m o \ ECUUftkaM. i ^ ^' y 2 ^ ! § ^SWBiBWwMiwwS^St!^^^"fflMtw S 1 S .. 1 > II 1 ■ 1 1 1 II ^ * X f fBliMiHai Iflii^ iiFt ^:<1 1 lllllil lilllil [11 i a 1 i III Ml 'III! MM III >> ■ '""" e; E iilg 1 r|| 11 ^ II i > It i B 4 b63 13T Jillli liHIri 1^1 oi ^H^i^^^^^^^^^H "IBB IB i^^ % B ^ B ^' Si Bi < fill ^OT W/mWM 1 !n &t' u'^ '^''^i><'^'4^^^ ^^ 1 ' S i jSvr ' r { i il 1 ^1 i^i^^^^^^^^^^^i^^^ffiii^^^T^^Sm^S ^ ^^^^^^^^^^^K^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^? S&5 » ^iiM&^^^^i^^^^S^y#m^^^^^iffi^^m:«5^^ ig^gg||^p||^^;^;:|y £ ttffiffiS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^i|j ^5 ^ i a* 1 ^ 1 ^1 1 1 1 1 ^N i Br § 1 ^1 IB 1^1 '11 ^ 1 ^1^ ^WhS^WuI wt eayuit^^wfwy^^rmfiT^^ ^ 111 ^ ^3 ? ^ 1 si ^ Hi ^1 ^^^^tSffiii^^g^iii^^^^gfl^^ -?*R ' ^^^s^M^r^ ^n^i^i^ iai:u ?;; Uiiiiiii mm^mw^ Wm : H~tS \ Si » I ffj ilf'ftiTlTill III llil 1 IIITITTP^TTTi' in liriViill TTiTfTlfC ffil iillfffllKIffTTi I'lfi'ifl lltTlf"P1TTrniilfMT "111 'Hi rVflMH ^w^^^^^^^^^^^^^^mH^^^^^^^^^^^^BH is [t^PljiB!!^ ^ p { JBSh 1 ' i ^^ i| i ^^''SRF^ni ]^? ^ St $ ^ 1 ^^ ^r i^ ^ ^ ^^m ^ 1 trart^^ ^^^m^^^^^^M^^^w^^^^mW^^^^^^^^ ii 1^1 11 i r i^^K ^^i ^ i i'P i \^m ^^1 1 § S O C innmiiirii ^^^^^y^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^S BERKELEY ^ LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EARTH SCIENCE* LIBRARY / m^ Success at Oil Creek August 27, 1859 ^^ y y ■^^' ACS EAKT ^^^6-19-7^ f Success at Oil Creek August 27, 1859 1 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government PrintinK Office Washington, D.C. 20402 - Price 65 cents Stock Number 024-000-00823-1 The excitement attendant on the discovery of this vast source of oil was fully equal to what I ever saw in California when a large lump of gold was accidentally turned out. — Correspondent New York Daily Tribune September 13, 1859 7ir o Oil Became Indispensable After Drake's Success il is one of nature's unique gifts. Many scientists think petroleum deposits were formed from the bodies of tiny plants and animals that lived in the sea hundreds of millions of years ago. Untold billions of animals and plants died and then sank to the bottom and became a permanent part of marine sediment. In time, the sedimentary layers were covered by more and more mud and sand and finally turned into rock. Ages later, the earth's crust buckled and the heat and pressure caused by overlying rock, along with decomposition of organic life, are thought to have formed oil in the deep-buried layers. Although most uses of petroleum were developed in recent times, man knew about its existence centuries before in the form of oil springs and seepage to the surface. In biblical times it was used as a binder for mortar, its medic- inal properties were valued by American Indians, and small amounts of it were used by early Americans as illuminants and to make liniment to soothe muscular aches. ^^ II Describing the Nation's oil situation in the 1840s and 1850s, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission found that several developments laid the foundation for increased marketing in petroleum, such as the demand for cheap, safe, burning fluids for lighting and a demand for lubricants to service the increasing number of machines. These demands appeared v^hen the supply of whale oil was declining and the supply of lard oil was proving insufl^- cient to mieet industry needs. The critical need for new lubri- cants led both Europeans and Americans to seek ways of obtaining oil from coal. In Canada, Abraham Gesner produced such an oil and gave it the name of "keroselain," a combination of the Greek words for 'Vax" and ''oil." It later came to be called "kero- sene." Meanwhile, Luther and William Atwood in Boston developed ''coup oil," a lubricant made by mixing vegetable and animal oils with an oil distilled from coal tar. The result of all these experiments and of others in Great Britain was that by 1859 there were more than fifty companies in United States manufacturing oil from coal, and kerosene was displacing other burning fluids for lighting purposes because it was cheaper and safer. One large plant in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, had a capacity of 6,000 gallons of kerosene daily. In Pittsburgh, Samuel M. Kier became interested about 1845 in making use of the petroleum produced by salt wells operated by his father at Tarentum on the Allegheny River. For a time he bottled and sold the petroleum as medicine, but this did not prove very profitable nor did it