The destroyed oil was valued at $2 million, but there was no loss of life. The fire raged for three days until it finally was brought under control. It came to be known as "Black Friday", when almost 300,000 barrels (48,000 m 3) of oil burned after an oil tank was hit by lightning. Rockefeller, which sparked legislative action in Congress concerning monopolies.įire was always a significant concern around oil and one of the worst blazes was on June 11, 1880.
Edwin l drake first american oil well series#
She became an accomplished writer and published a series of articles about the business practices of the Standard Oil Company and its president, John D. His daughter, Ida Minerva Tarbell, grew up amidst the sounds and smells of the oil industry. But the oil soon ran dry and within four years the city was nearly deserted. Oil was discovered in a rolling meadow there in January 1865 and, by September 1865, the population was 15,000. About 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Titusville was another oil boom city, Pithole. He first moved a few miles south in Venango County and established a wooden stock tank business. Tarbell, whose large Italianate home still stands. At one time it was said that Titusville had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world. He had been a partner in a lumber business prior to the success of the well. He owned the land where Drake's well was drilled. The first oil millionaire was Jonathan Watson, a resident of Titusville.
The exchange moved from the city, but returned in 1881 in a new, brick building, before being dissolved in 1897. In 1871, the first oil exchange in the United States was established there. Titusville grew from 250 residents to 10,000 almost overnight and in 1866, it incorporated as a city. Drilling tools were needed and several iron works were built. Other oil-related businesses were quickly established. Grant visited Titusville to view the important region. That line became part of the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad in 1871. The Union & Titusville Railroad was built in 1865. The next year the railroad line was extended south to Petroleum Centre and Oil City. In 1865, pipelines were laid directly to the line and the demand for teamsters practically ended. In 1862, the Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad was built between Titusville and Corry, where the product was transferred to larger east-west railroad lines.
Teamsters were needed immediately to transport the oil to markets. They had many difficulties, but on August 27, at the site of an oil spring just south of Titusville, they finally drilled a well that could be commercially successful. In the summer of 1859, Drake hired a salt well driller, William A. Drake to start drilling on a piece of leased land just south of Titusville, near what is now Oil Creek State Park. In the late 1850s, the Seneca Oil Company (formerly the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company) sent Col. Its main use at that time had been as a medicine for both animals and humans.
Oil was known to exist there, but there was no practical way to extract it. It was a slow-growing community until the 1850s, when petroleum was discovered in the region. The village was incorporated as a borough in 1849. Titus named the village Edinburg(h), but as it grew, the settlers began to call the hamlet Titusville. Within 14 years, others bought and improved land lying near his, along the banks of what is now Oil Creek. The area was first settled in 1796 by Jonathan Titus. Titusville in 1896, by Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler
0 kommentar(er)
