Edwin l drake friends6/30/2023 ![]() To learn about another first - several of them, actually - in the new Pennsylvania oil regions, read The First Dry Hole. In fact, it is Drake and his friend Peter Wilson, a Titusville druggist, standing in front of the second derrick. Photo courtesy Butler County Historical Society.ĭrake would will rebuild the derrick and engine house, which contained production equipment, including a boiler and six-horse power “Long John” engine purchased from the Erie Iron Works (also see Cool Coolspring Power Museum).Ī famous image by oilfield photographer John Mather is often mistakenly identified as Drake and Smith standing in front of the historic derrick. The blaze reportedly began when his driller, a blacksmith named William “Uncle Billy” Smith, inspected the well’s oil production while holding a lamp.Įdwin Drake’s driller, “Uncle Billy” Smith. petroleum industry’s first oil well fire ignited the Drake well slightly more than a month after the oil discovery. Once called “Drake’s Folly,” the well discovered a shallow oilfield and launched the nation’s first drilling boom as refineries produced a popular, inexpensive lamp fuel, kerosene. Residents of Titusville and nearby Oil City annually celebrate their 1859 oil well, and visitors to the Drake Well Museum and Park in Titusville tour a reconstructed cable-tool derrick at its original location along Oil Creek. Drake, a former railroad conductor hired by the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut. The already famous well had been completed the previous August by Edwin L. commercial oil well erupted in flames on October 7, 1859. ![]() ![]() Drake’s driller ignited their Pennsylvania oil well.Īlong Oil Creek at Titusville, Pennsylvania, the wooden derrick and engine house of the first U.S. ![]()
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