Oil creek as industrial apparatus: re-creating the industrial process through the landscape of Pennsylvania's oil boom

Environmental History

Volumn 3, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 210-229

  Black, Brian ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT; INDUSTRIAL HISTORY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; OIL PRODUCTION;

PENNSYLVANIA; USA;

EID: 0031664377     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3985380     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. The first written record of the stream is found in the diary of a Moravian minister who was traveling through the region. Zeisberger, "The Diaries of Zeisberger Relating to the First Missions in the Ohio Basin," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications XXI, 79.
2. Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Paul Giddens, Pennsylvania Petroleum: 1750-1872 (Titusville: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992); Harold Williamson and Arnold Daum, American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959).
3. Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Paul Giddens, Pennsylvania Petroleum: 1750-1872 (Titusville: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992); Harold Williamson and Arnold Daum, American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959).
4. Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Paul Giddens, Pennsylvania Petroleum: 1750-1872 (Titusville: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992); Harold Williamson and Arnold Daum, American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959).
5. Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Paul Giddens, Pennsylvania Petroleum: 1750-1872 (Titusville: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992); Harold Williamson and Arnold Daum, American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959).
6. For an extended discussion of the rule of capture, see Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and Brian Black, "Petrolia: The Landscape of Pennsylvania's Oil Boom, 1859-1872" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1996). Many sources deal with this transitional period in American history; none, however, specifically looks at the shifting use of technology and its influence on human relations with the natural environment. See Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), and Howard Mumford Jones, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865-1915 (New York: Viking Press, 1971).
7. For an extended discussion of the rule of capture, see Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and Brian Black, "Petrolia: The Landscape of Pennsylvania's Oil Boom, 1859-1872" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1996). Many sources deal with this transitional period in American history; none, however, specifically looks at the shifting use of technology and its influence on human relations with the natural environment. See Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), and Howard Mumford Jones, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865-1915 (New York: Viking Press, 1971).
8. For an extended discussion of the rule of capture, see Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and Brian Black, "Petrolia: The Landscape of Pennsylvania's Oil Boom, 1859-1872" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1996). Many sources deal with this transitional period in American history; none, however, specifically looks at the shifting use of technology and its influence on human relations with the natural environment. See Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), and Howard Mumford Jones, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865-1915 (New York: Viking Press, 1971).
9. For an extended discussion of the rule of capture, see Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and Brian Black, "Petrolia: The Landscape of Pennsylvania's Oil Boom, 1859-1872" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1996). Many sources deal with this transitional period in American history; none, however, specifically looks at the shifting use of technology and its influence on human relations with the natural environment. See Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), and Howard Mumford Jones, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865-1915 (New York: Viking Press, 1971).
10. See Brian Black, "Recasting the Unalterable Order of Nature," Pennsylvania History 64 (1997): 275-99, and "Delusions of Permanence: The Technological Sublime and the Development of the World's First Oil Boom," OASIS Working Paper Series, no. 22, Odense Center for American Studies, Odense, Denmark.
11. See Brian Black, "Recasting the Unalterable Order of Nature," Pennsylvania History 64 (1997): 275-99, and "Delusions of Permanence: The Technological Sublime and the Development of the World's First Oil Boom," OASIS Working Paper Series, no. 22, Odense Center for American Studies, Odense, Denmark.
