The tapping of the first commercial oil well by Edwin Drake and Billy Smith in 1859 set off an exploitative boom of industrial development reminiscent of the California gold rush ten years earlier. Within a few short years, the farms and forests of northwestern Pennsylvania were obliterated and replaced with oil derricks, storage tanks, pump houses and shacks. Floods were intensified, fires were dangerous and dramatic, towns built and abandoned, and fortunes made, lost and stolen. An urban landscape was erected to service the industry. In this work, Brian Black offers a geographical and social history of a region that was not only the site of America's first oil boom but was also the world's largest oil producer between 1859 and 1873. Against the background of changes in attitudes toward consumption and the growing demand for petroleum throughout and immediately following the Civil War, Black describes Oil Creek Valley's descent into environmental hell. Known as "Petrolia," the region charged the popular imagination with its nearly overnight transition from agriculture to industry.
So unrestrained were these early efforts at oil drilling, Black writes, that "the landscape came to be viewed only as an instrument out of which one could extract crude." In a very short time, Petrolia was a ruined place - environmentally, economically, and to some extent even culturally. Black gives historical detail and analysis to account for this transformation.