Happy 150th Birthday: Oil Industry
Do you know the birthplace of the modern oil industry? Many people would guess Texas, Oklahoma or the Middle East and not the backwoods of Pennsylvania.
August 27, 1859 Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the first commercial oil well in the Venago Oil Field along the banks Oil Creek in rural Pennsylvania. 
This event ushered in the modern petroleum industry that today provides us with fuel for light, heat and transportation. Many modern products contain petroleum or are derived from its byproducts such as plastics and pharmaceuticals.
Today it is hard to imagine the remoteness of Drake's well and the challenges faced getting oil to market without good roads or rail lines. Early photos from that era depict rugged & heavily treed terrain that was often hampered by rain & mud. The creeks and streams leading to the Allegheny River were the early highways used to get the oil barrels to market in Pittsburgh.
Prior to Drake's success in Pennsylvania other attempts to drill commercial oil wells had been made in Germany and Canada. Several factors contributed to Drake's success in Pennsylvania.
- Native Americans often found oil seeping from rock formations near streams which are plentiful in Pennsylvania.
- An oil sample from a 'natural seep' from the land leased by Drake was analyzed by Dr. Benjamin Silliman at Yale University. Dr. Silliman concluded that the crude oil from this area was superior thus ensuring the financing of Drake's well.
- The major factor in Drake's success was the formation of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company by co-founder, George Bissell, a New York lawyer and promoter, who hired Drake.
- Drake's well was a riparian well on bottomland, near Oil Creek, a well-known oil seep. Riparian means "on the bank of a stream."
And the rest is history
www.oil150.com
www.oilregion.org
www.drakewell.org
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Mary, I never, every would have guessed it was Pennsylvania. I would have thought Texas for sure...(too much Dynasty when I was youner perhaps :)