The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-31 00:00:00

The Oil Regions of Pennsylvania•

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)
PITHOLE CREEK, Oct. 12.

The road by which this most curious place is
gained from Cherry Run through Rouseville and
Plummer, and then through the Woods to the head
of this Creek, is in its way as interesting, and in
another way, as pointing out (the great lottery and
chance of oil wells, even more instructive than that
from Oil City. Before leaving the Tar and Blood
Farm, our party of 16 in number, English and Ame-
ricans, made a long inspection of the wells in the
neighbourhood. Some were doing fairly, some were
doing ill, and the majority were doing nothing at
all, so that the almost inevitable conclusion forced
upon the mind was that for the present, at least,
Cherry Run is pretty well played out. Much of this

enforced idleness of the wells is ascribed to the dread-
ful floods last May, which drowned out scores of
them ; much, also, to the undoubted rush for this

place ; but even after allowing the widest margin to
both these causes, they are altogether insufficient to
account for the almost complete desertion of this

once famous district. The plain fact is that other

regions are considered to pay better, and that, in

short, Cherry Run has for the present seen its best
days. Of this, however, I shall have to speak more

fully hereafter, in pointing out the glorious uncer-
tainty that more or less attends all oil-well opera-
tions, large or small. From the Tar Farm the Creek
was forded, and inspection made of the Storey
Farm, the celebrated Hyde and Egbert Farms, the
Dalzell Farm, &c., seeingas we went along the great
wells, Maple Shade, Jersey, and Coquette, which
were among the first to drive people mad about oil
in this country. The yield of all these has fallen off
to a mere tithe of what it was at first. Close by the
Coquette well was one which had just been struck,
which it was stated was flowing at the rate of 350
barrels a day, and which evidently was doing
over 200. From this point out there was
the same continuance of rough wild coun-

try, the track being seamed about in all direc-
tions with mud-holes, felled trees, and brawling
greasy brooks, across which the most primitive and
dangerous bridges were formed by the simple expe-
dient of felling trees across them. Here and there
were little groups of wells not yet deserted by For-
tune, which were pumping busily, and all their log-

house shanties round about teemed with life and

activity. These, however, were the exceptions, and
the open empty huts, abandoned tools, and idle
machinery, overgrown with grass, told their own
tales in language which could not be mistaken. As
the heat of the day was nearly intolerable, and there

was still a long ride to go, a halt was called in the

shade of the forest, at a place called Sulphur Springs.

- -
Here in the wilderness the inevitable derrick stood,

of course, but the well sunk here never yielded any-

thing but sulphur water, which gushes up now inces-

santly at a temperature little above freezing point,
and so strongly impregnated with sulphur as to taste
like liquid brimstone. Its medicinal virtues are said
to be very great—a fact which one is willing to con-
cede on tasting its intense nastiness. No cattle,
however, will touch it, no matter what their thirst.
From Sulphur Springs the track is a mere rough
bridle path through the forest, and any one who
knows the silent, monotonous gloom of the Ameri-
can backwoods scenery can guess how dreary such a
route must be. No sound of a bird, no sight of a
living thing ; nothing but the huge trees and thick
underwood, the latter here and there opening out
into patches of coarse rank grass and weeds as high
as the saddle ; then a clearing, with its group of
idle or busy derricks, as the case may be ; then
another interval of forest, mud-holes, brooks, and
dreadful bridges, when the path suddenly emerges
into light, and, after passing the Humboldt Farm,
where the great stills of one of the largest oil refiners
in the States are at work night and day, winds up
a hill, from which a view over Plummer Valley and
Plummer Town can be gained.

