Arizona weekly enterprise., 1882-10-21
The PenngYlvania Oil Fields.

Following everybody else, l got 8 buggy, after some difficulty, and started for the scene of excitement. It was al- most opposite the town over the river, but it was roundabout way of six miles to reach it. The livery man ad- monished me to keep the horse out ot the oil in the road. as it would take the hair off. This road was a wild, rocky, crooked, wicked road, and was marked by greasy pipes here and there, which seemed to creep down from the noun tain like endless, slimy blacksnakes- through the bushes, under the slender maiden-hair ferns, beneath blackberry briar and the tangled wire-grass, among the gnarled scrub oaks and the rich golden rod-tinally plunging under the road and disappearing over the bluff on the other side. Far below they connect ed with the great iron tanks beside the railroad track. These iron pipes have been connected with the seaboard re- gently, and the pump stations, at con- venient distances, force the oil to grease it's own way to the eastern refinery and places of shipment When 1 reached the top of the bluff l saw the tall der ricks dotting the fields on either side, and the smoke and steam, and walking beam told of activity. It was where the road beyond was blocked up by horses and vehicles that the attention was directed. There was a small farm house on the left. In the family garden patch gang of men were busily at work putting up an immense derrick. In the family barnyard one had just been erected, and workingmen were get ting in the machinery. In the corn-field beyond the garden stood derrick about ninety feet high. There was another one just like it this side, in the oats, and this derrick was black with oil from bottom to top. This was the big well, where the strike was made yesterday, and the blackened derrick was the mark of the oil-spout that shot eighty feet in- to the air so unexpectedly.
 My horse in fence corner, I plunged through the oat-stubble to join the look ers-on, and suddenly found myself over my shoe tops in oil-mud. The flow had flooded the whole neighborhood and left it sticky and disagreeable. There was curious scene here. The corn was trampled in the mud, the oat shocks thrown down, the fences were half destroyed. On the ground were strewn ends of worn-out ropes, joints ot iron pipe, rails, and odds and ends of rude machinery. There was furnace and steam boiler mounted between the corn rows. and the stalks wilted with the heat or were trampled under foot. No one noticed so small thing. The place looked like battlefield where a battery had been worked. The ma chinery was still. There is no need of machinery. The oil is glad enough to come up and be run in. The pipes simply connect with the casing of the well and run off there through the corn, where they empty into two great tanks. You can hear the roar of the escaping gas as it blows off the dark oil into the tanks, now ceasing, now gurgling, now making rushing noise like the escap- ing steam of 2 locomotive. You can climb up the little ladder and look over the top of the half-flled tank into the dark, creamy, sickening oil within. = Franklin Letter to Philadelphia Times. !