dispose of much oil. He made further experiments in distilling the petroleum to produce an illuminant, and by 1854 he had succeeded to such an extent that he built a refinery with a five-barrel still at Pittsburgh to manufacture this ''carbon oil." He is gen- erally considered to have been the first commercial refiner of petroleum, and the site where he built this refinery near the corner of Seventh Avenue and Grant Street in Pittsburgh is now marked to commemorate this achievement. By 1858 Kier and the Pittsburgh firm of McKeown and Finley had begun to sell sizable quantities of carbon oil to New York City distributors. Petroleum from western Penn- sylvania was also being sold to textile mills for use as a lubricant. The growing demand outran the supply and the price of oil climbed from seventy-five cents to two dollars a gallon. The development of these markets set the stage for the drilling of the Drake Well. k... m^ IV The recognized birth of the petroleum industry in the United States occurred in western Pennsylvania, near Titus- ville. There, along Oil Creek, on August 27, 1859, "Colonel" Edwin L. Drake, a former railroad conductor and jack-of- all-trades, proved that oil could be found in quantity by drilling into the earth. At 691/0 feet, the hole he bored filled with oil to signal a monumental change in the development of the world. Few could visualize the magnitude of Drake's accom- plishment. The first newspaper mention of the event came 17 days later . Drake's well and subsequent oil drilling apparently were not reported on by Secretaries of the Interior until many years afterward. But, along Oil Creek, interest soared in Drake's achieve- ment. As news of his success spread, western Pennsylvania became the scene of the biggest land rush since the scramble for gold in California in 1849. V Discussing Oil Creek activities much later, the U.S. Geo- logical Survey in its 1883 annual report said : "Great excitement ensued. Farms were bought or leased on all sides and preparations were made for drilling wells in many places, though but little was accomplished until 1860. In 1861 the first flowing well was struck — the 'Fountain' well — which produced 300 barrels per day. This upset all calcu- lations ; people were willing to believe anything regarding the industry, and great numbers rushed to the oil regions." Thus, many who had scoffed at the idea that oil could be obtained by drilling through rock, quickly made their way to the Oil Creek region, hoping to obtain oil land leases and duplicate Drake's success. Following Drake's success at Oil Creek 117 years ago, oil became indispensable to modern civilization. Products made from petroleum power our automobiles, buses, tractors, trucks, ships, and airplanes; lubricate engines, motors, and machines; heat homes and buildings; make possible the drilling and grinding that are essential to mass production ; provide asphalt for highways ; furnish electricity to illuminate houses, factories, and cities; and serve many other uses. Synthetics — fibres for clothing and rubber for tires — are manufactured from petroleum. So are soaps and detergents, paints and plastics, and ingredients used in medicines, food processing, fertilizers, and insecticides. This vignette is about events leading up to August 27, 1859, when the drilling for petroleum through rock was suc- cessful and changed man's destiny. '■^5 ^t^:^. -Duoyant and enthusiastic, Dr. Francis B. Brewer arrived at Han- over, New Hampshire, in the fall of 1853 carrying- a small bottle of petroleum. That tiny vial eventually led to a diverse group of indi- viduals launching the petroleum industry in America. Only two years earlier. Dr. Brewer came to Titusville, Pennsyl- vania, from Massachusetts, where he had pioneered in using petro- leum for medical purposes. He had come to Titusville to join Brewer, Watson and Company, a lumber firm in which his father, Ebenezer Brewer, owned a major interest. After arriving in Titusville in 1851, he became increasingly interested in an old oil spring located on the lumber company's prop- erty about two miles south of town along Oil Creek. Oil from that spring, he thought, had great possibilities as an illuminant and for other uses. His enthusiasm soon convinced other members of the Company to gather and sell the oil. So. on July 4. 