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Photograph from the Butler County Historical Society Collections.  Reproduction is prohibited without the permission of the Butler County Historical Society

Site Created by: Ian Greco


Western PA's Black Gold in the late 1800s:
the rise and fall of two oil boom towns

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The Beginning of the Oil Craze
 The oil craze in Western Pennsylvania began in what is known as Oil Creek Valley in Venango County, north of Butler County and North West of Clarion and Armstrong Counties.  These areas became the center of a mass migration of fortune seeking peoples, and their sights were set on black gold.  By the 1840s and 50s, many residents near and around the area of the future site of Drake’s Well had strong feelings that a large amount of oil lay below the surface.  In September of 1855, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of Connecticut was formed and then became the Seneca Oil Company.  Edwin L. Drake came to the area in 1858 and began to investigate oil discharges in Oil Creek for the oil company.  Drake soon believed that mass quantities of oil could be drilled and, after several attempts, in late August of 1859, Drake’s oil drill struck an oil deposit and shortly began to pump out twenty barrels of oil per day.  “Drake’s discovery was the first successful attempt to drill for oil and his well became the world’s first commercially successful oil well…This discovery at the Drake Well represents the birth of the world’s petroleum industry and ushered in the period that became known as the Age of Illumination.” (McCall, 29)The very first newspaper article that reported the success of Drake Well appeared in the New York Tribune on September 13, 1859.  Not long after this printing, “the rush for oil was begun, with the valuable product extending south along Oil Creek and the Allegheny River…After this date, oil wells were drilled at great speed.” (McCall, 31) Throughout the 1860’s, oil companies and oil entrepreneurs quickly looked for leases on numerous farms in and around the area of this oil excitement.  “Small towns up and down the Allegheny River flourished as a result of the discovery of oil with its rapidly multiplying consumer and industrial applications.” (McCall, 33)  This type of mad rush helped many towns in the area to boom in population practically over night, such as Titusville as its population jumped from a few hundred people to nearly 15,000.  This pattern of rapid population influx also saw the creation of many oil boom towns, such as Parker City (Armstrong County) and Petrolia (Butler County) that would quickly fall just as fast as they had risen as the oil frenzy in Western Pennsylvania had moved south into Clarion, Armstrong, and Butler Counties by 1869.  In addition, this rapid migration of people into the area topped with the intensions for rapid oil well drilling had adverse effects on the environment.

The Rise of Oil Boom Towns

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The map above is an oil and gas map of Southwestern Pennsylvania in 1915. (Topographic and Geological Survey of Pennsylvania: Oil and Gas Map of Southwestern Pennsylvania 1915 by Richard R. Hice) The green represents oil pools and red represents gas pools; however, despite this being a map drawn in 1915, it gives a good indication of why the vast amounts of people settled in certain areas of the counties, mentioned above, to drill for oil in the 1860s and 70s, particularly in the north eastern portions of Butler County and the north western portions of Armstrong County.  As the excitement in Oil Creek Valley (in Venango County to the north of Butler County) began to decline by 1870, new excitement enticed oil dwellers to move south into the Lower Oil Region, or River (aka Parker’s Landing) Region.  From here, boomtowns began to appear overnight such as Foxburg, St. Petersburg, Millerstown, Karns City, Greece City, Parker’s Landing (or Parker City), and Petrolia.  Most of these boomtowns are located in Parker, Fairview, and Concord Townships of Butler County (this can be seen in the map to the left that is found in the Atlas of the County of Butler, and the State of Pennsylvania, 1874); Parker’s Landing is located in the northern most part of Armstrong County while Foxburg and St. Petersburg are located in the southern portions of Clarion County.  These boom towns are located relatively close to each other: Parker is 4.3 miles downstream from Foxburg and 7.7 miles northeast of Petrolia; Petrolia is 1.7 miles north of Karns City and 9 miles northwest of Greece City.  These relatively close distances along with the oil and gas map of 1915 mentioned above signify the reason for why these boomtowns were built in a specific area and why this region was considered the lower portion of the Pennsylvania Oil Region.  To give a sense of the nature of an oil boomtown in terms of the rise and fall of its prosperity and population, Pithole provides an early example.  In 1865, the first well in Pithole, located in Venago County, was drilled.  Soon after that, the small town was producing nearly 5,000 barrels of oil per day which led to much excitement.  This excitement brought in many oil operators and others looking to get in on the black gold fortune and the population quickly rose to 6,000 and eventually to nearly 15,000 people.  However, as quickly as wells were drilled and producing vast quantities of oil, the black gold in Pithole began to run dry.  This, along with numerous devastating fires, caused many to leave.  By the beginning of 1866, most of Pithole’s population had moved out of the area, moving on to other oil producing towns.  Today, Pithole is a tourist attraction in Venango County.  Although Pithole was at the extreme end of the spectrum for oil boomtowns as it did not survive, boomtowns like Parker’s Landing and Petrolia did survive but do not have near the number of population they once had during the height of the oil excitement in the Lower Region during the 1870s.  For more information on the development of Parker’s Landing (the City of Parker) and Petrolia, and for information on the environmental effects oil boomtowns had on the environment, use the following links:


*For a visual picture to compare the location of the various oil towns of the late 1800s Pennsylvania Oil Region (upper and lower) mentioned above, use the following links:

**For more Links:

http://history445.viviti.com/
This site is the main page for the many website projects conducted by my classmates for Environmental Thought of the U.S. that deal with environmental factors in and around Butler County, PA
http://www.evolutionofevanscity.weebly.com/
This website is another project for the class mentioned above.  It contains the development of Evans City, located in Butler County.  One can compare the differences of why Evans City grew and prospered and remained an important location in Butler to the development of the oil boomtowns mentioned on my site.
http://www.butlerhistory.com/
This site is the Butler County Historical Society where I ventured to, in Butler, PA, on many occasions to obtain a lot of information on oil history in Western PA.

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