ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 12, 1997 TAG: 9701110001
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PETROLEUM CENTER, PA.
SOURCE: RANDY KRAFT THE ALLENTOWN MORNING CALL
Riding a rental bicycle through the peaceful ``valley that changed the world,'' it's hard to imagine this beautiful wilderness once was a sprawling industrial site that became an environmental disaster.
About 125 years ago, this valley in northwestern Pennsylvania was ``wall-to-wall oil derricks.'' All the trees were chopped down to build derricks and provide fuel for noisy engines that operated oil well pumps. Steam locomotives rumbled up and down both sides of the creek. Smoke spewed from small refineries dotting the landscape.
The lack of trees caused soil erosion, turning the area into a sea of mud. When oil prices dropped too low, it was allowed to flow into the wide stream. At least once, Oil Creek caught fire, and burned for miles.
Now all the derricks are gone and the valley, again covered with forests, looks much as it did before the oil boom of the 1860s and early 1870s. But in winter, when leaves are off the trees, pump jacks, pipes and storage tanks can still be seen scattered in the woods of Oil Creek State Park.
The paved bicycle path follows one old railroad bed. In warm weather, a diesel-powered tourist train chugs up and down the other rail line across the stream.
The world changed here on Aug. 27, 1859, when Edwin L. Drake struck oil. He did not discover oil. People already knew about oil, but Drake was the first to find commercially viable quantities and spur an entirely new industry. He is called the founder of the modern petroleum industry.
Thousands followed Drake into this valley, especially after the Civil War, building large oil boom towns, some of which are now ghost towns.
Folks at the Drake Well Museum note what happened here did indeed change the world, far more than wars or revolutions.
Considering that, this area probably deserves much more attention. That's exactly why it has been designated a Pennsylvania Heritage Park. Its official name, Oil Heritage Region, is more appropriate, because it's much more than a park. It includes Venango County, as well as Titusville just across the northern boundary in Crawford County.
In late October, I was among the first group of travel writers invited to spend 21/2 days exploring the Oil Heritage Region.
The best-known landmark is a replica of Drake's oil well at Drake Well Museum, a state historic site just south of Titusville.
Most of the region's other attractions don't exactly reach out and grab you - including small but worthwhile nickelodeon and ``Wild West'' museums in Franklin.
But Venango County also is gaining popularity for outdoor recreation. Its paved bicycle trail system eventually will cross the entire county. And Allegheny River and Oil Creek are popular for fishing and canoeing.
The 7,075-acre Oil Creek State Park preserves nearly 14 miles of ``the valley that changed the world.'' People fish for bass and trout in the once-lifeless stream.
``Nature has done a fabulous job of recovering here,'' said Barbara Zolli, site administrator at Drake Museum, at the north end of the state park. ``You never see a slick of oil on Oil Creek.''
But at a historic site named Boughton in the park, she added, you can still smell sulfur and see spots where vegetation doesn't grow, because sulfuric acid was poured on the ground. A sulfuric acid recycling operation was in that spot, said Carolyn Worley, the state park's environmental education specialist. She added: ``It will be at least another 100 years before it recovers.''
Petroleum Center, where the state park office is located, was an oil boom town with as many as 5,000 residents. It had the reputation of being ``the wickedest town east of Gold Rush California.'' Although still on state highway maps, now it has only one resident.
An even bigger boom town was Pithole, which grew to have more than 15,000 residents in just nine months. It had 57 hotels, some three stories tall. It even had suburbs. Zolli said Pithole, now a state historic site, is the largest ghost town in Pennsylvania. But nothing remains except a visitors center.
This isn't the best time of year to visit the Oil Heritage Region. The 10-year-old Oil Creek & Titusville tourist railroad has stopped regular operations until June. The visitors center at Pithole is closed until late May. So is TyredWheels Museum, a mom-and-pop place filled with 25 antique cars, an airplane, thousands of miniature vehicles, toys and much more.
Drake Well Museum includes much more than the familiar wooden derrick and engine house building, a replica of his second well. With indoor and outdoor exhibits, including a much taller oil derrick and portable drilling rigs, the museum covers 219 acres along Oil Creek.
In the replica wellhouse is a drilling rig and a steam engine that operates it. ``Everything around you is a reproduction except the hole in the ground,'' said Zolli. ``The hole in the ground is the real thing.''
Outside, rusty steel bars, called rod lines, stretch across the grounds from another engine house to operate pumping jacks. One engine could operating pumping jacks on six wells, said Zolli.
Visitors are surprised to learn no actual drilling is done on museum grounds. ``We don't own the mineral rights,'' said Zolli, adding a New York family owns those rights, but the state does not allow drilling on the site.
The museum building is across the lawn from, and much larger than, Drake's wellhouse. Zolli wants to revamp indoor exhibits, saying they were state of the art when installed in the late 1960s. She wants to create a simulated oil field environment. ``We've taken some hits as a museum that we are too clean and too pretty. We're going to make it more authentic.''
A transportation exhibit building being erected will be followed by another to house restored engines and a leased house of the 1940s, to show how people who managed oil wells lived.
Schoolchildren still clap at the end of a 27-minute film, ``Born in Freedom: The Story of Colonel Drake.'' Made for the museum in 1954 by the petroleum industry, it stars Vincent Price and boasts that ``American ingenuity, freedom and independence'' created an entirely new industry.
In the gift shop, you can buy tiny bottles of ``pure Pennsylvania crude oil'' for 94 cents, but books and T-shirts are more popular.
Drake's success did not make him a wealthy man. Because other wells that soon followed were much more productive, he and his partners went out of business.
The man who dug the first successful oil well became largely forgotten. Drake lived in Bethlehem, Pa., poor and in ill health, for the last six years of his life. He died on Nov. 8, 1880, and was buried in Bethlehem.
In 1902, Drake was re-interred, in front of a heroic memorial, in Woodlawn Cemetery outside Titusville. The American Petroleum Institute erected a monument, complete with a bronze sculpture called The Driller, at Drake's grave. It praises Drake as ``founder of the petroleum industry, the friend of man...''
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: RANDY KRAFT ALLENTOWN MORNING CALL. 1. A statue standsby CNBguard at the Wild West Museum in Franklin, in the heart of
Pennsylvania's Oil Heritage Region. 2. The bicycle trail system
(above) in Venango County, Pa., eventually will cross the entire
county. 3. A good place to begin learning about the region's history
is at Drake Well Museum (right), a state historic site just south of
Titusville. 4. The American Petroleum Institute erected a monument
(above) called The Driller at the grave of Edwin Drake. 5. At Oil
Creek State Park, the Oil Creek & Titusville railroad (right) is one
of the attractions. color.