1853, Brewer, Watson and Company signed the first petroleum development lease in the United States with J, D. Angier of Titusville. Although this first development eff'ort did not produce a lot of money, it worked well. Angier kept the oil spring in good shape and, by the use of some crude inexpensive machinery that cost less than $200, was able to separate the oil from the water and put the oil in containers. Angier usually collected three or four gallons of oil a day, but some times the daily collection amounted to as much as six gallons. That early development effort, small and unimposing. served to I'einforce Dr. Brewer's conviction that collection of oil for commercial purposes was feasible and desirable. That hope was partially respon- sible for his visit to Hanover in the fall of 1853. He wanted to interest anyone who would listen in the potential uses of ])etroleum and, addi- tionally, to find investors to help develop petroleum on the Company's property and elsewhere along Oil Creek, 1 '^^ij^'^^^i,^^^^'*^^^ ■ « The Drake WeU in 1859. Among others, Dr. Brewer showed the sample to Dr. Dixi Crosby of the Dartmouth Medical School and Professor 0. P. Hubbard of Dartmouth's Chemistry Department. Professor Hubbard found the petroleum very valuable but said the oil could hardly become an article of commerce because it could not be obtained in large quantities. (That meeting between Dr. Brewer and Dartmouth faculty mem- bers is described by Dr. Paul H. Giddens in The Early Petroleum Industry, published first in 1938 and republished in 1974 by Porcupine Press, Philadelphia. Dr. Giddens' book is outstanding in its thorough- ness and probably is the most authoritative narrative available on the birth of America's oil industry.) Later that fall another Dartmouth graduate. George H. Bissell, noticed the bottle of petroleum in Crosby's office and expressed great interest in its possibilities. Dr. Crosby's son, Albert H. Crosby, also became interested and persuaded Bissell to pay his expenses to Titus- ville in the summer of 1854 to inspect the oil springs and land. Bissell and his business partner, Jonathan G. Eveleth, agreed to organize a company, buy the land, develop the springs, and market petroleum, if Crosby reported favorably on his inspection. -^ A, ccompanied by Dr. Brewer, the younger Crosby looked over the oil springs, traveling as far down Oil Creek as Hamilton McClintock's farm. Describing the visit. Dr. Brewer wrote : "As we stood on the circle of rough logs, surrounding the spring, and saw the oil bubbling up, and spreading its bright and golden colors over the surface, Crosby at once proposed to purchase the whole farm, which could have been bought for $7,000, but he did not have enough money to purchase the property. "When I told Crosby that we (Brewer, Watson and Company) did not want to take money from the lumber business to put into oil, Crosby said, 'damn lumber, I would rather have McClintock's farm than all the timber in western Pennsylvania.' " Brewer, Watson and Company agreed to sell for $5,000 from lands it owned the one-hundred-acre Hibbard Farm, where the prin- cipal oil spring was located, if Bissell and Eveleth would organize a company to develop the property. The agreement also provided oil rights in a nearby 1,200 acres owned by Brewer, Watson and Com- pany. Following the purchase of the Hibbard farm in November 1854, Bissell and Eveleth on December 30, 1854, organized the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York, the first petroleum company in the world, but sales of stock in the company did not go well. Times were hard and prospective investors knew little about the economic value of petroleum. Furthermore, under New York laws, company stockholders would have been liable for the company's debts. But then came a turning point. Bissell and Eveleth had employed Professor Benjamin Silliman, Jr., of Yale College to analyze the petroleum from Oil Creek, and Silliman produced an encouraging economic report of the oil's value. >2? i^ -^ The Titusville oil, Silliman reported, was different from other oils he had examined and heard about in that it did not become hard and resinous from continued exposure to air. A teacher of general and applied chemistry, Silliman detailed the results of his experiments, said the Titusville oil produced a most perfect flame with an Argand burner, and concluded: "It appears to me that there is much gi^ound for encouragement in the belief that your Company have in their possession a raw mate- rial from which, by simple and not expensive process, they may manu- facture very valuable products. It is worthy to note that my experi- ments