The early development of the industry must be credited bodily to western Pennsylvania. For fif teen years after Drake's well began to yield an " incredible quantity, at the rate of twenty-five barrels a day," Pennsylvania produced practically the entire yield of crude oil. The extension of op erations in all directions from Oil Creek had brought the total amount above 10,000,000 barrels by 1874, yet only small additional supplies were produced outside the limits of that state.
During the boom days in the sixties, the hope of " striking oil " led to the drilling of wells every where from Michigan to Alabama, and from Massa chusetts to Missouri. Traces of oil, it is true, were found in innumerable cases, but, with a few excep tions, they were nothing more than traces with absolutely no prospect of securing oil in paying quantities. The two important exceptions were in West Virginia and Ohio. After Drake's success, boring for oil was done in both states, and several producing wells were struck. In West Virginia, a second oil boom to rival the one in Pennsylvania was beginning, with a town projected and a crowd of speculators at hand, when the Civil War broke out. Confederate raiders burned the stores of oil, destroyed the wells, and completely obliterated all trace of the progress made. Successful operations were resumed in 1865, but the combined supply from both states ten years later was less than two per cent of the total production for the country.
The first important development outside of Pennsylvania came in 1885 and 1886 in the north western part of Ohio, in the district since known as the Lima field. The development started more or less accidentally through efforts to secure a sup ply of natural gas. This product of the oil regions was then being very profitably used in Pennsyl vania, and for many years it had been burned on a small scale in the vicinity of Lima, Ohio. In 1885 a well drilled in an attempt to secure a larger supply of gas near that place produced a fair quan tity of oil, instead. This result was entirely unex pected, for all the Ohio petroleum prior to that time had been confined to a small district in the southeastern part of the state along the edge of the great Appalachian field.
The new deposit was wholly unlike that found in the older localities, the character and quality being quite inferior to the Pennsylvania product. In
fact, the color was so dark and the odor so dis agreeable that the oil was regarded with general disfavor. It was the first of the sulphur or " stink ing oils," and because this quality prevented its manufacture into kerosene by the processes then known, its use was confined largely to fuel pur poses for some time. But, strangely enough, the character of the oil had no bad effect on the rapid expansion of operations. There was a plentiful demand for fuel, and as wells were drilled in great numbers, the production for the state increased with giant strides.
Ninety thousand barrels in 1884, then over half a million, a million and three quarters, five million, ten millions barrels, is the summary of four years' growth. By this time persistent experiments had succeeded in perfecting processes to eliminate the sulphur and make possible the manufacture of ker osene from the Lima oil. Ohio refined products im mediately became an important factor in the oil market, and at the same time the oil was more valu able to the produceis. Additional developments were thereby directly stimulated with the annual production steadily mounting upward. The even tual outcome was already apparent, for the older localities were slowly dropping back from their long unrivalled position so far in the lead. In just ten years from the time the Lima field was opened, Ohio forged to the front as the most important petroleum-producing state in the country. For full thirty-five years supremacy, undisputed, unap proached, in the country, in the whole world even, had belonged to Pennsylvania, the pioneer. Now the leadership was gone from the states of the Appalachian field, never to return.
West Virginia was the next one to enter the ranks of important producers. A wildcat well drilled in the fall of 1889, in Marion county, far away from any other known productive area, proved to be a profitable venture, and, in spite of the necessity of drilling to great depths in most localities before the oil-bearing strata were reached, the industry increased immediately. The Pennsyl vania output was declining rapidly during the nineties, nothwithstanding every effort to keep it up to former levels, and at the end of the decade it was forced to yield second rank to the younger field to the south.