![]() ![]() This Week in Petroleum History, July 3 to July 9.Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. Wells.Ĭitation Information – Article Title: “First Oil Well Fire.” Authors: B.A. ![]() For more information, contact © 2022 Bruce A. ![]() Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases. Y our Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. Recommended Reading: Western Pennsylvania’s Oil Heritage (2008) Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009). An oil well fire at Rouseville in 1861 brought added urgency for inventing new ways to make oil exploration safer.Ī gusher had attracted people from the small Pennsylvania town and covered them in oil before before the well erupted in flames, killing 19 and seriously burning many others (learn more about this early petroleum industry tragedy in Fatal Rouseville Oil Well Fire of 1861).Īfter the Civil War, solid shot balls from cannons would be used for fighting oilfield tank fires. Thousands of visitors today tour the replica cable-tool derrick and steam-engine house at Titusville’s popular oil museum, which also preserves thousands of photographs and artifacts from Pennsylvania’s “Valley that changed the World.” Rouseville Well FireĪs Pennsylvania’s oil region continued to expand, drilling technologies raced to catch up. The monument, including a bronze statue by Charles Henry Niehaus, was dedicated on October 4, 1901. A Standard Oil Company executive commissioned a monument at Woodlawn Cemetery grave in Titusville. The “father of the petroleum industry,” Edwin Drake, died in 1880. 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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