BOOM TIMES AND THE PENNSYLVANIA OIL BUBBLE As soon as the news of Drake's success became well known, crowds of people from all sections of the country flocked to see the natural wonder. Everybody was carried away at the thought of the possibilities which it presented. Here was offered a chance to get rich quick apparently presented with a greater degree of certainty than ever before in the memory of man. It was not a business that required years of training, long experience and hard work to bring success. By the investment of a few thousand dollars the lucky operator had be fore him the chance of winning a fortune in the course of a few months. Vast, indeed, was the tide of humanity which surged into the oil regions in answer to these alluring prospects, bringing repre sentatives from every state, froM almost every country of the world, to try their luck in the back woods of Pennsylvania.
Men rushed by scores and hundreds to secure plots of land in the oil region, and, in the few years following 1859, wells appeared as if by magic up and down the valleys. In this quiet farming coun try the plow disappeared to make way for the oil derrick. Farms were sold ; old and young joined the ranks of the speculators; and poor men to-day were dreaming of millions which might be theirs to-morrow. So great was the excitement that men found no sacrifice too hard to make in order to raise funds for a lease of a plot, whereon they could sink a well, with the hope of securing a fortune in a single season.
During the first years of the oil boom the devel opments were confined largely to the operations of men of only moderate means. Men of wealth ap parently hesitated about investing in any enter prise which had sprung into existence so suddenly, for in the early annals of the oil fields are found practically no names familiarly connected with the important affairs of that day. The pioneers in the field, like Drake himself, were largely a class of adventurers, often roving spirits who had seen much of the world and came here trusting to their wits and energy to bring them success. In the rush for leases and wells it soon became a case of the "devil take the hindmost." Ignorance of the real character of the oil and its condition of occurrence made impossible any system of development ; in deed, it is doubtful if any system, however per fect, would have been followed, so great was the desire of everybody to secure a producing well be fore his neighbors. It was inevitable, therefore,
that .many failed in their first ventures and, hav ing staked all they possessed, were reduced to ab ject poverty. But the hope of "striking oil" seems never to have ceased in the breasts of these gamblers with fate. Labor was in great demand, wages were good, and many a laborer rose rapidly to be a leaseholder, a well owner and, if fortunate, a man of wealth in the community.
The general appearance of the oil country was quickly changed. Derricks and engine houses re placed the humble backwoods dwellings; and a spirit of restless activity took the place of former peaceful quiet. Two years after Drake's well was completed, the valley of Oil Creek, still the only producing locality of any consequence, had under gone such a startling transformation as to be no longer recognizable as its former self. For ten miles up and down the Creek stretched continuous lines of tall derricks towering above the rude en gine houses and board shanties where the operators lived. A hustling town ten miles long filled a valley where only yesterday had stretched green fields and quiet pastures.
Oil City, on the Allegheny River, at the mouth of the creek, became the natural center of the in dustry through its superior advantages as a ship ping point. A small village proudly boasting the possession of a grist mill, iron furnace, hotel and boat landing had flourished there during the boom ing days of lumbering about the headwaters of the Allegheny, but with the disappearance of the log ging crews the place had fallen into decay, and was almost dead and forgotten when Drake first visited the locality. The revival beginning in 1860, how ever, was tremendously rapid, exceeding in a sin gle season anything that the place had ever known before. Capitalists, speculators, prospectors, trad ers, laborers, gamblers, all kinds and classes of hu manity poured in, until within a few years the hustling population numbered not far from ten thousand.