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Authors: Seamus McGraw
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machines that could be run on this cheap, plentiful commodity, and John D. Rockefeller and his band of oil barons made sure they’d have plenty of the stuff available, firing a process that would reach its apex forty years after Drake’s well began operations when Henry Ford rolled his Quadricycle out onto the streets of Detroit. Soon, the remote backwater of Titusville turned into a boom-town, far more chaotic and fast-paced a place than Fredonia had ever been, and in the entire region, vast tracts of old-growth forest were felled so that the timbers could be used to build derricks to rush even more oil out of the ground. Great fortunes were about to be made—for everyone, it seems, except the crazy old make-believe colonel who had started it all.
Indeed, luck followed the industry and not its inventor. Drake had never bothered to patent his derrick or protect his techniques, and, ever the gambler, he lost what savings he had as a result of speculation in the wild markets of the 1860s. By the time he died in 1880, he was a penniless old man, living hand to mouth in the eastern Pennsylvania steel town of Bethlehem, far from the oil fields he had opened, with nothing but a $1,500-a-year pension that the state legislature had granted to him as a kind of thank-you for making so many other people rich.
P ROSPERITY IS FICKLE, AND , though Drake’s discovery in the scree of western Pennsylvania would change the world, the riches that Drake helped bring to Titusville, and from there throughout northern Appalachia, would not last forever. By the time my parents bought their piece of northern Appalachia, the boom was long over, and only the faintest echo of it remained.
It had started with a bang, that’s certain. At the beginning of thetwentieth century, refineries had sprouted along the banks of the Allegheny River, and in formerly sleepy river towns like Port Allegany at the headwater of the river 180 miles or so northeast of Pittsburgh, great mansions sprang up on wide, elm-lined boulevards to house the wealthy oil barons. But by the early 1920s, the great Appalachian energy boom was already starting to fade, a victim, in part, of technology. The old oil and gas fields of Appalachia were giving out the last of their easily gotten resources, and the cable drilling technology that had opened those fields in the first place was now old hat. It had been replaced by rotary drilling, in which a massive drill, less brutal but no less effective than its predecessor, whirls its way into the earth under enormous power.
Like most new technologies, rotary drilling was based on a very old idea. It was a concept that had its roots in ancient Egypt and got a facelift from Leonardo da Vinci in the late fifteenth century, but only really took off in the early part of the twentieth century. In much the same way that advances in technology in the last decade would open up vast new territories—including the Marcellus Shale—the rotary technology in the early twentieth century was opening up new fields for exploration all over the nation.
The real death blow to Appalachian energy was actually delivered in 1901 and half a continent away from Titusville when, after several failed attempts, a wildcatter named Anthony F. Lucas—Captain Anthony F. Lucas, as he called himself—decided to take one last stab at sinking a well into the Spindletop salt dome outside Beaumont, Texas.
At first, nothing happened, and then, in the winter of 1900–01, just as the investors seemed ready to pull the plug, Lucas made one last attempt. On January 10, 1901, using what was then state-of-the-art rotary-bit technology—essentially a big whirling jackhammer—they set off a 150-foot-high gusher that dwarfed anything ever seen in Appalachia. In so doing they not only launched the modern age of oil but made the sandy southwest its epicenter for the next seventy years, creating with it the classic image of the Texas oilman, an icon that has lasted, as it turns
Indeed, luck followed the industry and not its inventor. Drake had never bothered to patent his derrick or protect his techniques, and, ever the gambler, he lost what savings he had as a result of speculation in the wild markets of the 1860s. By the time he died in 1880, he was a penniless old man, living hand to mouth in the eastern Pennsylvania steel town of Bethlehem, far from the oil fields he had opened, with nothing but a $1,500-a-year pension that the state legislature had granted to him as a kind of thank-you for making so many other people rich.
P ROSPERITY IS FICKLE, AND , though Drake’s discovery in the scree of western Pennsylvania would change the world, the riches that Drake helped bring to Titusville, and from there throughout northern Appalachia, would not last forever. By the time my parents bought their piece of northern Appalachia, the boom was long over, and only the faintest echo of it remained.
It had started with a bang, that’s certain. At the beginning of thetwentieth century, refineries had sprouted along the banks of the Allegheny River, and in formerly sleepy river towns like Port Allegany at the headwater of the river 180 miles or so northeast of Pittsburgh, great mansions sprang up on wide, elm-lined boulevards to house the wealthy oil barons. But by the early 1920s, the great Appalachian energy boom was already starting to fade, a victim, in part, of technology. The old oil and gas fields of Appalachia were giving out the last of their easily gotten resources, and the cable drilling technology that had opened those fields in the first place was now old hat. It had been replaced by rotary drilling, in which a massive drill, less brutal but no less effective than its predecessor, whirls its way into the earth under enormous power.
Like most new technologies, rotary drilling was based on a very old idea. It was a concept that had its roots in ancient Egypt and got a facelift from Leonardo da Vinci in the late fifteenth century, but only really took off in the early part of the twentieth century. In much the same way that advances in technology in the last decade would open up vast new territories—including the Marcellus Shale—the rotary technology in the early twentieth century was opening up new fields for exploration all over the nation.
The real death blow to Appalachian energy was actually delivered in 1901 and half a continent away from Titusville when, after several failed attempts, a wildcatter named Anthony F. Lucas—Captain Anthony F. Lucas, as he called himself—decided to take one last stab at sinking a well into the Spindletop salt dome outside Beaumont, Texas.
At first, nothing happened, and then, in the winter of 1900–01, just as the investors seemed ready to pull the plug, Lucas made one last attempt. On January 10, 1901, using what was then state-of-the-art rotary-bit technology—essentially a big whirling jackhammer—they set off a 150-foot-high gusher that dwarfed anything ever seen in Appalachia. In so doing they not only launched the modern age of oil but made the sandy southwest its epicenter for the next seventy years, creating with it the classic image of the Texas oilman, an icon that has lasted, as it turns
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