The World Petroleum Industry: It All Started in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The World Petroleum Industry: It All Started in Pennsylvania The modern petroleum industry is a vast and complex association of multinational corpora­tions, producing countries, consumers and other inter­acting elements. The petroleum milieu is often identified and equated with the largest oil companies, “the seven sis­ters”: Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, Gulf, British Petroleum, Mobil, Standard of California, and Texaco. As if to empha­size the...
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Pithole City: Boom Town Turned Ghost Town, An Interview with James B. Stevenson

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pithole City: Boom Town Turned Ghost Town, An Interview with James B. Stevenson One hundred and twenty-five years ago this summer, the placid calm of northwestern Pennsylvania’s sparsely populated but panoramic vista was ruptured when “Colonel” Edwin L. Drake’s well coughed up rich, black crude oil on August 28, 1859. The following boom years of the oil industry gave rise to numerous towns and cities, some of which were short-lived ghost towns. The...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents It’s a Zoo! When the Zoological Society of Philadelphia was organized at the home of Dr. William Camac (its first presi­dent) on March 21, 1859, it was the first of its kind in North America. In spite of its auspicious beginnings, the early years of the Philadelphia Zoo – now touted as “America’s First Zoo”­ – were dampened by the Civil War, which not only...
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Lost and Found

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lost and Found Lost The world’s first service station – build exclusively to dispense motor fuel and related automobile products – was opened by the Gulf Refining Company (now Gulf Oil) in December 1913 in Pittsburgh. Located at Baum Boulevard (known as “automobile row” because of its many dealerships) and St. Clair street, the drive-in station boasted thirteen pumps and offered...
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1st Drive-In Filling Station

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on 1st Drive-In Filling Station Pittsburgh’s Mellon family owes much of its fortune to the oil industry. In 1902, William Larimer Mellon Sr. (1868–1949), with the help of his uncles, Andrew William Mellon (1855–1937) and Richard Beatty Mellon (1858–1933), was placed in charge of the J. M. Guffey Petroleum Company, with its rich Spindletop oil fields and a refinery at Port Arthur in Texas.Mellon guided Guffey Petroleum,...
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