Pithole City
| Pithole City | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 This climbing aid is the last remaining original piece from Pithole City |
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| location | Venango County , Pennsylvania | ||
| Coordinates | 41 ° 31 '23.2 " N , 79 ° 34' 49.8" W | ||
| Built | from 1865 | ||
| NRHP number | 73001667 | ||
| The NRHP added | March 20, 1973 | ||
Pithole City is a ghost town in Venango County , Pennsylvania . It was built in 1865 during the oil boom in western Pennsylvania and abandoned after almost two years.
history
When Edwin L. Drake carried out the first successful oil well near Titusville in 1859 , there was an oil rush in this region immediately afterwards . Pithole City emerged as a boomtown in the early days of commercial oil drilling after investors Frazier and Faulkner had successfully completed a well on Pithole Creek on January 7, 1865, which produced a daily output of 250 barrels . Only a little later, a competing company succeeded in drilling a similarly profitable well in the immediate vicinity. In just a few days, several thousand speculators and workers, including many veterans from the American Civil War , poured into Pithole City. There they leased land at $ 3,000 for half an acre . The resulting city was built entirely of wood to save time. Many of the buildings were of poor quality, such as the two-story, 60-guest Astor Hotel , which was built in just one day. Another problem was the water supply, which had to be brought into the village from distant sources, and the lack of waste disposal. By September 1865 Pithole City had a population of over 15,000 as well as several hotels, theaters and its own newspaper.
When oil production collapsed dramatically in the following year and severe fires destroyed the town's wooden buildings, the residents left the town. In 1878, the Pithole City property, valued at $ 2 million at the height of the oil boom, was bought by Venango County for just over $ 4.
On March 20, 1973, Pithole City was added to the National Register of Historic Places .
literature
- Susan Tassin: Pennsylvania Ghost Towns: Uncovering the Hidden Past . Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3411-0 , pp. 8-14
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Susan Tassin: Pennsylvania Ghost Towns: Uncovering the Hidden Past . P. 8, 9
- ^ Susan Tassin: Pennsylvania Ghost Towns: Uncovering the Hidden Past . P. 12
- ^ Susan Tassin: Pennsylvania Ghost Towns: Uncovering the Hidden Past . P. 8
- ↑ according to the National Register of Historic Places . Retrieved October 26, 2014