--- description: Aug. 27, 1859: Edwin Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania with the first commercial well in the U.S. title: History of the American Oil Industry: When Drake Struck Oil image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte4dbb421763e6c98/698860a6cf40a8446cc3f5f0/well.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [energy](/tag/energy/) ## energy Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How the American Oil Industry Got Its Start by [Jennifer Latson](/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Aug 27, 2015 2:30 PM CUT  This is the well near Titusville, Penn., that pumped the petroleum industry into existence 100 years ago. The picture was taken four years after Col. Edwin L. Drake struck oil on Aug. 27, 1859. This is the well near Titusville, Penn., that pumped the petroleum industry into existence 100 years ago. The picture was taken four years after Col. Edwin L. Drake struck oil on Aug. 27, 1859.AP by [Jennifer Latson](/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Aug 27, 2015 2:30 PM CUT America’s first successful wildcatter had a lot in common with fiction’s most famous whaler. Edwin Drake was as obsessively single-minded in his hunt for oil as Ahab had been in his quest for the white whale: He was called Crazy Drake, [per PBS](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/drake%5Flo.html "undefined"), after pouring the modern equivalent of more than $40,000 in investors’ money — and his own endless labor — into a search that spanned more than a year without results. But on this day, Aug. 27, in 1859, Drake’s monomania paid off. He struck oil after drilling 69 ft. into the ground in Titusville, Pa., [launching the petroleum age](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,813551,00.html "undefined") and making Titusville ground zero for the [Pennsylvania oil rush](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/business/energy-environment/oil-makes-a-comeback-in-pennsylvania.html "undefined"). Unlike Ahab (spoiler alert), Drake wasn’t destroyed by his discovery — at least not instantly. But although he was the first to engineer a [successful oil-drilling system](https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/09/19/reliving-pennsylvanias-first-drilling-boom-a-visit-to-the-drake-well-museum/ "undefined"), lining his well with pipe to keep it from caving in, he never patented the method, and the money he’d made when he struck oil soon dried up. A century later, TIME [referred](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,865931-1,00.html "undefined") to him as “a sickly, bearded failure of a man in a stovepipe hat” in a story that nonetheless acknowledged that “\[t\]hough Discoverer Drake wound up virtually penniless and forgotten, his find opened the scramble for oil across the land,” inspiring a legion of oil prospectors to chase what had become, by 1959, “the greatest single source of wealth in America.” His discovery also helped bring the whaling chapter of American history to a close. At the time, of course, petroleum didn’t power cars; it was used primarily to make kerosene for lamps. And it proved [far cheaper](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/this-post-is-hopelessly-long-w/ "undefined") than the prevailing source of lamp fuel: whale oil. At its peak, around the time Melville published _Moby Dick_ in 1851, whaling was the fifth-largest industry in the U.S., netting the equivalent of roughly $10 million, [according to _The Atlantic_](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/the-spectacular-rise-and-fall-of-us-whaling-an-innovation-story/253355/ "undefined"). But by the time Drake drilled for oil, over-hunting in the waters around North America had decimated local whale populations, forcing whalers to venture farther and stay at sea longer to catch their prey — and making the hunt both more costly and more dangerous, some historians say. The parallels between the declining availability of whale oil at that time and the modern-day perils of the petroleum industry have not gone unobserved. As the New York _Times_ has [noted](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/nyregion/03towns.html?%5Fr=0 "undefined"), whale oil once seemed to be an “impregnable” industry that the world could never do without. But petroleum, and the kerosene it produced, proved a fiercer rival to whalers than boat-bashing sea creatures. **_Read more about Edwin Drake, here in the TIME archives:_** [The Greatest Gamblers](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,865931,00.html "undefined") ### Photos From Inside North Dakota’s Oil Boom Town  A gas flare is seen at an oil well site on July 26, 2013 outside Williston, North Dakota. Gas flares are created when excess flammable gases are released by pressure release valves during the drilling for oil and natural gas. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  Ray Gerish, a floor hand for Raven Drilling, works on an oil rig drilling into the Bakken shale formation on July 28, 2013. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  An oil drilling rig is seen in an aerial view in the early morning hours of July 30, 2013 near Watford City. N.D. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  Gold plated belt buckles reading, "Rockin' the Bakken, Williston, North Dakota" are displayed at Ritter Brothers Diamond Cutters on July 24, 2013 in Williston. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  Street signs sit in front of empty lots in a new subdivision on July 24, 2013 in Williston. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  Two girls play on a four-wheeler in a new subdivision on July 24, 2013 in Williston. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  Construction workers specializing in pipe-laying grill lunch while working on a pipeline that will stream line oil production from drill sites to train yards and oil refineries on July 25, 2013 outside Watford City. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  Sections of pipe are lined up before being used to drill at Raven Drilling's oil rig on July 28, 2013 outside Watford City. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  Russell Girsh, a floor hand for Raven Drilling, helps line up a pipe while drilling for oil in the Bakken shale formation on July 23, 2013 outside Watford City. Andrew Burton—Getty Images  A coal-burning energy plant is seen in an aerial view in the early morning hours of July 30, 2013 near Bismarck. Andrew Burton—Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4008544/american-oil-well-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4008544/american-oil-well-history/"},"headline":"How the American Oil Industry Got Its Start","datePublished":"2015-08-27T14:30:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:01:57.472Z","description":"Aug. 27, 1859: Edwin Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania with the first commercial well in the U.S.","url":"https://time.com/4008544/american-oil-well-history/","keywords":["energy","Oil","Business topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte4dbb421763e6c98/698860a6cf40a8446cc3f5f0/well.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jennifer Latson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte4dbb421763e6c98/698860a6cf40a8446cc3f5f0/well.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Historic Oil Well","caption":"Oil Well","creditText":"AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/energy/","name":"energy"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4008544/american-oil-well-history/","name":"How the American Oil Industry Got Its Start"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Watch: A Timelapse of Climate Change","description":"Climate Change","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ywHiuC83/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-05-09T17:46:05.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ywHiuC83.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4008544/american-oil-well-history/","duration":"PT48S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4008544/american-oil-well-history/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```