Oil Creek

“ In the Oil Creek region, some of the smaller wells having been exhausted, resort was had to deeper boring. One hopeful theorist imagined that if the desirable fluid came from a very great depth, it might be good policy to seek it in a stratum still nearer its rocky home. So down he penetrated, regardless of the 'fine show' of oil that presented itself by the way, until at the depth of five hundred feet in the rock, a vein of mingled gas and oil was reached that literally forced the boring implements from the well. ”

“ Oftentimes very fine wells are opened in localities where no oil has been found on the surface, and no appearance of oil having been obtained at any previous time in the neighborhood. Perhaps the most unsuccessful operations in the whole Oil Creek valley have been in the midst of the ancient pits that have already been alluded to. Wells have been bored in the bottom of these pits without the least success. At a point near the bank of the Alleghany, some two miles above Franklin, there was a well-known oil spring some forty years ago. ”

“ The wells of Oil Creek penetrate strata immediately overlying the Huron shale, and the oil is obtained from fissured and porous sheets of sand stone of the Portage and Chemung groups, which lie just over the Huron and offer convenient reservoirs for the oil it furnishes. It is a well-known fact that wells sunk into the black shale yield no considerable quantity of oil, unless from strata resting upon it. ”

“ Every man about here is in oil, somehow or another; and even the farmers back of the Creek prefer bringing their horses down and teaming oil to working the land or felling wood. This is emphatically the oil region."
Arrived at Schaeffer's or Shaffer's Farm, the present terminus of the Oil Creek Railway, Miselle was relieved from much anxiety by seeing upon the platform Friend Williams, to whom she had, in a fit of temporary insanity, written that she should leave home on Tuesday instead of Monday. ”

“ The oil region of Western Pennsylvania is the portion of oil-producing territory that now occupies the largest share of attention. It is confined principally to the valley of Oil Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany River, which it enters at a point about sixty miles south from Lake Erie. It is true that oil wells are successfully worked on the banks of the Alleghany for some distance above and below the mouth of Oil Creek: still the county of Venango has monopolized almost the whole number of oil-producing wells in this region. ”

“ The amount of freight the railroads carried the first year of the business was enormous. Of course connecting lines were built as rapidly as men could work. By the beginning of 1863 the Oil Creek road, as it was known, had reached Titusville from Corry. This gave an eastern connection by both the Philadelphia and Erie and the Atlantic and Great Western, but as the latter was constructing a branch from Meadville to Franklin, the Oil Creek road became the feeder of the former principally. Both of these roads were completed to Oil City by 1865. ”

“ With wondrous speed and unfailing certainty it conveys crude-oil from the wells to the refineries in or out of the region, climbing hills, descending ravines, fathoming rivers and traversing plains and forests. Methods of refining have kept pace with progress in transportation. The smoky, dangerous, inconvenient kettle-still of the pioneer on Oil Creek has given place to the mammoth refinery of to-day, with its labor-saving appliances, its hundreds of skilled employés and 332its improved processes. ”

“ More than one solid citizen got his start on fortune’s road by dipping oil in this way. If the voyage ended safely the oil was transferred from the guipers—fifty barrels each—and small boats to larger ones for shipment to Pittsburg. William Phillips, joint-owner of the biggest well on Oil Creek, was the first man to take a cargo of crude in bulk to the Smoky City. The pond-freshet was a great institution in its day, with romantic features that would enrapture an artist and tickle lovers of sensation to the fifth rib. ”

“ The history of petroleum in America commences with the use the pioneer settlers found the red-men made of it for medicine and for painting their dusky bodies. The settlers adopted its medicinal use and retained for various affluents of the Allegheny the Indian name of Oil Creek. Both natives and whites collected the oil by spreading blankets on the marshy pools along the edges of the bottom-lands at the foot of steep hill-sides or of mountain-walls that hem in the valleys supporting coal-measures above. ”

