updated: September 30, 2002
The first commercial oil field in the World was (and still is) located in north-western Pennsylvania. The oil and refining industry started just outside Titusville, PA, where the Drake Well Museum is located today. The museum is located on the outskirts of Titusville, on the banks of appropriately named Oil Creek. Today Oil Creek State Park is a very nice recreational area featuring fly fishing, hiking and biking on the Oil Creek trail, and the Oil Creek and Titusville Scenic Railroad. The museum features a visitor center with well-done exhibits and an open-air museum that documents the technologies used to bring the oil to the surface.
This is a recreation of the original Drake Well. It includes a working steam engine using steam from a restored boiler. Visitors can see how the technologies for bringing oil to the surface were designed and operated.
This more modern "rig" is typical of the hundreds of wells that proliferated throughout the north-western Pennsylvania oil fields in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries.
The images above illustrate the complex system of connecting rods and linkages that allowed a single engine to power several pumps. Mechanical linkages even transmitted mechancial power around corners and across streams. You must visit the open air museum to truly appreciate both the technology itself and the wonderful restoration of these "lost arts."
This structure is a reconstruction of the train station that served the oil boom town of Petroleum Center, between Titusville and Oil City. It now serves the scenic railroad. Today, Petroleum Center has almost completely disappeared; only a few foundations remain to mark the site of a town where thousands once lived and worked. Once a horribly polluted area, the verdant woods and clear waters of Oil Creek bear testimony to the remarkable recuperative powers of Nature.
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