Venango County
Franklin, Venango County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed March 12, 1800 out of Allegheny and Lycoming counties. The name (an Indian term) refers to French Creek. Franklin, county seat, was laid out in 1795. It became a city in 1868, as did Oil City in 1871. At Drake Well the oil industry was born, 1859.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Formed in 1800 and named with an Indian term for French Creek, Venango County would give the world an industry. In 1859 at nearby Drake Well, the first commercially drilled oil well struck petroleum, igniting an energy revolution that transformed daily life across the globe. Franklin and Oil City grew into cities on the fortunes that flowed from the ground.
Why it matters
Here the modern petroleum industry was born, a turning point that fueled the machinery, transportation, and economy of the industrial age.
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Related people
- · Edwin Drake
Related events
- · Birth of the oil industry at Drake Well
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George Bissell
Franklin, PA · est. 2002
In 1854, attorney George Bissell and his partner J.G. Eveleth purchased the Hibbard Farm in northwestern Pennsylvania — land that would soon hold the famous Drake Well — and organized the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, the first oil corporation in America. Their gamble that "rock oil" could be drilled and refined at scale helped launch an entirely new industry just years before petroleum transformed the world's economy. Bissell went on to develop Petroleum Centre and other holdings around booming Oil City.
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.
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.
Oldest Oil Producing Well
Cornplanter Township, PA · est. 1958
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.