At either Titusville or Oil City the stranger finds himself in a new world. The objects which he is too apt to touch, in spite of all precautions, have a greasy, clammy feel. His nostrils are assailed by gaseous odors, such as they probably never before inhaled in the open air. Into his ear is continually poured a stream of speech, in a dialect essentially different from that taught in Webster or Worcester. Such phrases as “surface indications,” “dry territory,” “developed territory,” “oil-smeller,” with the names of a dozen implements unknown to the outside world, all uttered with earnestness and volubility, at once set his half-bewildered wits at work in quest of their meaning.
He tastes petroleum and salt water, of course, to satisfy his curiosity or acquire information of their qualities. Then he sees tall derricks and huge tanks standing on side-walks or in gardens; engines running and walking-beams moving sedately up and down in the midst of what remain of the original forests; drilling apparatus at work; immense flat-boats or rafts floating down-stream with the current or drawn upward by three or four horses abreast, plunging along the bed of the creek or river.
With very little loss of time he takes to exploring the valley. I shall assume that he begins with the region back of Titusville, that Pennsylvania Venice, arising out of the mud, which in April is still sufficiently deep and liquid to float a whole navy of gondolas. Then there is Oil City, at the mere mention of which, Titusville is transformed into a capital with all the charms of Dublin or the neatness of Philadelphia.
In the heart of that borough he finds large hotels or caravansaries by the half-dozen and as many are in the course of erection. On every land new houses are rising under the incessant blows of the carpenter’s hammer. At morning, mid-day, and evening, the screams of steam-whistles at the various machine shops, foundries, and refineries are painfully long and loud. In the various houses or sheds thrown up on the principal streets, where lots sell at New York City prices, he finds whole platoons of land agents, lawyers, speculators, the agents of merchants and manufacturers, whose wares are likely to be in demand there. He can hardly turn a corner without being “drilled to the third rock” by a pair of keen, inquisitive eyes, followed by the inquiry: “Do you wish some first-rate oil territory, sir?” “I would like to sell you a fourth interest in a fifty-barrel well.”
Determined, however, on piercing the heart of the country, he hires a horse at $10 per day, and sets out on his pilgrimage down the valley. Immediately below Titusville, and above the confluence of the east and west branches of Oil Creek, he enters the celebrated Watson flats, a short distance beyond which he observes the derrick of Colonel Drake, erected in 1859, the first work of the kind in Petrolia. More than one hundred others, new and old, may now be counted within one mile of Titusville, especially near the point of confluence. Everything betokens disorder, disarray, indifference to all except the one grand object of pursuit. There are no roads, no fences, and scarcely laws or regulations, except a few laid down in the leases or imposed by common consent.
Proceeding down the creek, where one’s best road, off the railway, is the uneven bottom of that impetuous stream, the valley is found to grow quite narrow—barely one hundred yards from bluff to bluff. On the heights, overhanging the railroad and creek, where heavy forests of pine, hemlock, or white oak once grew, little now, save brushwood and stumps with long, horizontal lines of shale and sandstone behind are visible, the scene being here and there diversified by a small unpainted cabin, or by the ubiquitous derrick.
Here, as well as higher up, one meets tall gentlemen, encased in tall shining boots, or what were such in their primitive state; wearing tall black coats, tall black beards, and carrying tall black valises. They are adventurers, in search of lands, appointments, interests in wells, or individuals, whom they can sell and deliver equally with their property.
For the five or six miles immediately below the Watson flats, little boring has been done—ten or a dozen wells to the mile or so. The section is pronounced dry territory. At Miller’s farm symptoms of more activity are manifest; and at Shaffer’s where the railroad terminates, a cluster of hotels and another of shipping-offices have sprung up. To that point, boats, filled with petroleum in bulk or in barrels, are dragged upstream at nearly all seasons.
Beyond Shaffer’s the nearly level bottoms begin to widen, affording the creek more abundant space for its frequent gyrations. Each of the halfmoon flats beyond has a distinct name, usually given after that of the former proprietor, in connection with the farm lying immediately above and behind. Every flat has also its system of derricks, and, in general, characteristics of its own distinguishing it from those above and below. In passing downward, the derricks will be seen to hug the bluffs more closely, and even to climb them, in places, to the height of one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet.
