Pennsylvania Oil Field
What we'll do for a little oil... This article from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly (June, 1892) was written when oil was 60 cents a barrel. It describes what happened to a small Pennsylvania town when oil was discovered. Illustrations by EJ Meeker; text extracted from original article.
"Less than twelve months ago McDonald, Pennsylvania, eighteen miles west of Pittsburgh, was a sleepy and commonplace little coal-mining town. In six months it doubled in population and became the busiest and most typical oil town in the country.
In this oil field on June 1st 1891 there were three completed oil wells. By November there were over three hundred wells in various stages, of which nearly one half were in and about McDonald.
To-day there are about three hundred and fifty completed wells in the field, with one hundred and fifty more drilling."
"The derricks tower up like church-steeples all over the village. They seem to be built indiscriminately in the front and side and back yards of the village lots.
It is no uncommon occurrence to see an oil well with its accompanying derrick and engine-house in the back yard, the boiler making steam in the front yard, a well-to-do residence sandwiched in between.
To reach the front door of the house, the caller must dodge the walking-beam and get around the derrick of a vigorous oil well in operation."
"The boring of these multitudinous oil wells brought to the surface such vast quantities of oil that local brooks and streams became covered and practically swimming in oil.
Frequently pure water was in such demand that a barrel of oil was gladly exchanged for an equal quantity of water. hildren went about with pails of water suspended from their shoulders by means of the old-fashioned wooden neck-yoke.
The writer met a little curly-haired and barefooted maiden thus equipped, as she was trudging along, after having disposed of her precious product, the empty pails swinging loosely by her side."
"The most famous oil well is the Jumbo well of Mssrs. Greenlee & Forst. On October 4th it put out seven hundred and fifty barrels of oil per hour for several hours, surpassing all American records. In the first six months of its existence it produced 6,000,000 barrels. This, at an average price of sixty cents per barrel, would be worth $3,600,000.
It is said that dollars coined in the oil country are so greasy that they easily slip away. The first wells were almost all gushers, and thinking that the whole country was underlaid with an ocean of oil, hundreds of wells were drilled that never paid for themselves."