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Oil Creek as Industrial Apparatus: Re-creating the Industrial Process through the Landscape of Pennsylvania's Oil Boom

Cut into the firm limestone rock that constructs the surface geology of most of Pennsylvania, a slight, seemingly insignificant creek ties the runoff from a wide portion of western Pennsylvania to the broad, sedate flow of the Allegheny River. Today, it is a stream disrupted only by fly-fishermen in season, canoers in the spring, and hikers and bikers in good weather. Well concealed in a lightly populated region one hundred miles north of Pittsburgh (see map), this creek resembles many waterways in the state except for one detail: the black substance that profusely seeps to the Earth's surface throughout the surrounding region. Indeed, the first European observers dubbed this stream Oil Creek., Contemporary observers might think that with such a name this place's story can be assumed, but the meaning of the name has varied with that of the crude's natural appearance here. Prior to 1859, the termspetroleumand oilhindered settlement. During the subsequent boom, however, oil meant incredible economic opportunity. Since the 1870s, the name Oil Creek has increasingly provided a connection with the region's storied past, a story defined almost completely by this natural resource. As humans learned the value of this region's unique geology, the oil story increasingly embodied the nature of this place. Oil Creek's tale reveals that the process of commodification does not necessarily sever a locale from its nature; boom periods become mere chapters in an ongoing story. That story began in the Oil Creek valley with the early discovery of pools and seeps, and the region continued to be identified with this oddly occurring substance throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But with no known use for rock oil during much of this period, Oil Creek's name signified a nuisance to potential agricultural development. The word petroleum on maps firmly discouraged settlement in this region except as a last resort. On August 27, 1859, a single act showed just how quickly such ideas could be altered.