E.L. Drake 

Early Oil Exploration

Like the 1849 gold rush which saw multitudes of would-be miners arrive in the frontier regions of California, a similar phenomenon took place a decade later in America's eastern wilderness. The beacon was crude oil and the place was Oil Creek at Titusville in Northwest Pennsylvania. The allure of the fledgling oil industry, like that of gold, tapped one of mankind's greatest emotions, the thrill of discovery.

For some, the quest for oil led to great riches, and there were new jobs, towns, inventions and machinery. At Oil Creek, there were many successes, as well as dry holes and tragedies.

Coincidence, timing and luck combined to get the first concerted search for oil underway in the 1850's. The right eyes saw a sample bottle of crude oil from a seep. The oil was tracked to a site near Titusville, Pennsylvania, and a stock company was formed to extract and market it. After a favorable chemical analysis, stock in the company was sold to finance the extraction venture.

Before E.L. Drake's well of 1859, many attempts to retrieve oil at a seep site on the east side of Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania, had taken place. Beginning with nearby pits by Native Americans in the deep past, infrequent gathering of it was continued by early settlers. The seep oil was used by a local saw mill of Brewer and Watson and, at other places, for lighting and lubrication of machinery. It had some early medicinal use too, such as a purge and balm. Some hawkers claimed that it could cure everything, and it was called Seneca Oil.

Joel D. Angier from Titusville leased the seep from the saw mill principals on July 4, 1853, thus transacting the first petroleum lease in the United States. However, oil was never collected in sufficient amount to make the operation economic, so Angier gave up. 

Another seep on Oil Creek had been exploited by the farm owner, Hamilton McClintock, since the early 1800s. The oil seeped upward from the rock through the alluvium and burst to the water's surface. Hamilton McClintock trapped some of it in a ring of timbers and baffles around the main seep. In 1854, the Hamilton McClintock seep was deemed very desirable by Albert Crosby (agent for George H. Bissell of New York), but the $7000 asking price was too much. He reluctantly gave up the H. McClintock seep, but commenced negotiations for the purchase of 100 acres around the seep near Titusville, which Drake was later to drill on. Local people were astonished at the sale price of $5000 for "worthless" land where walkers always had to clean messy oil off their boots!

The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York was the first oil company formed to seek oil near Titusville (the name changed to Connecticut and finally to the Seneca Oil Company of Connecticut). Edwin L. Drake, who happened to be out of work and in the same hotel in New Haven, Connecticut where the founders of the new Seneca Oil Company were staying, was hired to visit Titusville, handle some title work, and give a report on the seep (Drake got the assignment because he had a free pass on the railway due to his former jobs as express agent and conductor). In this capacity, Drake surveyed the area of the seep in December, 1857.

Drake's well

Drake returned to Titusville again in 1858, this time as a salaried general agent of the Seneca Oil Company and in charge of operations at the seep. His first activity was to try to put Angier's collection site back into operation and hopefully to improve it, but the effort failed. The main seep produced only three or four gallons daily and, if oil was going to be in demand, this small quantity certainly wouldn't meet it. Drake managed to increase the amount collected to 10 gallons per day, and also hired men to try to open up other seeps. He then employed workmen to dig a shaft, and thus try to mine the oil, but water entered in such quantity that the work couldn't continue. Drilling was the answer.

Drake was prepared to drill to 1000 feet , and drew up a stringent drilling contract which included the hole specifications. He wasn’t prepared to tolerate a crooked hole, and whisky was out of the question at his well site. They struck oil at 69 1/2 feet.

The first oil well fire was accidentally started on October 6, 1859.  Smith, the driller, touched it off with an open lamp. He intended to inspect the level of oil in the vat but the collected gases flashed and the oil burst into flames. All the stored oil, the derrick and even the driller's house went up in smoke.

In Pittsburgh, Drake and George Mowbray, an influential chemist with the New York firm Schieffelin Brothers, puffed their way through a box of Havana cigars while conferring about oil. The big "smoke" ended with a 300-barrel sale of oil and a contract to sell more oil to the New York firm.