Evansville daily journal. (Evansville, Ind.) 1863-1866, 1865-07-21
PithOle--.The Way There, and What
You See when yOu get There.
PIT HOLE, June 29th, 1865.


PIT HOLE, June 29th, 1865.
PIT HoLEl Grand combination of all
that is exciting and Industrious. Grand
concentration of all that is driving, and
energetic, and speculative, and profit
able. Profitable to the buyer and seller;
profitable to lessee and lessor. Profit.
able to the eager purchaser Of lots and
leases at enormous prices, for the next
day be can sell at still more enormous
ones. What and where is Pit Hole, and
how does one get there? Six months
ago this valley, now teeming with life
and bustle, compared to which Califor-
MIA was almost tame, was terra iHcog.
rlita to the outside world; now its name
is as famous in Wall street and on
every money-making and aristocratic
street in the land asis that of Oil Greek
itself
Toiling over the dusty hills and
through the always muddy valleys from
Oil City or Titusvills forming one of an
overtaken by eager horsemeu urging
their still foaming steeds to still greater
speed, that they may the sooner reach
the goal; passing footmen in companies,
in squads, in knots of two or three, or
solitary aud alone, all bot, dusty, aud
weary, but unHaggiug still in their de-
termined way; overtaking teams stuck
in the mud, and others Just out Of one
hole and just plunging into another,
loaded with engines, with coal, with
lumber, with household goods; past log
houses in the woods, where the women
are doing the outdoor work while the
men have joined the endless procession /;
coming, at turn of the road, upon a
broad shanty with Saloon or Refresh.
meDts," in native lettering, staring at
played consumptive lemons and bottles
of mixed turpentine and raw highwin es,
labeled whisky" past Cherry Run,
"once the centre of the oil basin, sir"
| and still bristling with derricks of which
not one in twenty shows signs of life;
past Plumer, which sprang, in g quarter
of q year, from q hamlet upon q hill into
a Village, then town, then city il
everything but charter and mayor,
but which now mourns the paiing of its
| glory in the light of bigger thing be-
yond d;-alI this is the road to Pit Hole |
A hundred rough board structures
solitary house and barn; not less than
fifty more frames of equally rough struc-
lures in process Of erection; the origi-
nal stumps standing in the middle of
the two principal streets, around which
stumps the paths wind worse than the
streets of Boston; population of five
hundred men and Eve women; saloon
every five rods and boarding house
with bar attached in all the intermedi-
etc spaces; one great frame of hotel
where sleepers are packed away al
night like herTings in box; two tele-
graph Offices in full operation, around
which is a,crowd of oil operators, wait
ing their turns to be served; a market
and news depot, in joint occupation OF
one room, eight by fifteen, Of shanty
put up yesterday, and which has not yet
sign of door or window; the pro
prietor of the ''EI Dorado Saloon" open
ing his bar and mailing up his sign be
fore his house 10 rooted or enclosed
white cloth tents pitched in the rear o
the hotel, where, when the house il
packed TO the ridge>pole, the surplus
guests are put to sleep on a bgndle o.
bay; lumber $50 thousand and rising
u and through all this, darting to or fro
like agsnerals aids at grand review
or flock Of swallows through the sum
mer evenings air, speculators on foo
and on horseback, each ready to buy OF
sell, if the price is only big enough;-
this is Pit Hole City to-day.
yallav IN the hills -,kh i, rr1,;n,
stream at its foot; the roads full O
stumps, and hillsides full of rattlesnakea
the bottoms full of bogs, the people ful
of speculation, and the earth full of oil
acres of empty oil barrels here, an
acres of filed oil barrels there; derrick
, going up, ike mushrooms in night
] engines clAnking and putting; horsemei
dashing mp, hitching their horses, takinI
!. look. and having. q consultation an
dsshing of again in search OF land o
leases; groups of visitors standing 0
sitting wherever there is q vacant spot
0 and here on the hillside, three chatty
|. adventurous young ladies, from some
! where where neat riding habits are nj
, unknown, come to see the sights, the oi
! fee OF the United States Petroleum
! / w. toNy 9AAAOoAACQ AAA6 . Gd8CAk Z
' fortress; and down there by the sid
OF the stream, surrounded BY hug
tanks, the grand centre of all thi
: wild excitement, the three magnifcer
/ wells, out of whose iron mouths, with
n rush and roar, the rich, unctuous hui
pours increasingly into those mammot
. tanks, holding an average of twsls
i hundred barrels apiece, and of whiC
a there are no less than sixteen provide
n for the Frazier Well alone: this 10 P
Hole itself, on this 29th day of Jun
eighteen hundred aud sixty-hve. [
J. you wonder that men are excited; th
= they leave Office and dock and desk 81
AZ farm and pulpit and rostrum and rush
secure some part of the splendid priz
when the smallest of these wells yiel
l. more than q thousand dollars day
y its owners, at the present exceeding
l. low price Of oil7 Is it strange that th
:. fiercely contend for the privilege of pa
. ing a bonus of Eve, eight or ten thor
u and dollars for lease in the iE.msdia
o. viciuisVH Is IL marvellous that the for,