"The First Oilwell in the United States of America" and How $80 Seems Cheap
By Robert Gaston

Dateline... Titusville, Pennsylvania; the year is 1854.

Oil was selling at $40.00 a barrel, (that's $18,000 at todays prices!) .

At that time there were no oilwells. Oil was skimmed from springs, off ponds, and creeks where it collected. Oil had only a few uses; axle grease for wagons, adhesive, caulk for boats, illuminating lamp fuel (kerosene), and some medicinal use.

Dr. F. B. Brewer, a Titusville physician, visiting his professor of surgery at Dartmouth College, had showed him, as a curiosity, a sample of oil skimmed from a spring on land belonging to his family. The professor in turn showed the sample to another Dartmouth graduate, George Bissell, a New York lawyer. In an amazing excercise of productive creativity, lawyer Bissell wondered if the oil could be used for lamp fuel in place of the standard and cheapest illuminant, whale oil, the supply of which was getting no longer adequate. Benjamin Silliman, a Yale University chemistry and geology professor analyzed Bissell?s sample and declared it could be refined into excellent kerosene.

Bissell immediately leased the land on Oil Creek containing the spring, thus becoming the first Petroleum Landman, and interested some New Haven bankers in backing a company that would try to develop oil in quantity, thus becoming the first Oil and Gas Promoter. This company, Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, was the first oil company in the USA.

Bissell, being the creative sort, happened upon a picture on a patent medicine circular, illustrating a wooden tower housing machinery used to drill salt wells. Samuel Kier, a Pittsburgh salt-works owner, had found a profitable use for the nuisance rock-oil that came up with the brine by bottling and selling it as " Kier?s Petroleum or Rock Oil Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers. A Natural Remedy Procured from a Well in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 400 feet below the Earth?s Surface". This competed, although probably less favorably, with the cocaine and alcohol and laudenum based "curatives" on the market at the time. Now who would you consider to be a better salesman? The guy who sells people powerful narcotics in order to feel better or someone who talks people into drinking petroleum?

If oil could be found indirectly as a result of drilling for salt, Bissell wondered, why not use the same method to find oil directly? It did not occur to the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company promoters that any special talent would be required to drill such a well, otherwise they would probably not have selected so unlikely a manager as Edwin L. Drake, a railroad conductor.

Mr. Drake, was commissioned by Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company as a "Colonel", with the thought that it would lend dignity to the project. This was the first time that fraud was used to secure investment in the oil patch.

Drake immediately hired William A. "Uncle Billy" Smith, a sprightly old blacksmith, knowledgeable about salt wells and salt works, who set about building a 35 foot high wooden derrick and equipment housing. The Drawworks were homemade and the rig was powered by a small 6 or 8 horsepower steam engine, and a tubular marine boiler called a "Long John". This was the first dedicated oilrig.

Uncle Billy became the first toolpusher. He worked for Drake about three years and then retired. He took with him the first string of tools from the Drake well and preserved them for us to see today and are on exhibit at a museum on the site of the well. The tool string consists of the rope socket and sinker bar, jars and temper screw, the reamer, some bits and a couple of sand pumps (bailers).

Uncle Billy and his two sons kept the well drilling while "Colonel" Drake supervised and fished (for real fish) and played Euchre with the storeowners in Titusville, thus becoming the first "company man".

People in Titusville referred to the operation as a foolish venture, a "folley?, or "Drake?s Folley", after all, who had ever heard of drilling into the ground for oil?

Soon problems arose, water coming into the hole caused the crew to spend more time bailing out water than drilling. One year had gone by and the well had only been drilled to 40 feet and had cost $2,490.00, (thus leading, I suppose, to the the first day rate contract!). The New Haven backers, unable to sell more stock refused to send Drake another dollar, although he assured them he had finally solved the drilling difficulties.

The assets were then leased to the Senneca Oil Company of New Haven, which, until then had been bottling Oil for "medicinal" purposes.

Drake continued as drilling supervisor.

Drake lined the well with pipe to a point below the water entry, thus shutting off the flow of water and continued to drill through the pipe. Drake was no longer an imposter! He had earned a real title?that of inventor?and this ingenious idea would be adopted by all drillers after him. This was the first use of casing in an oilwell.

On Saturday afternoon August 26, 1859, Uncle Billy reported to Drake that the well had been drilled to a depth of 69 ½ feet.

The drilling was shutdown on Sundays and on this particular Sunday, while Uncle Billy was tidying-up around the rig, he happened to look down the hole. He noted with irritation that water had seeped into the hole and was up within 10 feet of the top. He sent the bailer down to start bailing it out, but when the bailer was pulled from the hole it was dripping with oil.

Uncle Billy hurried to town and slyly did not tell Drake why he wanted him to come to the wellsite.

"Look there!" Uncle Billy said. "What do you think of this?"

The mystified Drake looked down the hole. "What?s that?" he asked (remember... the first "company man").

"That?s your fortune," Uncle Billy said gleefully.

The crew set about to complete the well to produce the oil that had been found. Two inch copper tubing was run into the well and since the flow was small, Drake and Uncle Billy rigged up a pump. This increased the production to 35 barrels of oil a day. With oil selling for $40.00 a barrel this started a flurry of activity. Speculators rushed to drill wells up and down the creek, thus the first cornershooters.

Wells were drilled, some using the simplest equipment, and found oil that gushed as much as 1000 barrels per day.

Soon the countryside was pockmarked with wells and in two years time this forest of wooden derricks had sucked so much oil from under the Pennsylvania landscape that the price was down to 10 cents a barrel, given that there really wasn't a market for thousands, much less millions of barrels of oil at that time. The new oil industry nearly died before it started. However the glut was not to continue, as Americans and Europeans were finding more and more new uses for this plentiful product.

With America?s emergence from the War Between the States, the demand for petroleum products increased and the country was headed for economic boom times.

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