prove that nearly the whole of the raw product may be manufactured without waste, and this solely by a well directed process which is in practice one of the most simple of all chemical processes." Oilliman's report led James M. Townsend, president of New Haven's City Bank, and a number of other New Haven investors to agree to buy stock in the venture provided the company was reorganized under the more liberal corporation laws of Connecticut. This was accqm- plished and the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of Connecticut was formed on September 18, 1855, with a capital stock of $300,000. Town- send was elected president of the company. Several years were to elapse, however, before the company would find a way to test for quantities of oil. The panic of 1857 discouraged potential investors, but hardly dampened the enthusiasm of Townsend, who wanted a thorough examination made of the land at Titusville to determine its oil potential. Townsend's New Haven stockholders agreed, but when he sought to interest others, they looked at him in disbelief. Townsend later recalled unbelievers saying: "Oh, Townsend, oil coming out of the ground, pumping oil out of the earth as you pump water? Nonsense! You're crazy." Townsend, however, was not to be dissuaded, and he continued to look for persons he deemed capable of inspecting the property. Boarding at the same Hotel Tontine in New Haven as To\\Tisend was Edwin L. Drake, 38, a railroad conductor also known as a jack- of-all-trades. -^ k Pennsylvania Oil Region in the 18608. After living his early years on farms in New York and Vermont, Drake left home in 1838 at 19 and became a clerk on a ship operating between Buffalo and Detroit. When the shipping season ended that year, Drake went to his uncle's farm near Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he worked for about a year. Drake then was employed as a hotel clerk in Michigan, a clerk in dry-goods stores in New Haven and New York City, an express agent on the Boston & Albany Railroad, and a conductor on the New York & New Haven Railroad. Following the death of his wife in 1854, Drake moved with his only child to the Tontine Hotel in New Haven. Drake talked many times with Townsend, the banker, about the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of Connecticut and eventually put out $200 for stock in the company. Drake became ill during the summer of 1857 and, though not seriously disabled, gave up his job as a conductor on the New York & New Haven Railroad. Still regarded as an employee of the railroad, Drake was entitled to free railroad transportation passes. Knowing this, Townsend sug- gested that Drake go to Titusville and examine the potential oil land held by the oil company. Drake agreed to go and left for Titusville in December 1857. 5 f k ^ rr ^^ — k jS UB Lii I 1! nn II' 11^ II lir 11 ' 1iC II' ii(r iir> ni" II m II' iir Tir IT* nf nr n ir iii ii' -r' II- III ir I II •. H Titusville's Danforth House, a frequent meeting place of pioneer oilmen. G iddens described the event as follows : "To give the whole affair a pompous turn in the eyes of a fron- tiersman at Titusville, Townsend mailed the legal documents and several letters to 'Colonel' E. L. Drake in care of Brewer, Watson and Company before Drake ever left New Haven, the title being an inven- tion of Townsend's, Drake has ever since been known as 'Colonel' Drake." Prepared for Drake's visit by the arrival of letters addressed to Colonel Drake, Titusville turned out a warm welcome for the visitor. And, while Drake's legal business concerning title to the oil land was completed in about three hours, he had to remain in Titusville for three days to board the next stagecoach for Erie. With time to spare, Drake made inquiries about Oil Creek, Oil Creek Township, and Oil Creek Lake. He visited the principal oil spring and saw oil being used for lighting and lubricating purposes in sawmills owned by Brewer, Watson and Company. Leaving Titusville, Drake completed his legal business in Pitts- burgh, and examined salt wells at Tarentum, Pennsylvania, before returning to New Haven to advise Townsend he believed oil could be found in large quantities around Oil Creek and a fortune made from rock oil. -^ ^C\^- (^ Colonel Edwin L. Drake and friend, Peter Wilson, at the Drake Well in 1866. Favorably impressed by Drake's investigation, three Company directors in New Haven (a majority of the board) leased the property at Titusville to Drake and