The first commercial oil well struck oil in Pennsylvania
On this day · 27 August 1859
At sixty-nine and a half feet near Titusville, a former railroad conductor's stubborn well tapped the modern petroleum age.
On August 27, 1859, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, a well drilled specifically for oil struck it at a depth of 69.5 feet. The project was run by Edwin L. Drake, an agent of the Seneca Oil Company, with salt-well driller William “Uncle Billy” Smith turning the tools.
The loose ground kept collapsing into the borehole, so Drake hammered iron pipe down to bedrock and drilled on through it, a method that made deeper oil drilling practical.
The well that everyone called “Drake’s Folly” had just opened an industry.
Kerosene for lamps was the immediate prize, but the strike triggered a frenzy. Pennsylvania’s output leapt from about 2,000 barrels in 1859 to roughly 500,000 by 1865. Drake himself died poor, having neglected to patent his technique, yet his shallow Titusville well is widely marked as the birthplace of the modern petroleum industry.
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