174 I. C. WHITE HISTORY OF PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS 



to this valuable fluid in the United States was made as early as 1776 by 

 General Washington, who preempted the land around the "burning 

 spring," nine miles above Charleston, in the Great Kanawha Valley, 

 which he described as "A bituminous spring of so inflammable a nature as 

 to burst forth" (take fire) "as freely as spirits and is nearly as difficult 

 to extinguish." It is also well known that the first use of natural gas 

 for manufacturing purposes in America was by Mr. William Tompkins 

 in the same Kanawha Valley, who in 1841 struck a large flow of gas 

 in boring a salt well only a few hundred feet distant from the 

 "burning spring" that Washington had noted 66 years before and, 

 piping the gas to his salt works, used it instead of coal in boiling down 

 the brines, displacing several hundred bushels of coal daily. These 

 early utilizations of petroleum and natural gas in America and many 

 other countries of the world, however, were all meager, sporadic, and 

 of no general economic importance. 



Colonel Drake's Well the real beginning of tfie Petroleum 



Industry 



In spite of the fact that these valuable hydrocarbons had been known 

 to the human race for more than twenty-five centuries, it remained for 

 an American, Col. E. L. Drake, of the Seneca Oil Company, to become 

 the real founder of the petroleum industr}^, when, on August 28, 1859, 

 only 61 years ago, he completed the famous well on Oil Creek, near 

 Titusville, Venango County, Pennsylvania. This notable event in 

 petroleum history, occurring at a time when "rock oil" was selling for 

 $25 to $30 per barrel, soon led to a drilling campaign of wide extent, 

 spreading to Ohio, West Virginia, and Canada in 1860, and to Eussia 

 in 1862, where hand digging of wells was carried on until seven years 

 later, when it was supplanted by the drill, the production of Eussia then 

 rising from 37,400 barrels in 1863 to 203,000 in 1869. 



Modern History of Petroleum and natural Gas divisible into 



three principal Epochs 



The historical development of petroleum and natural gas since 1862 

 is naturally divisible into three periods of approximately twenty years 

 each, characterized by different phases of progress. 



Characteristics of first Epoch 



The twenty years of petroleum and natural gas history from 1862 to 

 1883 might be termed the epoch of mechanical invention in the pro- 



