Oldest Oil Producing Well
Cornplanter Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
McClintock No. 1 Oil Well has produced continuously since August, 1861. Drilled only two years after the famous Drake Well, it is located 240 yards away, across the railroad.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Drilled in 1861, just two years after Edwin Drake's famous well launched the modern oil age nearby, the McClintock No. 1 has produced oil continuously ever since. Sunk into the Venango County fields at the very birthplace of the petroleum industry, it stands only about 240 yards from the Drake site. Its remarkable longevity makes it a living link to the frantic first years of the American oil boom.
Why it matters
As one of the oldest continuously producing oil wells on earth, it embodies the birth of the petroleum industry that would remake the American economy and the modern world.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Joseph Reid Gas Engine Company
Oil City, PA · est. 1997
In the boomtown decades after Pennsylvania's Oil City became a hub of the world's first petroleum industry, Joseph Reid founded his gas engine works here in 1894. The company's rugged single-piston engine became a workhorse for pumping wells, shipped to oilfields around the globe until the firm shut its doors in 1939. It was a classic example of the specialized machine-building that grew up alongside the oil that made the region famous.
Patrick C. Boyle (1846-1920)
Oil City, PA · est. 2013
In the decades after the 1859 Drake Well strike, northwestern Pennsylvania's Oil Region became the crucible of the world's first petroleum boom, and Oil City sat at its heart. Patrick C. Boyle rose from the rough-and-tumble world of the oil scout to build trade papers—The Derrick and The Oil and Gas Journal—that told drillers, refiners, and investors what was happening across the fields. His publications gave a chaotic new industry a shared language and a national nervous system of prices and news.
Humboldt Refinery
Cornplanter Township, PA · est. 2001
Along Cherry Run in Venango County, chemist Jon Bruns and the Lodovici Brothers opened the Humboldt Refinery in 1862, in the heart of the region where America's oil industry was born only a few years earlier. Named for the great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, the 47-acre works was among the largest and most scientifically advanced refineries of its day, featuring a two-mile pipeline, oil-fired boilers, and even aniline dye production. It ran until 1868, a brief but ambitious chapter in the frenzied early oil boom.
First Oil Pipeline
Oil Creek Township, PA · est. 1954
When it was built in the fall of 1865, this roughly five-mile line running a straight course from the boomtown of Pithole to a railhead at Miller Farm was among the first successful oil pipelines. Instead of hauling barrels by wagon over rutted, muddy roads, operators pumped crude directly to the railroad — a change that transformed the economics of the young petroleum industry. When Pithole's wells ran dry the pipe was dug up, but the trench it left is still visible along its old course.