Drake Oil Well Museum
Replica of the drill and pumping station at the Drake Oil Well museum in Titusville, Pennsylvania
Quick, where was the first oil well in the United States drilled? Texas? No. Alaska? Of course not! The first oil well in the United States was in Pennsylvania. The year was 1859 and a man named Edwin L. Drake drilled an oil well in Titusville Pennsylvania thus starting America’s oil industry.
The museum itself consists of the obligatory gift shop, a replica oil derrick and pumping station and a rock placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution commemorating the historic event that happened some 50 years earlier. Nowadays, since the well is dry, the pump just cycles crude in and out of the original hole, which is still interesting to watch.
The museum also has some displays on oil from around the world and some ways we’re dependent on oil that may not be obvious to many. Back in the day, for example, we used oil to melt the raw material needed to make glass.
Too bad they can’t find a little more crude in that well; we could use it!
Drake Well Museum
Themocracy
Mutter Museum in Philadelphia–a storehouse of medical oddities; skeletons of giants and midgets, an old lady with a horn, cyclops babies. Not for the squeamish or very religious.
I’ve heard of that but have never visited it. I’ll have to do some research on it.