He worked at various jobs in Titusville, then moved to New York City, Vermont, and New Jersey. With the spread of Drake’s drilling techniques, Titusville and other northwestern Pennsylvania communities became boomtowns.ĭrake drilled two more wells for the Seneca company, but he failed to patent his drill-pipe methods and never became a success in oil speculation. He solved the problem by driving sections of pipe into the ground until bedrock was struck, and from there the drilling continued until the top of an oil deposit was reached at a depth of 69 feet (21 metres) on August 27, 1859. He began drilling in May 1858 and almost immediately found it impossible to maintain a borehole in the loose rock and soil just below the surface. Seeing the futility of gathering oil from surface seeps or trying to mine it from excavated shafts, Drake studied the techniques of drilling salt wells and decided to bore for the oil. After Drake returned to New Haven with a favourable report, the New Haven stockholders formed a new company, the Seneca Oil Company, sold some stock to Drake, and sent him back to develop the site. Letters of introduction to businessmen in the area referred to Drake as “Colonel,” and for the rest of his life he was known as Colonel Drake. The company hoped to make money selling the oil for lighting, and to this end the stockholders sent Drake to Titusville to assess the viability of the enterprise. In 1857, while living in New Haven, Connecticut, Drake met stockholders of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, which claimed a lease on land near Titusville, Pennsylvania, where oil had been gathered from ground-level seepages for medicinal uses. In 1850 he became a conductor on the New York and New Haven Railroad, but a few years later he had to retire for health reasons. (age 61) Greenville, New York, United Statesĭrake worked as a hotel and dry-goods clerk before becoming an agent for the Boston and Albany Railroad.
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