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The well is the centerpiece of the Drake Well Museum located 3 miles (5 km) south of Titusville. Drilled by Edwin Drake in 1859, along the banks of Oil Creek, it is the first commercial oil well in the United States. Drake Well was listed on National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
The reconstructed Drake Well demonstrates the first practical use of salt drilling techniques for the extraction of petroleum through an oil well. A historic site, the museum is located in Cherrytree Township, 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Titusville on Drake Well Road, situated between Pennsylvania Routes 8 and 27.
Before petroleum was used as a fuel, oil had many uses. In Pennsylvania, the Native American tribes had been using oil from seeps for several centuries. Early European explorers discovered evidence of troughs dug alongside the creek where Native American tribes had collected oil for use as ointment, insect repellant, skin coloring and in religious ceremonies.
The importance of the Drake Well near Titusville was that it prompted the first great wave of investment and additional drilling that established petroleum as a major industry. [11] Within a day of Drake's striking oil, Drake’s methods were being imitated by others along Oil Creek and in the immediate area.
Pithole, or Pithole City, is a ghost town in Cornplanter Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania, United States, about 6 miles (9.7 km) from Oil Creek State Park and the Drake Well Museum, the site of the first commercial oil well in the United States. [3]
At Drake Well Museum, southeast of Titusville 41°36′42″N 79°39′27″W / 41.61168°N 79.65747°W / 41.61168; -79.65747 ( Drake Well Roadside
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Before the Drake well, oil-producing wells in the United States were wells that were drilled for salt brine, and produced oil and gas only as accidental byproducts. Historians have noted that the importance of the Drake well was not in being the first well to produce oil, but in attracting the first great wave of investment in oil drilling ...