E. B. Bowditch, a New Haven cabinet manufacturer, for 15 years for one dollar and one-eighth of the oil. Townsend and his colleag-ues thought this an excellent agreement, especially since they had confidence in the lessees and the Drake- Bowditch offer was 25 percent higher than another offer received earlier by the company. The next day — after signing the lease with Drake and Bow- ditch — Townsend received an offer to lease the oil land for 15 years with a royalty of 12 cents a gallon. Drake and Bowditch readily agreed to meet that offer and signed a supplementary lease changing the terms of the first agreement. With the contract signed, the New Haven investors organized the Seneca Oil Company of Connecticut on March 23, 1858, with a capi- talization of $300,000, divided into 12,000 shares. Drake was named president and the leading stockholder with 8,296 shares but, in accord with a previous understanding, all except 656 of his shares were transferred to other stockholders. On March 27, 1858, Drake and Bowditch assigned their lease to the Seneca Oil Company. Drake was elected general agent of the company at an annual salary of $1,000 and another $1,000 was placed at his disposal to begin drilling for oil at Titusville. m)^^ k rake, who had married again in 1857, moved his wife and family to Titiisville early in May 1858 and went quietly to work on his assignment. As genei'al agent, he had been directed to drill for oil, an objec- tive not well understood in Titusville, because drilling for oil was an entirely new undertaking. Moving ahead with as little fanfare as possible, Drake engaged a driller to bore a round, smooth straight five-inch hole a thousand feet deep for $1.25 for the first 100 feet and $1 a foot thereafter. The driller agreed to forfeit all pay if he failed to reach the depth through his own negligence or carelessness. Drake ordered a six-horse-power engine and a "Long John" stationary, tubular boiler — the same kind used by steamers along the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers — to power drilling tools. He also ordered materials from Brewer, Watson and Company to build an engine- house and derrick to swing his drilling tools. Jonathan Watson, on handing the bill to the wood boss, said : "I have no faith in the project myself, but I am going to help him through with his venture." By August 1858, Drake had completed the enginehouse and the derrick, which was built lying on the ground near the oil spring. The derrick was 12 feet square at the base with four timbers 30 feet long, gradually sloping to three feet square at the top. When it came time to put the derrick in place, some two dozen men from Upper and Lower Mill and Titusville helped raise the structure, taking about an hour to complete their work. The Titusville Morning Herald reported several years later that the men who raised the derrick dubiously shook their heads and laughed and called the derrick "Drake's yoke." Altogether, they reportedly thought Drake had embarked on a "wild and woolly" idea in his effort to locate oil under solid rock. T he $1,000 advanced to Drake was nearing exhaustion, so Drake asked for $1,000 more by Se])tember 10, 1858. Stockholders meeting in New Haven in early September voted to send him $500 by Septem- ber 15 and another $500 by October 15. For reasons unknown Drake did not receive the September money until October 30 and the October money until December 30, 1858. '■^5 8 mk^ .-^^ So many things had happened from the time Drake came to Titusville, 1858 would not be the year of successful drilling". For one thing, the driller Drake had hired did not appear, and Drake could not find him despite a diligent search in Tarentum. Some time later, it was learned, the driller said he regarded Drake as "crazy" and promised to drill for oil only to get rid of him. Drake contracted with another driller, but unexpected difficulty at the salt well he was working kept him from taking the job. With winter near, Drake decided to install the engine and boiler and wait until the following spring to drill. In February 1859, Drake hired another driller who also failed to appear, which thoroughly discouraged Drake and tempted him to give up the idea. About this time, however, Lewis Peterson, a salt well operator, wrote Drake and recommended he hire W. A. Smith of Salina, who had made drilling tools and pans for Kier and Peterson's salt wells. Smith wanted to quit blacksmithing and go to farming. Deciding to make one last attempt to