About midway between Titusville and Oil City the stranger has entered the great heart of the oil region, where the Sherman, the Noble, the Empire, the Craft, the Wildcat, the Jersey, the Coquette, and other famous wells were formerly, or are now, wont to discharge their hundreds of barrels per day. Each of these famous producers has its own street or block of black, dirty, greasy tanks, from two or three to ten or twelve in number, with an aggregate capacity of between 5,000 and 15,000 barrels. Most of these are roofed over and located close to the creek with a view to easy loading in the barges. From their bottoms exude streams of the dark green liquid, which crawls along by slimy paths to the creek, covering its entire surface with a film of petroleum. Many barrels of it thus escape every day, to the deep regret of the looker-on, who wishes he had the facilities, with the right to use them, for preventing such a waste. With a clear sky overhead, the different hues formed by this “oil cast upon the troubled waters” are exceedingly delicate and beautiful, and can hardly have failed to suggest the extraction of certain rich and rare colors.
On every farm is a village, bearing the farm name, or the affix “ville” as a substitute. The village usually consists of a number of oil companies’ offices, about twice as many boarding-houses, perhaps a school-house, where religious services are held occasionally on Sundays, a hotel or two. In Rouseville, Plumer, and one or two other points, banks have been established. Post-offices abound, nearly every farm having one; and the telegraph extends to every nook and corner in the country as fast as a good well is struck. The number of houses in these villages or hamlets ranges from ten to fifty, and the population, exclusive of strangers and pilgrims, from one hundred to eight hundred. The houses are built of weatherboards and strips only, being guiltless of paint on the outside or of lath and plaster within. Once, and only once, I did notice a discharged soldier engaged in planting a little grass-plot in front of his cabin. Probably one half the engineers and laborers sleep in cribs attached to the engine houses, and some even cook their own meals there, in order to escape a charge of $7 or $8 dollars per week for board and the coarse accommodations. If there is one cow in that part of Petrolia, she escaped my observation. Even the dog tribe are far from being numerous.
Added to the natural disorder prevalent in the oil regions, are the wrecks produced by the great freshet of this spring, the most destructive that ever visited any portion of the Northern States. It not only swept down the river numbers of houses and immense quantities of petroleum, but deposited all along the low lands fragments of boats, dwellings, engine-houses, furniture, fuel; overturning derricks, carrying off wooden platforms laden with engines and hurling the whole with resistless force against bridges, which shared the common fate. The sidewalks in Oil City have been left wherever the capricious element chose to deposit them; a huge flat-bottomed boat was dropped in the principal street; dwellings and factories were lifted from their foundations, and moved hither or thither.
Oil refineries, belching forth clouds of black smoke, or lying idle, form one of the features in the landscape of those valleys. They are for the most part small establishments, each with a capacity not exceeding three hundred barrels per week.
No community on the face of the earth has a smaller proportion of drones to the number of working bees than Petrolia. This observation applies to city, village, and single shanty. Nobody but has a hand engaged in some business or pursuit; many in half a dozen. If a man betakes himself to mercantile life, he reckons upon giving it from twelve to fifteen hours per day filling up his leisure moments with speculation or an agency. The young fellow who would stand at the street corners elsewhere, there kills two birds with one stone by offering to sell wells, or interests in wells, or leases. If Satan found mischief only for the idle, his occupation would be gone in the oil region. Perhaps the high cost of living has impelled the slothful as well as the diligent to this remarkable activity, but it seems to be an admitted principle on all hands that people have gone thither to work. On this account, the country is essentially orderly. Property as well as life is more secure than in any Eastern city.
The fact is, in Petrolia, the church universally believed in is an engine-house, with a derrick for its tower, a well for its bible, and a two-inch tube for its preacher, with mouth rotund, “bringing forth things new and old,” in the shape of two hundred barrels per day of crude oil, mingled with salt water.
Originally published in the October 2012 issue of American History. To subscribe, click here.