "The Bloss Brothers: From the Wild West to the Titusville Herald". NWPA Stories. Retrieved 2020-06-12.
- 1 2 Bates, Samuel P.; Brown, Robert C.; Mansfield, John Brandt (1885). History of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. University of Pittsburgh Library System. Chicago : Warner, Beers & Co. p. 478.
- ↑ Giddens, Paul Henry (1974). The Early Petroleum Industry. Porcupine Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-87991-325-0.
- ↑ Rowell's American Newspaper Directory. 1873. p. 198.
- ↑ The Derrick's Hand-book of Petroleum vol.2. 1898. p. 83.
- ↑ Springirth, Kenneth C.; Weber, David L. (2011). Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad. Arcadia Publishing. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7385-7593-3.
- ↑ Hilburn, Jessica (2019-08-05). Hidden History of Northwestern Pennsylvania. Arcadia Publishing. p. 55. ISBN 978-1-4671-4145-1.
- ↑ Editor & Publisher. Editor & Publisher Company. 1922. p. 27.
- 1 2 "The Titusville Herald - Sesquicentennial Edition". Issuu. June 13, 2015. Retrieved 2020-06-12.
- 1 2 "The Titusville Herald, Crawford County's oldest newspaper, closes". news.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2022-11-07.