It was soon evident, however, that there was no profit to be made in operating under the old method of skimming the oil from the surface of pits and streams. Some way of securing larger quantities must be devised if the oil were to become important in domestic and industrial uses, and the company made a financial success. The suggestion which offered a solution for this problem is said to have come by a strange coincidence from one of Kier's old patent-medicine circulars bearing a picture of the artesian well from which he claimed to have secured his oil. It not only recalled the ex periences of the salt makers who had encountered oil in their drilling, but it also suggested a means of tapping the subterranean reservoir from which petroleum was then supposed to come.
The New Haven company, after many delays and difficulties, succeeded in formulating a plan for a drilled well on the Oil Creek property. For some unexplainable reason the work was placed in charge of Edwin L. Drake, then a conductor on the New York and New Haven Railroad. He left for Oil Creek in 1858, and at the time of his depart ure, for business purposes it is said, his employers bestowed on him the dignified title of "Colonel," by which lie was known forever after. Drake im mediately began to encounter difficulties. All sorts of tales are told about his constant lack of funds and the obstacles he had to overcome in getting hold of even the barest necessities to carry on oper ations, but, be that as it may, Drake unquestion ably found the actual drilling of a well to be a seri ous task.
In sinking the salt wells the general practice had been to dig an open pit down to the bed rocks and then begin operations with the drilling tools. Along Oil Creek, however, the loose deposits were especially deep, and, despite all efforts, the sand was continually caving in and filling up the pit. To add to Drake's difficulties competent workmen were hard to get, and still harder to keep, on ac count of the demand for experienced men to drill wells for brine, where the work was easier and the pay more certain. At last, in 1859, as a reward for
his perseverance, Drake succeeded in surmounting his worst obstacles. To overcome the caving of the sand he hit on the ingenious idea of driving an iron pipe down to solid rock, and then operating his boring tools through the pipe. At the same time he succeeded in obtaining as drillman and helpers one William Smith and his sons, skilled workmen, who had had long experience in drilling salt wells, among others those from which Kier is said to have secured his oil.
Repeated attempts finally resulted in success fully forcing Drake's iron drive pipe through fifty-odd feet of sand, a depth which presented an almost impossible barrier to the old method of digging in an open pit. The drillers then com menced operations, and found that they could con tinue without any further trouble from caving. Concerning subsequent events every narrator has his own tale to tell. There has been in later years more or less inclination to clothe the drilling of Drake's well with as much romance as possible, but the real facts of the case are decidedly prosaic. Two or three feet a day was the best progress the drills could make, and, stopping one night with a depth of about sixty-nine feet to their credit, the men returned in the morning to find the well nearly full of oil.
Then it was that the romance came. On that day, late in August, 1859, Drake and his drillman, " Uncle Billy" Smith, had brought into existence the first well ever drilled for oil in the United States, and won for themselves everlasting fame in the annals of the petroleum industry. With one stroke they had ushered in a new era for the petro leum industry of the whole world.