12. Thousands of photos have been preserved in the form of glass-print negatives that reveal dated and identified scenes of the Oil Creek valley. This artifactual record, when combined with more traditional cultural sources, makes it possible to reveal the priorities and values of the culture that constructed these scenes. I use a definition of culture advanced by anthropologist Clifford Geertz: "As interworked systems of construable signs . . . culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be intelligibly - that is, thickly - described." The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: HarperCollins, 1973), 14 . My analysis of landscape is based on the writing of cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, whose methods for understanding perception and memory lend themselves nicely to the utilization of performance theory on landscape forms in order to use historic scenes and landscapes as a source for the study of cultural values and ethics. See, for instance, Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).
13. Thousands of photos have been preserved in the form of glass-print negatives that reveal dated and identified scenes of the Oil Creek valley. This artifactual record, when combined with more traditional cultural sources, makes it possible to reveal the priorities and values of the culture that constructed these scenes. I use a definition of culture advanced by anthropologist Clifford Geertz: "As interworked systems of construable signs . . . culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be intelligibly - that is, thickly - described." The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: HarperCollins, 1973), 14 . My analysis of landscape is based on the writing of cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, whose methods for understanding perception and memory lend themselves nicely to the utilization of performance theory on landscape forms in order to use historic scenes and landscapes as a source for the study of cultural values and ethics. See, for instance, Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).
14. Bureau of the Census, Census: 1870, vol. 3, Tables XIII and XIV, 760, 769.
15. J. H. A. Bone, Petroleum and Petroleum Wells (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1865), 55-56.
16. See, for instance, Andrew Cone and Walter R. Johns, Petrolia (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1870), 39-45; William Manning, Transactions and Collection of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 1 (Worcester, Mass., 1820), 310-12.
17. See, for instance, Andrew Cone and Walter R. Johns, Petrolia (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1870), 39-45; William Manning, Transactions and Collection of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 1 (Worcester, Mass., 1820), 310-12.
18. Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 1 (Boston, 1805), 375.
19. General William Irvin, Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, XI, no. 25, 516.
20. During the 1790s, bottles containing the substance found their way into urban areas, where they were called "Seneca Oil" and offered as a miraculous cure for many ailments, but particularly rheumatism. The American consumer normally ingested the Seneca oil much as he or she would castor oil. Giddens, Pennsylvania Petroleum, 5-8.
21. 12. Later, the lake would be given its present name, after Chief Canadaughta of the Cornplanter people of the Six Nations. See History of Venango County, Pennsylvania, 1879 (Franklin, Penn.: Venango County Historical Society, 1976). The deconstruction of commodities has shown that a natural resource is assigned a value by the surrounding or using culture. If placed in a capitalist economy, this value can transfer the resource into the standing of a commodity, in which case its use and management is orchestrated in a varying manner depending on its value, and therefore its supply. In 1965, Maurice Godelier, the French anthropologist, wrote "there are thus no resources as such, but only possibilities of resources provided by nature in the context of a given society at a certain moment in its evolution." For discussion of this topic's relation to natural resources, see William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), and Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
22. Later, the lake would be given its present name, after Chief Canadaughta of the Cornplanter people of the Six Nations. See History of Venango County, Pennsylvania, 1879 (Franklin, Penn.: Venango County Historical Society, 1976). The deconstruction of commodities has shown that a natural resource is assigned a value by the surrounding or using culture. If placed in a capitalist economy, this value can transfer the resource into the standing of a commodity, in which case its use and management is orchestrated in a varying manner depending on its value, and therefore its supply. In 1965, Maurice Godelier, the French anthropologist, wrote "there are thus no resources as such, but only possibilities of resources provided by nature in the context of a given society at a certain moment in its evolution." For discussion of this topic's relation to natural resources, see William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), and Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
