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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McKean County: Where the Gold is Green

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on McKean County: Where the Gold is Green The great gold and silver rushes of the late nineteenth century to places such as the Black Hills, Colorado, Arizona, California and Alaska have long been hailed in story and song for their excite­ment, riches and heartbreak. But, the rush for “green gold” to McKean County during the same century was equally or more exciting. First, there were the forests – immense forests of...
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The Last Frontier: Venango County Indians, Oil, Ghost Towns

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Last Frontier: Venango County Indians, Oil, Ghost Towns Venango County. Its name is derivation of a the Seneca Indian word earliest for explorers “French and Creek.” Its earliest explorers and settlers were the French, shortly followed by the English. At one time, the territory was claimed simultaneously by France, and the colonies of Virginia and Pennsyl­vania. But Venango County’s rich history bespeaks vigorous pioneering a spirit...
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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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The Valley That Changed the World: Visiting the Drake Well Museum

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Valley That Changed the World: Visiting the Drake Well Museum “They’ve struck oil!” They were only three words, but they thundered triumphantly throughout the valley along northwestern Pennsylvania’s Oil Creek during the days following the long-anticipated breakthrough – one that would change the world forever – on an otherwise quiet Saturday in August 1859. To many it was a miracle, one on which great fortunes would be...
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John A. Mather’s Lens: The Unerring Eye of History

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on John A. Mather’s Lens: The Unerring Eye of History When the dapper Englishman John Aked Mather (1829-1915) stepped from the stage coach in Titusville, Crawford County, that October day in 1860, he had no idea that he was about to become the pre-eminent chronicler of a Pennsylvania phenomenon, petroleum. But for five and a half decades Mather recorded the birth and development of the new industry, one which would forever change the way the nation...
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McClintock Well No. 1 at Drake Well Museum

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on McClintock Well No. 1 at Drake Well Museum McClintock Well Number 1 – the world’s oldest continuously producing oil well – was recently acquired by the Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Venango County. Drilled near Oil Creek in August 1861, the well produced fifty barrels of oil a day. The Quaker State Oil Corporation purchased the McClintock Well in 1952 and nominated it for the nearby state historical marker four years...
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The Lady and the Titan

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Lady and the Titan Before the creation of the Pulitzer Prize, long before Woodward and Bernstein, there was Pennsylvania’s own Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944). Best known as the muckraking journalist who single-handedly took on the mighty John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), she was among the most feared and admired women of her time. Writing during the Progressive Era, an age of hope and reform running roughly from...
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Pennsylvania History Goes Green

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania History Goes Green Sustainable, or “green” design is beginning to make its way into daily lives in ways that are both obvious and subtle. For the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), “going green” has become part of the philosophy of preserving and protecting treasured historic sites and museums, as well as conserving resources and improving sustainability. On December 15,...
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