440 International Those Were the Days
August 27
OIL DAY
The Drake Well w/Colonel Edwin L Drake and Peter Wilson Titusville, PA, August 27, 1859. A shaft was being sunk deep in the ground and the drill had reached 69 feet, 6 inches. W.A. Smith, better known to the drillers and other folk in the small town in Western Pennsylvania as Uncle Billy, saw a dark film floating on the water. The water was below the derrick floor.

Colonel Edwin Drake kept drilling, because what Uncle Billy saw was oil. Soon, the first commercial oil well was pumping out 20 barrels of crude oil a day.

This wasn’t Texas crude. It wasn’t Oklahoma gold. This was Pennsylvania oil, folks; Titusville, PA: home of the first oil well.



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