find a driller, Drake located Smith and the latter agreed to work for Drake for $2.50 a day and "throw in" the services of his son free. Smith made the drilling tools he needed and arrived in a wagon furnished by Drake around the middle of May 1859 with his 15-year old son, Samuel, and a daughter, Mary Jane. Mrs. Smith and other members of the family did not arrive in Titusville until July of that year. Drake's men already had worked for some time digging a well hole and putting up timber to hold back the dirt, but they encountered much trouble from water flowing into the hole from Oil Creek. Upon reaching 16 feet into the earth they decided to drive an iron pipe through quicksand and clay until they hit rock. Using 10-foot-long sections of cast-iron pipe brought from Erie, Drake's men employed a white-oak battering ram, lifted by an old-fashioned windlass, to drive the pipe 32 feet into bedrock. Around the middle of August, they began drilling with steam power and pushed the pipe down about three feet a day. k Wax figure of "Uncle Billy" Smith in the Drake Well Museum at TitusviUe. But people around TitusviUe did not pay much attention to Drake's drilling, and most were prone to mock his efforts. Dr. Giddens pointed out in The Early Petroleum Industry: "Almost everyone regarded drilling for oil as visionary and sure to prove abortive; there was a complete lack of confidence in the idea, and at times his activities were the subject of ridicule. "Even Dr. Brewer, a stockholder in the company which leased the land, seemed to regard the whole affair as a joke. To the young men in TitusviUe, he gave away cigars, laughingly saying 'Have some on me! They didn't cost me anything. I traded oil stock for them.' " On another occasion R. D. Fletcher, a former clerk in Brewer, Watson and Company, and later a merchant in TitusviUe, made a business trip to New York City and called on an old friend of Drake's — a Mr. Babbitt of Babbitt's Schnapps. TJ\e latter wanted to know where Drake was and what he was doing. When Fletcher told him. Babbitt laughed long and heartily; Fletcher thought he never would stop. "You don't mean to tell me that Drake thinks he can get oil out of solid rock?" Babbitt asked. Fletcher said that was precisely it, and then Babbitt laughed more than ever. >1A 10 m)^^ .-^ First U.S. oU field developed at TitusviUe in 1860 M, eanwhile, the Company's New Haven stockholders had begun to lose their enthusiasm and expressed regret for the $2,000 spent without any sign of success. After voting to send Drake $500 in April 1859. they refused to advance any more money. Drake was able to continue, however, be- cause on April 1 he had $347 in cash and the additional $500 made a total of $847. When that was spent, Townsend personally continued to pay expenses, but even he became thoroughly discouraged and decided to abandon the work. He sent Drake a final remittance and told him to pay all bills and return to New Haven. Townsend's message and money, however, did not reach Drake until August 27, or possibly later ; records do not clearly say. To make the situation worse during the summer of 1859, Drake found himself without personal funds, so he called on R. D. Fletcher, his merchant friend, and Peter Wilson, a druggist, to endorse his note for $500 at a nearby Meadville bank, which enabled him to meet his own personal obligations. As shown in this view of FunkviUe, derricks dotted the landscape around Oil Creek by 1864. j^aturday afternoon, August 27, came and as Smith and his helpers prepared to quit work until the following- Monday, their drill dropped into a crevice 69 feet below the surface and then slipped down another six inches. Smith and his men put away their tools and went home without any thought that they had struck oil. They expected to go down sev- eral hundred feet before striking any bed of petroleum. Late the following day (Sunday afternoon) Smith — "Uncle Billy" Smith, as he became affectionately known — visited the well and saw a dark fluid floating on top of the water within a few feet of the derrick floor. "Uncle Billy" lowered a piece of tin rain spouting he had fashioned into a container down the pipe and pulled it up filled with oil. "Uncle Billy's" boy ran shouting to Upper Mill : "They've struck oil ! They've struck oil !" Mill hands at first didn't believe him, but finally stopped and rushed to the well to see what had happened. To their amazement, the Titusville Morning Herald reported, there was "Uncle Billy" dipping out oil in larger amounts than they had ever seen before. 