Plummer is one of the " dreadful examples" of
the uncertainty of oil wells. Its natural position,
above Cherry Run, its geographical and geological
formation, all pointed it out as likely to be one of
the best of paying regions in Pennsylvania. Oil was
found over all its brooks and under its stones; the
air smelt strongly of gas, and brine was said to be
abundant between its strata of sandstone. Plummer,
therefore, at once became the Promised Land of
°Mom. Its acres of uncleared forest sold at fabu-
lous prices, a town was built, hundreds of derricks
were erected, hundreds of wells put down in all
directions, millions and millions of dollars spent
lavishly, and the result was absolutely nil. Not a
" red cent," as they say here, was obtained in re-

turn for all this enormous expenditure of capital and
industry. Of all the wells sunk, not a single one
found as much oil as would have greased its ma-
chinery. Here in the valley the derricks are as
thick as trees, as new and unstained by oil as the
day they were first erected. Here all the agencies
and offices are closed, all the machinery idle, all the
huge vats as clean and as empty as when the coopers
finished them. Plummer is not much talked of here.
Its mention, in fact, is avoided by general consent,
as its very name is not unnaturally thought to exer-
cise a depressing influence on would-be oil specula-
tors. It would not be bad policy if those having
authority in these regions went to work and cut down
all those warning derricks of Plummer, which stand
so white and clean and bare, like tombstones in me-
mory of capital gone beyond all recall. For the rest,
Plummer itself is what one might expect under such
adverse circumstances. Originally intended only as a
temporary abiding place, even this crude conception
failed of fulfilment like its oil wells, and thus there
are only a couple or so of tolerable wooden hotels,
and two or three hundred intolerable log houses.
Nevertheless, for a village of such recent growth,
Plummer is considered here as "quite a place."
Out of this embryo township the path gets if pos-
sible worse than ever, and teams going back to Pit-
hole laden with coals and produce, or teams coming
from Pithole laden with oil, begin to straggle over
the face of the country, converging here and there
in some favourite pass where horsemen and waggons
flounder, struggle, and splash alike in muddy hope-
lessness for half a mile or so. It is painful to see
how horses are treated here, and the more noticeable
from the considerate and unvarying gentleness with
which Americans through the States generally ma-
nage their cattle. But what they have to endure in
the mud is as nothing to what they suffer on the cor-
duroy road over the hills to Pithole. " A corduroy
road" means a passage through a forest where no
road can be made, and the natural difficulties of
which are aggravated by felling trees across the route.
I have, however, seen corduroy roads both in Ame-
rica and Western Canada, where fair progress could
be made by horse or light waggon, but that which
leads to Pithole is execrable even beyond the limits
of the roughest backwoods travelling. It is a mere
disjointed litter of branches and trees, amid which,
though partially concealed, rises a stubble of sharp
brushwood points, against which the horse inces-
santly stumbles, outting his feet to pieces, and if he
passes from a stumble into a fall, it is ten to one he
stakes himself or rider, perhaps both. A mile or so
of such a route leads out at last upon the crest of a
lofty hill, looking down into a very steep wooded
valley, both sides of which are roughly cleared to
mate room for a large wooden town, which, partly
=7l swhite t
ac:lanrgisheens,farpartly in its raw shingle oF,
hotels, stores,, and wide—stables, houses;
This
isd pitahnties, building or built, in all
directions.
begin-
ning of April was
underpaid
eurnpeal
Pithole City, which, in the
iedared wood, belonging to
an overworked,
Now it has from 8,000 to Pennsylvanian farmer.
10,000 inhabitants, and
is likely, if things go well, to contain. double that
number before a twelvemonth more. Everything
World hi ng
here is so utterly unlike what we of the Old
have been accustomed to see that it is difficult to
give a description that can resemble the place, and
quite impossible to institute a comparison that will
parallel it. It is at once a town fully occupied
though only half-built, a town which is the great
centre of the great oil trade, a town littered over a
forest amid ragged stumps of pines and girt about
with a perfect sea of deep tenacious mud. Yet, un-
like Oil City, there are no derricks here—all that is
in the Creek below. The muddy channels, too,
which make the streets are at least wide and spacious,
whereas the miserable lanes of Oihlom are often as
deep as they are wide. Pithole, in fact, is like no-