Oil City, Pennsylvania The First Oil in the USA

Oil City, PA

Photo Credit:   Mine.  This is my husband’s Parents house when they lived there.

My Husband’s family lived there for many years and the lived in a house that was 100 years old.  Oil City is situated on the Allegheny River Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania. They took us on a tour of the area and it was all dismantled and the buildings that were there were all falling down. 

Oil City was the first to have an Oil Well on its land. It was the first to produce and refine petroleum in the United States.  It was in 1859 when Colonel Edwin Drake first built upon the Oil reserves there.  At that time it is said that the oil literally sat on top of the earth.  He was the first to drill that oil out of the ground.  In its heyday they shipped more than one million barrels of oil in a single year. 

When Oil was there the town was full of well off people.  There were also those who were workers in the oil plants that were also not so well to do.  They lived in a place called Pithole located on Oil Creek.  In 1866 is when the banks collapsed and that is when the petroleum industry in Oil City and Pithole started to crumble.  Many people left the area.  The population dropped from 20,000 to just 2,000 in one year.

You can take a tour on the Oil City/Titusville Railroad and see all the places where Oil Was first refined in the United States at +http://www.octrr.org/

© Debra K. Allen a.k.a Lady Guinevere

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