This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ...it to the nearest railroad station. This cheapness of oil at the wells greatly checked production for two or three years, until more satisfactory means of securing, refining, and distributing it could be provided. These means were obtainable through the building of new railroads, and the introduction of pipe lines for pumping it to the railroad stations, so that, in 1864, crude oil sold as high as fourteen dollars a barrel. A single flowing well, struck that year, producing three hundred barrels a day, led to the selling of a small lot of land for one million dollars. In that year four thousand teams and one thousand boats were employed in transporting the oil and supplies, and one million barrels were required to accommodate the trade. In 1865, oil was ten dollars a barrel at the beginning of the year, and five dollars a barrel at the close. At that time I was at Pit Hole City, where a flowing well had recently been struck, furnishing fifteen hundred barrels per day. Much of the oil was running to waste, and the cost of hauling it by teams to Titusville or to Oil City was the larger part of the price for which it would sell at those points. Five pipe lines soon after centered at Pit Hole to compete for the business where only one was called for. Fifteen years later I drove over this ground, and there was not a building in sight, and the whole country was devoted to grazing and the raising of buckwheat. In 1865 it cost $5.55 to transport a barrel of oil to New York City, whereas the present price from any part of the oil region of Western Pennsylvania is only 50 cents. In 1866 the loss of oil by fire amounted to seventy thousand barrels, and has been much greater during many years since. It is a most hazardous article to store and handle. From...