The Rural Voice, 2002-08, Page 37WHEN FIELDS
GREW OIL RIGS
When Lambton County farmers
discovered gum beds' on their farms the
world's first oil boom was created
Story and photos by Larry Drew
While farm fields of Southern Ontario produce only
a small fraction of our province's oil
requirements today, these fields have a certain
significance beyond all others world wide — this is where
it all began.
In the 1800s, Oil Springs and nearby Petrolia supplied
over 90 per cent of Canada's oil requirements. Recognized
today as Ontario's Oil Heritage District, it is from here that
"farmers became oil prospectors" and from where some of
our ancestors set out to "teach the world how to drill and
refine oil".
While the petroleum industry estimates that some
50,000 wells have been drilled in Ontario, we can still visit
North America's very first commercial oil well located
down a side road in Lambton County. This side road,
appropriately named Gum Bed Line, is home to the Oil
Museum of Canada,ja National Historic Site. In addition to
the indoor and outdoor displays of early rigs and
equipment, you can also see areas of surface tar, called
gum beds, where it all began.
In a swampy area near Oil Springs, Charles and Henry
Tripp formed the world's first oil firm, distilling the
gummy substance to make asphalt, paint, and resins as
early as 1853. At the time only about 37 settlers inhabited
the township, but world acclaim began in 1855 when the
Tripps' achievements were recognized at the Universal
Exhibition in Paris.
Then, James Miller Williams acquired the property and
dug into the tar pits to find their source. At a mere depth of
14 feet he struck oil, and with the increasing scarcity of
whale oil and thanks to the recent invention of the kerosene
lamp, he was able to almost immediately figure out how to
refine it in kettles to make lamp oil — thus creating the
first commercially viable oil well and refinery in 1858.
This was a full year before the first wells in Pennsylvania
— and before oil fever ever struck Texas or Alberta.
The Oil Springs boom began in earnest, boasting some
400 wells, each producing from 50 to 800 barrels per day,
by 1861. Meanwhile, horse-drawn tankers could only haul
two barrels at a time out of the bush and swamp. At first,
wells were dug by hand.
As wells went deeper, or into bedrock, the early
prospectors began using "spring pole rigs" (see photo) – a
"teeter-totter" arrangement of sorts, using an ash log,
suspended over a fulcrum, with a heavy drill bit suspended
from one end of the log and men on treadles at the other
end to jerk the bit up and down. This innovation allowed a
near bankrupt, but persistent, Hugh Dixon Shaw to drill to
a depth of 157 feet where he hit the world's first oil gusher
34 THE RURAL VOICE
An early "spring
pole rig" at the
Oil Museum of
Canada.
A jerker-line system can still be seen in
operation on the Oil Heritage Tour.