The Allegheny River traffic grew to great proportions— fully r,000 boats and some thirty steamers were in the fleet, and at least 4,000 men. This traffic was developed by men who saw here their opportunity of fortune, as others had seen it in drilling or teaming. The foremost of these men was an Ohio River captain, driven northward by the war, one J. J. Vandergrift. Captain Vandergrift had run the full gamut of river experiences from cabin-boy to owner and commander of his own steamers. The war stopped his Mis sissippi River trade. Fitting up one of his steamers as a gun-boat, he turned it over to Commodore Foote and looked for a new stream to navigate. From the Oil Region at that moment the loudest cry was for barrels. He towed 4,000 empty casks up the river, saw at once the need of some kind of bulk transportation, took his hint from a bulk-boat which an ingenious experimenter was trying, ordered a dozen of them built, towed his fleet to the creek, bought oil to fill them, and then returned to Pittsburg to sell his cargo. On one alone he made $7o,000.
But the railroad soon pressed the river hard. At the time of the discovery of oil three lines, the Philadelphia and Erie, the Buffalo and Erie (now the Lake Shore), connecting with the Central, and the Atlantic and Great Western, connecting with the Erie, were within teaming distance of the region. The points at which the Philadelphia and Erie road could be reached were Erie, forty miles from Titusville, Union City, twenty-two miles, and Corry, sixteen miles. The Buf falo and Erie was reached at Erie. The Atlantic and Great Western was reached at Meadville, Union City and Corry, - and the distances were twenty-eight, twenty-two and sixteen miles, respectively. Erie was the favourite shipping point at first, as the wagon road in that direction was the best. The amount of freight the railroads carried the first year of the business was enormous. Of course connecting lines were built as rapidly as men could work. By the beginning of 1863 the Oil Creek road, as it was known, had reached Titusville from Corry. This gave an eastern connection by both the Phila delphia and Erie and the Atlantic and Great Western, but as the latter was constructing a branch from Meadville to Franklin, the Oil Creek road became the feeder of the for mer principally. Both of these roads were completed to Oil City by 1865.
The railroads built, the vexatious, time-taking, and costly problem of getting the oil from the well to the shipping point still remained. The teamster was still the tyrant of the business. His day was almost over. He was to fall before the pipe-line. The feasibility of carrying oil in pipes was dis cussed almost from the beginning of the oil business. Very soon after the Drake well was struck oil men began to say that the natural way to get this oil from the wells to the rail roads was through pipes. In many places gravity would
carry it; where it could not, pumps would force it. The belief that this could be done was so strong that as early as Febru ary, 1862, a company was incorporated in Pennsylvania for carrying oil in pipes or tubes from any point on Oil Creek to its mouth or to any station on the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad. This company seems never to have done more than get a charter. In 1863 at least three short pipe-lines were put into operation. The first of these was a two-inch pipe, through which distillate was pumped a distance of three miles from the Warren refinery at Plumer to Warren's Landing on the Allegheny River. The one which attracted the most attention was a line two and one-half miles in length carrying crude oil from the Tarr farm to the Humboldt refinery at Plumer. Various other experiments were made, both gravity and pumps being trusted for propelling the oil, but there was always something wrong; the pipes leaked or burst, the pumps were too weak; shifting oil centres interrupted experi ments which might have been successful. Then suddenly the man for the need appeared, Samuel Van Syckel. He came to the creek in 1864 with some money, hoping to make more. He handled quantities of oil produced at Pithole, several miles .from a shipping point, and saw his profits eaten up by teamsters. Their tyranny aroused his ire and his wits and he determined to build a pipe-line from the wells to the rail road. He was greeted with jeers, but he went doggedly ahead, laid a two-inch pipe, put in three relay pumps, and turned in his oil. From the start the line was a success, carrying eighty barrels of oil an hour. The day that the Van Syckel pipe-line began to run oil a revolution began in the business. After the Drake well it is the most important event in the history of the Oil Regions.
The teamsters saw its meaning first and turned out in fury, dragging the pipe, which was for the most part buried, to the I surface, and cutting it so that the oil would be lost. It was only by stationing an armed guard that they were held in check. A second line of importance, that of Abbott and Harley, suffered even more than that of Van Syckel. The teamsters did more than cut the pipe; they burned the tanks in which oil was stored, laid in wait for employees, threatened with destruction the wells which furnished the oil, and so generally terrorised the country that the governor of the state was called upon in April, 1866, to protect the property and men of the lines. The day of the teamster was over, however, and the more philosophical of them accepted the situation; scores disappeared from the region, and scores more took to drilling. They died hard, and the cutting and plug ging of pipe-lines was for years a pastime of the remnant of their race.