Stereo Photo Gallery

Petroleum Centre, PA -- "The Wickedest Town East of the Mississippi"-- Oil Boomtown 1864-1873.

The town was never organized as a borough or a city and never had any form of local government, nor a police force capable of protecting the citizens from the depredations of the criminals and riff-raff for whom such a place was made to order.

With everything favorable to the growth of lawlessness, Petroleum Centre soon became "the headquarters of a horde of outcasts from society of both sexes." The Golden Flood, 1941 by Herbert Asbury

No citizen owned the land on which his building stood. Buildings were erected as hastily and as cheaply as possible, because all that was expected of them was that they remain standing for the duration of the boom.

These 2002 photos are of the HO-scale diorama displayed today in the Petroleum Centre Train Station in Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania. For more information about the oil boom, go here. Single Kodak digital and 35mm SLR on slide bar.

Pond Freshet Disaster on Oil Creek -- May 31, 1864

The pond freshet was an early means of transporting oil down Oil Creek to Oil City and the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania. Boatmen floated their flatboats and barges on the crest of a large, deep, wave of water created by opening a series of dams along the creek. Often an inexperienced or unlucky pilot lost control of his boat and crashed against bridge supports or other barges, causing havoc on the creek and a tremendous loss of oil.

This is a photo of the diorama at Drake Well Museum, an historically accurate representation of this photo, showing the Center Street Bridge in Oil City, looking downstream toward the Allegheny River where steamboats waited to carry oil to Pittsburgh refineries. 35mm SLR on slide bar.

Pithole City, PA -- Oil's Vanished Boomtown, 1865

In January, 1865, three wells struck oil on the Holmden Farm and four months later speculators began leasing building lots in Pithole City. By September, the city boasted a population of almost 15,000 people, more than fifty hotels, a daily newspaper, and the third largest Post Office (by volume of mail) in Pennsylvania! But too many wells drawing from the same reservoir of oil and fires that destroyed whole blocks of the city took their toll as people moved on to newer oil fields. By December 1866, Pithole's population was less than 2,000. In 1879, the city once offered for sale at two million dollars was purchased by the Venango County Commissioners for $4.37.

This photo is of the diorama located at the Visitor Center on the site of Pithole City. 35mm SLR on slide bar.

Tractor at Drake Well Park, 2002. 35mm twin synchronized SLR rig.