The First Oil Well

Titusville Pennsylvania claims the distinction of having the first well drilled for the purpose of striking oil in 1859, and much of the history of oil revolves around this discovery. However, a well at Burkesville Kentucky hit a gusher thirty years earlier in 1829. The oil shot up out of the ground fifty feet into the air, filling and flowing down a nearby stream into the Cumberland River where it covered the river from bank to bank to Selina Tennessee, a distance of 200 miles. It spewed forth an estimated fifty thousand barrels, and someone or something ignited the Cumberland, creating a two hundred mile river of fire for weeks. Where's an environmentalist when you need one.

To be fair to Titusville Pensylvania's claim to fame, the Burkesville Kentucky well was not drilled for oil, but for brine. Salt was an essential commodity to the pioneer settlers and one way they acquired it was by boiling off brine water. A fellow named Martin Beatty had accepted the job of drilling a brine well for a Dr. John Croghan from the Burkesville area. The drilling equipment was a crude, home make apparatus operated by foot power, and he had been laboriously drilling for weeks. Exasperated it's said he exclaimed one day "I will strike salt or I will strike hell". Some time after that his bit broke through into a pocket of gas and oil rocketing the rope and bit into the air followed by a fifty foot gusher of oil. It was reported he ran off into the woods never to be seen in the area again. I wonder if he was anywhere around to see the Cumberland on fire. He might well have thought he'd indeed unleashed hell upon the Earth.

When we think of oil producing states, we don't normally think of Kentucky. From where I sit here in south central Kentucky there are hundreds of wells pumping away in any direction you care to travel, several within two or three miles. Some of those wells have been steady producers for half a century and are still flowing. Most are not gushers, nor can they be pumped steadily. They determine the oil flow in any particular well and set the pumps on timers. It will pump for a while, then shut off long enough to allow the oil to flow back in before the pump comes back on.