“ Many a horse fell into the batter and was left to smother. If a wagon broke the load was dumped into the mud-canal, or set on the bank to be taken by whoever thought it worth the labor of stealing. Teamsters would pull down fences and drive through fields whenever possible, until the valley of Oil Creek was an unfathomable quagmire. Think of the bone and sinew expended in moving a thousand barrels of oil six or eight miles under such conditions. ”

“ Oil Creek and its varied branches, Pithole and its suburbs, Forest and Warren had figured creditably in oil-developments, but the Mastodon of the North was yet to come. “The goal of yesterday shall be the starting point of to-morrow” is especially true of oil-operations. At times men have supposed the limits of juicy territory had been reached, only to be startled by the unexpected opening of a larger, grander field than any that preceded it. Guessing the weather a month ahead is child’s play in comparison with guessing where oil may be found in paying quantity. ”

“ David McElhenny sold the upper and lower McElhenny farms—one-hundred-and-eighty acres at the south-east corner of Cherrytree township—to Captain A. B. Funk, for fifteen-hundred dollars and one-fourth of the oil. Joining the Foster farm on the north, Oil Creek bounded the upper tract on the east and south and Pioneer Run gurgled through the western side. Oil Creek flowed through the northern and western sides of the lower half, which had the Espy farm on the east, the Boyd south and the Benninghoff north and west. ”

“ Petroleum In the Massachusetts Magazine, published in 1789, occurs the following reference to the existence of oil-springs in Pennsylvania:
“In the northern part of Pennsylvania there is a creek called Oil Creek, which empties into the Allegheny River. It issues from a spring, on the top of which floats an oil, similar to that called Barbadoes tar, and from which one may gather several gallons a day. 135The troops sent to guard the western posts halted at the same spring, collected some of the oil, and bathed their joints with it. ”

“ Vast improvements in the application of power have been effected since Stephenson’s grand triumph, nowhere more satisfactorily than in 450the oil-regions. Producers who remember the primitive methods in vogue along Oil Creek can best appreciate the wonderful progress made during three decades. ”

“ All the sugar used by the people here is obtained from the maple tree. Fossil coal is found along the banks. There is a creek pouring forth Petroleum, about one hundred miles from Pittsburg on the Alleghany, called Oil Creek, which will blaze on the application of a {20} match. ”

“ Lying between the east and west branches of the Tunagwant—or Big Cove—Creek, and hid away from the busy world by the rough, rugged hills that surround it, until in 1874, when oil was found in flowing wells among the hills, and in the valleys, and by 1878 the quiet little village of 500 inhabitants was transformed into a perfect beehive of 18,000 busy people, buying and selling oil and oil lands, drilling wells that flowed with wealth, until the owners scarce knew what to do with their money ”

“ Soft rock, with a provoking tendency to cave-in, and artesian water, impregnated with sulphur and found just above the oil-sand, rendered drilling a difficult task. The best well in the bunch produces from a rock five-hundred feet down, while the deepest is sixteen-hundred feet and the sand is fifty feet thick. Oil-basins on Caspar Creek, Powder River, Salt Creek and Poison Spider indicate the existence of petroleum over a wide section of the state. Wells on Salt Creek resemble those in Russia. ”

“ So confident are we that a few of our most highly respectable citizens have, at the instigation of the Editor of ‘The Opp Eagle,’ bought up the land lying between Turtle Creek and the river, and as soon as a little more capital has been accumulated, intend to open up a oil proposition that will astonish the eyes of the natives! ”

“ Of fourth sand, fifth sand, Gordon rock, fifty-foot rock, Trenton rock, Berea grit, corn-meal rock, Big-Injun sand and others of the deep-down brand operators on Dunkard Creek never dreamed. Some oil was detected and more blocks of land were tied up in 1864-5. The credulous natives actually believed their county would soon be shedding oil from every hill and hollow, garden and pasture-field. The holders of the tracts—lessees for speculation only—drilled a trifle, sold interests to any suckers wanting to bite and the promised developments fizzled. ”

