Oil-Producing Salt Well
Beaver Township, Crawford County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Drilled here in 1815 by Samuel Magaw and William Clark to reach brine, a frontier source of salt. When it was deepened by Daniel Shryock to 300 feet in 1819, oil was struck. Because of this unwanted byproduct, the well and salt works here were closed, 1821. This early yield of oil from a drilled well occurred 40 years before Edwin L. Drake's 1859 discovery near Titusville.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In 1815, drillers here bored into the earth hunting brine to boil down into salt, a precious commodity on the frontier. When the well was deepened in 1819, they struck oil instead—an unwelcome contaminant that soon forced the salt works to close. Decades before the world thought to prize it, petroleum surfaced here as a nuisance, some forty years ahead of Drake's famous 1859 well near Titusville.
Why it matters
This accidental strike foreshadowed the birth of the American oil industry in northwestern Pennsylvania, where the world's first commercial petroleum boom would soon begin.
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Related people
- · Samuel Magaw
- · William Clark
- · Daniel Shryock
- · Edwin L. Drake
Related events
- · Early yield of oil from a drilled well
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Drake Well Park
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On a wooded flat near Titusville in 1859, Edwin Drake gambled on a radical idea: drilling for oil the way one drilled for water or salt. When his well struck oil that August, it proved petroleum could be produced in quantity, and a scramble of derricks and boomtowns soon filled the Oil Creek valley. The state now preserves the site with a park and museum on the ground where the modern oil age began.