Even Pickaxes Couldn’t Stop The Nation’s First Oil Pipeline
“One-hundred-fifty years ago, a man named Samuel Van Syckel built the nation’s first commercial oil pipeline in the rugged terrain of northwestern Pennsylvania.
His pipeline transformed how oil is transported — and it would change the modern world, too — but not before a battle that makes the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline look meek by comparison.
In January 1865, the place where this all happened, called Pithole, was nowhere, really — just a patch of wilderness in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Then drillers struck gushers at three wells and everything changed.
By September, an estimated 15,000 people moved to Pithole. And soon, Van Syckel had constructed his 5 1/2-mile pipeline.”
Berliner, Uri. NPR 24 February 2015.