12 -4i? When Drake came to work Monday morning, he found Smith and his young boys guarding the well and several tubs and barrels already filled with oil. In the confusion, no one gauged the production of the well, but it was probably running at the rate of eight to ten barrels of oil a day. Differences of opinion exist as to the day Smith struck oil at the Drake well. Dr. Giddens stated : "Smith struck oil on Saturday, August 27; its presence was observed on Sunday, the 28th; and the fact became generally known on Monday the 29th." Drake appeared pleased at his success at Oil Creek, but the achievement did not overwhelm him, and it is doubtful he and others at the time grasped the full significance of his accomplishment. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission a hundred years later (1959), pointed out that Drake became the founder of the modern petroleum industry by providing the one essential factor which hitherto was lacking — a demonstration that a dependable sup- ply of a great natural resource could be obtained by drilling. 13 «5 "His personal contributions to this achievement inchided a dogged persistence which refused to be discouraged by continued disappointments and the vision to apply salt-well drilling techniques to tap the reservoirs of petroleum beneath the surface," the Commis- sion recalled. Drake's well also disclosed the existence of vast petroleum fields in northwestern Pennsylvania that helped provide major sources of oil for lamps and lubricants. As history chose, however, Drake's influence faded fast after the completion of his well in 1859. He became a justice of the peace and an oil buyer for New York merchants in Titusville and remained there until 1863. Eventually, Drake lost everything, mainly because of unsuccess- ful speculation in oil stocks. He became seriously ill with neuralgia and spent most of his remaining life in an invalid's chair. In 1873, the Pennsylvania General Assembly, in recognition of Drake's important contribution to the State's economic development, voted him an annual income of $1,500, which was transferred to his wife upon his death in 1880. ^ 14 Ji :^& JL/rake lived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at the time of his death and was buried there. In 1901, his body was removed to Titusville and a monument was erected to his memory. Now, Drake Well Memorial Park stands at the site of Drake's historic well at Titusville. Here, visitors see a replica of the engine- house and derrick, along- with many other exhibits, including a wax image of "Uncle Billy" Smith of Tarentum, Pennsylvania, who made Drake's tools and drilled Drake's well. Also on display at the museum is a lifelike wax display of Colonel Drake in his Victorian sitting room. 15 ^J^ --^ Located in a valley surrounded by rolling hills and forests, the park's tree-shaded paths lead to the banks of Oil Creek and wind through pleasant picnic areas. Drake's drilling rig is silent, to be sure, but many visitors seem to feel they can hear — or even see — Colonel Drake and his chief assist- ant, "Uncle Billy" Smith, preparing for their success at Oil Creek. From Drake's modest beginning emerged in time petroleum development in most of the world. Several other wells were drilled along Oil Creek in 1859 and U.S. oil production that year was about 2.000 barrels. By the end of 1860, there were 74 producing wells in and around Oil Creek and U.S. production jumped to 509,000 barrels for the year. Production outside the U.S. totaled only 5,000 barrels in 1860. By 1870, U.S. oil production increased to 5,261,000 barrels and production outside the country totaled 538,000 barrels. While those increases seem impressive, they hardly forecast the expanding need for oil. By 1970, the United States was using nearly three times as much oil in a single day as it had produced in an entire year a century earlier. 16 tV U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1976 0-212 880 Prepared by the Office of Communications Department of the Interior Washington, D.C. 20240 August 27, 1976 R«c'd UCB £ART JAN 2 4 1979 RETURN EARTH SCIENCES LIBRARY T0«-^ 230 Earth Sciences BIdg. 642-2997 LOAN PERIOD 1 1 4 DAYS 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS Books needed for class reserve ore subject to immediate recall DUE AS STAMPED BELOW UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY FORM NO. DD8, 6m, 477 BERKELEY, CA 94720 1 ®^ ! s/t-