“ Because their hopes are not based on a shadow. The Salt-Creek oil-field, the first worked in Wyoming, is in the northern part of Natrona and the southern part of Johnson county, fifty miles north of Caspar, the terminus of the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri-Valley Railroad. As known to-day the field is eighteen by thirty miles. It lies along Salt Creek and its tributaries, which drain northward and empty into Powder River, and is a rough country, cut by deep gulches, beneath which there are table-lands of small extent. Vegetation is scanty and timber is found only on the highest bluffs. ”

“ This opened the 215gay ball which was to transmute the Tuna Valley from its arcadian simplicity to the intense bustle of the grandest petroleum-region the world has ever known. The valley soon echoed and re-echoed the music of the tool-dresser and rig-builder and the click of the drill as well as the vigorous profanity of the imported teamster. Frederick Crocker, who drilled on Oil Creek in 1860 and devised the valve which kept the Empire well alive, had won another victory and the great Bradford field was born. He lived at Titusville fifteen years, erected the home afterwards occupied by Dr. ”

“ Wayne and Cumberland had been heard from and Clinton county was the third to have its inning. On the west bank of Otter Creek, a sparkling tributary of Beaver Creek, a well bored for salt fifty or more years ago yielded considerable oil. Instead of giving up the job, the owners pumped the water and oil into a tank, over the side of which the lighter fluid was permitted to empty at its leisure. The salt-works came to a full stop eventually and the well relapsed into “innocuous desuetude.” L. D. Carter, of Aurora, Ill., sojourning temporarily in Clinton for his health, saw the old well in 1864. ”

“ Canada has oil-fields of considerable importance. The largest and oldest is in Enniskillen township, Lambton county, a dozen miles from Port Sarnia, at the foot of Lake Huron. Black Creek, a small tributary of the Detroit river, flows through this township and for many years its waters had been coated with a greasy liquid the Indians sold as a specific for countless diseases. ”

“ The mode of collecting it is this; the place where it is found bubbling up in the creek is surrounded by a wall or dam to a narrow compass, a man then takes a blanket, flannel, or other woollen cloth, to which the oil adheres, and spreading it over the surface of the enclosed pond, presses it down a little, then draws it up, and running the cloth through his hands, squeezes out the oil into a vessel prepared for the purpose; thus twenty or thirty gallons of pure oil can be obtained in two or three days by one man.—Cramer. ”

“ The mouth of the creek was crowded with large boats, waiting to receive a lading of oil; and immense pyramids of earthen jars were raised within and around the village, disposed in the same manner as shot and shells are piled in an arsenal. This place is inhabited only by potters, who carry on an extensive manufactory, and find full employment. The smell of the oil was extremely offensive ”

“ Voyagers who cross the axis of the Cane Creek anticline may observe on the right-hand (west) bank a protruding oil-well casing, some drill bits, and several shacks—all that remain of the Frank Shafer No. 1 oil test started during the winter of 1924-25 and completed by the Midwest Exploration Co. (Baker, 1933, p. 81) . As described by Maxine Newell (U.S. Natl. Park Service, written commun., 1970) ,
The well blew in in December 1925, caught fire, and spewed burning oil 300 feet into the air. ”

“ Pike has gone N. from Cañon City some 30 or 35 m., having Oil cr. on his right, and having crossed certain of its tributaries from the west known as Wilson, South Oil, and High creeks. He is now camped on West Oil cr. (the western one of the two main branches) , at or near a place called Truro. This is a sufficiently well known locality, in a nest of mountains whence Oil cr. gathers several affluents from various directions. On another branch of the creek is the place called Alnwick, near where Riggs used to have his ranch, or in the same place. ”

“ No doubt at some time in the future a competitive technique will be developed, or a growing shortage of other oil will bring world prices to a level with which present production techniques can compete.
Oil and gas production in Colorado is decreasing at present, even though great efforts are being made to find new oil pools. Petroleum prospecting and wildcat drilling are carried out in as yet unproductive basins in the Plateau Province, in intermontane basins such as the San Luis Valley, and on the Plains. ”