23. Later, the lake would be given its present name, after Chief Canadaughta of the Cornplanter people of the Six Nations. See History of Venango County, Pennsylvania, 1879 (Franklin, Penn.: Venango County Historical Society, 1976). The deconstruction of commodities has shown that a natural resource is assigned a value by the surrounding or using culture. If placed in a capitalist economy, this value can transfer the resource into the standing of a commodity, in which case its use and management is orchestrated in a varying manner depending on its value, and therefore its supply. In 1965, Maurice Godelier, the French anthropologist, wrote "there are thus no resources as such, but only possibilities of resources provided by nature in the context of a given society at a certain moment in its evolution." For discussion of this topic's relation to natural resources, see William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), and Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
24. Unlike the gold rush, there was very little professional engineering or scientific involvement in early oil speculation. The geological occurrence was not understood until the mid-1860s, and the process of extraction was not standardized until around 1870. The most important contemporary articles on the occurrence of oil include E. B. Andrews, "Rock Oil, Its Geological Relations and Distribution," American Journal of Science and Arts 32 (1861): 85-93; Thomas Ridgway, "Report on the Oil District of Oil Creek in the State of Pennsylvania," Journal of the Franklin Institute 75 (1863): 269-73; and E. W. Evans, "On the Action of Oil-Wells," American Journal of Science and Arts 88 (1864): 159-66.
25. Unlike the gold rush, there was very little professional engineering or scientific involvement in early oil speculation. The geological occurrence was not understood until the mid-1860s, and the process of extraction was not standardized until around 1870. The most important contemporary articles on the occurrence of oil include E. B. Andrews, "Rock Oil, Its Geological Relations and Distribution," American Journal of Science and Arts 32 (1861): 85-93; Thomas Ridgway, "Report on the Oil District of Oil Creek in the State of Pennsylvania," Journal of the Franklin Institute 75 (1863): 269-73; and E. W. Evans, "On the Action of Oil-Wells," American Journal of Science and Arts 88 (1864): 159-66.
26. Unlike the gold rush, there was very little professional engineering or scientific involvement in early oil speculation. The geological occurrence was not understood until the mid-1860s, and the process of extraction was not standardized until around 1870. The most important contemporary articles on the occurrence of oil include E. B. Andrews, "Rock Oil, Its Geological Relations and Distribution," American Journal of Science and Arts 32 (1861): 85-93; Thomas Ridgway, "Report on the Oil District of Oil Creek in the State of Pennsylvania," Journal of the Franklin Institute 75 (1863): 269-73; and E. W. Evans, "On the Action of Oil-Wells," American Journal of Science and Arts 88 (1864): 159-66.
27. In much the same fashion as the 1860s journalists, I use Petrolia to designate a locale where myth and reality mix in the possibility of great fortune and the certainty of a massive impact upon the natural environment.
28. The term "commons" here means areas outside of general property boundaries. It is a resource shared by a number of users, with no real owner.
29. Cone and Johns, Petrolia, 259, 261.
30. Rev. S. J. M. Eaton, Petroleum (Philadelphia: J. P. Skelly and Co., 1866), 197.
31. Bone, Petroleum, 75.
32. The only recorded movements to improve sanitary conditions in the boom communities took place in Franklin and Titusville, both of which were fairly established and somewhat permanent. See Black, "Petrolia."
33. The lumber industry of the oil regions is discussed in Philip W. Ross, Oil Development in the Allegheny National Forest (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
34. Later, a dam was built specifically for this purpose just below Titusville. Black, "Petrolia."
35. At this time, seventeen sawmills and dams were located on the principal branches of Oil Creek. Paul H. Giddens, The Birth of the Oil Industry (1938; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972), 103.
36. Derrick's Hand-Book, vol. 1 (Oil City, Penn.: Petroleum Developments, 1898), 34; Giddens, Birth of the Oil Industry, 104.
37. Derrick's Hand-Book, vol. 1 (Oil City, Penn.: Petroleum Developments, 1898), 34; Giddens, Birth of the Oil Industry, 104.
38. Warren Mail, 24 January 1863.
39. Ibid.
40. Venango Spectator, 21 May 1862; Titusville Gazette and Oil Creek Reporter, 26 June 1862.
41. Venango Spectator, 21 May 1862; Titusville Gazette and Oil Creek Reporter, 26 June 1862.
42. Andrew Carnegie, Autobiography (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1924), 138.
43. Eaton, Petroleum, 166.
44. William Wright, The Oil Regions of Pennsylvania (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1865), 107.
45. Derrick's Hand-Book, 27; Venango Spectator, 13 May 1863; Warren Mail, 30 May 1863.
46. Derrick's Hand-Book, 27; Venango Spectator, 13 May 1863; Warren Mail, 30 May 1863.
47. Derrick's Hand-Book, 27; Venango Spectator, 13 May 1863; Warren Mail, 30 May 1863.
48. "Waifs from Petrolia," Boston Journal, 21 October 1865; Boston Journal, 23 October 1865.
49. "Waifs from Petrolia," Boston Journal, 21 October 1865; Boston Journal, 23 October 1865.
50. F. W. Beers, Atlas of the Oil Regions (New York: F. W. Beers, A. D. Ellis, and G. G. Soule, 1865).