Venango. -Area, 660 square miles; population in 1880, 8,480. Allegheny
River enters from Forest County, meandering westward to Franklin, and
then south-eastward to the corner of Butler and Clarion Counties. At
Franklin it receives French Creek from the north-west, then the Sandy
from the west, and the Scrubgrass from the south-west. At Oil City it
receives Oil Creek from the north and further east Pithole Creek from
the north-east. Sugar Creek from the north enters French Creek 3 miles
above Franklin; and East Sandy Creek comes in from the east 5 miles
below Franklin. The whole county, therefore, is an excessively rough
and broken table land, trenched to a depth of 500` in every direction
by narrow valleys and innumerable side ravines bounded by steep slopes,
along which range nearly horizontal craggy outcrops of the sand rocks
and intervening shales of No. XII and No. X; the intervening red shale
formation No. XI being doubtfully present. An exceedingly gentle slope
of the formations southward carry them one after another under water
level down the river; and preserving at least 26 patches of the Lower
Productive coal measures in the southern townships. One of these occupies
a hill just north of Centreville in Pine Grove; four others west of
it in Cranberry; six between East Sandy Creek and the river; five in
Irwin, four in Clinton, two in Scrubgrass; and the rest along the Butler
County line. All the southern patches form knobs high enough to take
in the Ferriferous limestone, with one or both of the overlying
Kittanning coal beds. The limestone is even preserved in two knobs north-west
of Centreville. The amount of workable coal in the county is small,
but it has sufficed to run engines at the oil wells. Petroleum in quantities
was discovered on Oil Creek, at the north line of the county, in 1859;
but for centuries previous to that date the Indians had collected it
in shallow pits, for sacred and medicinal uses. August 28,1859, Col.
Drake’s first well reached the 1st Sand rock at a
depth of 71`; the tools dropped into a crevice, and a flow of 25 bbls.
Per day commenced the production of the American Oil Regions. Of the
many wells soon afterwards bored, some went 200` deeper and got a greater
yield from a 2d Sand rock. In February 1861 Funk’s well on the
McElhenny farm, on Oil Creek, at a depth of 400` struck the still rich
3d Oil Sand, and became the first "flowing well." The Phillips
well on the Tarr farm and the Empire well, each flowed 3000 bbls. a
day. Oil was then sold for 10 cents a barrel, or allowed to run waste,
and the small wells were abandoned. In 1864 the whole production had
dwindled to 4000 per day; but a market had been created; and oil sold
for $14 per barrel. This excited the new developments along the Pithole
Creek; and in 1866 wells began to be drilled from the highland, without
regard to the valleys, on Bennehoff, Pioneer, and Stevenson hills in
1866; on the Tidioute and Triumph hill in 1867; on the Pleasantville
and Shamburg hills in 1868. C.D. Angell’s theoretical line N. 16º E.
was adopted by the drillers in 1871. * The Lower Oil Region south of
Franklin was brought first into notice in 1868, by some good wells at
Lawrenceburg, on the hill above Parker’s Landing. The enterprise at
first expended in Venango County was transferred to Butler and Clarion
and afterwards to Warren, McKean, and Forest Counties, and the silent
oil cities on the original hills are among the most impressive things
of human history. The geological character of the Oil Sand Group as
a well-defined formation separate from those above it and below it was
worked out by Mr. J.F. Carll, of Pleasantville, in the years preceding
his appointment in (1874) as Assistant Geologist on the Second Survey
of the State, and is to be found described and illustrated in his first
Report I, 1875. A great number of well records are published and annotated
in Report I2 (1877). A fuller report on the Oil regions,
with an Atlas of maps and charts, I3 appeared in 1880. Ennis
Hill at Pleasantville, the highest point in the county (1713` A.T.)
has not preserved the bottom layers of the Pottsville (Olean) conglomerate
No. XII, but only its fragments. The section proceeds downwards thus:
Cuyahoga shale (XI?) with some little poor coal, poor iron ore,
black slates &c. 70`; First mountain sand (X) with Lower
Carboniferous plants, 45`; shales, with ferns &c. crustacea, and
fish remains, 55`; Second mountain sand (Lower Berea grit) with
plants, sea weed, and shells (Productus, Orthis,) 45`; Bedford
and Cleveland shales, with the same fossils, 231`; Third mountain
sand, 56`; shales 168`; First Oil Sand 40`; shales 99`; Second
Oil Sand 30`; shales 76`; "Stray Third" 16; parting shales
27`; Third Oil Sand 20`; thence downward nothing but soft Chemung
shales to the greatest depths bored. Any given section, however, differs
in its details from this and every other section, each Sand being found
in various places split into two; and the Stray and Third in some places
united and 100` thick. But nevertheless the peculiar triple character
of the group is always noticeable, and its normal thickness of 300`
to 350` is wonderfully preserved. Where the sands are fine and light
no oil is obtained; where they were found to be pebbly, and especially
where the interstitial sand and clay had been washed away from between
the pebbles by fresh or salt water in the course of ages, leaving a
layer of pebbles loosely touching each other, there the well flowed
or spouted floods of oil and water, driven from below upward by the
force of the more volatile hydro-carbon compounds, under the superincumbent
weight of from 400 to 1000 feet of strata. (For detailed descriptions
of the underground transfers of oil, water and gas, see Report I3.)
* The Butler-Clarion belt was afterwards found to lie about N. 22º
E., with a bend at Parker’s.
From: A geological hand atlas of the sixty-seven
counties of Pennsylvania :embodying the results of the field work
of the survey, from 1874 to 1884. By J. P. Lesley. (Report of
progress (Geological Survey of Pennsylvania), v. X ) Harrisburg, PA
: Board of commissioners for the second geological survey, 1885.
Return to Geologic
Maps of Pennsylvania Counties
Copyright © 2000, Pennsylvania State University
Libraries. All rights reserved.
Please send comments to: ems@psulias.psu.edu
Last modified: 5/3/01
|
