By June 1, 1862, 495 wells had been put down near Titusville, and the daily output of oil was nearly 6,000 barrels, selling at the wells at from $4.00 to $6.00 per barrel. But the tapping of this vast subterranean storehouse of oleaginous wealth continued, until the estimated annual production was swelled from 82,000 barrels in 1859 to 24,385,966 barrels in 1883; in the latter year 2,949 wells were put down, many of them, however, being simply dry holes.[1] The total output of oil in the Pennsylvania regions, between 1859 and 1883, is estimated at about 234,800,000 barrels--enough oil to fill a tank about 10,000 feet square, nearly two miles to a side, to a depth of over 131/2 feet. [Footnote 1: The total number of wells in the Pennsylvania oil regions cannot be given. In the years 1876-1884, inclusive, 28,619 wells were sunk; this is an average of 3,179 per year. During the same period 2,507 dry holes were drilled at an average cost of $1,500 each.] As long as oil could be sold at the wells at from $4.00 to $10.00 a barrel, the cost of transportation was an item hardly worthy of consideration, and railroad companies multiplied and waged a bitter war with each other in their scramble after the traffic. But as the production increased with rapid strides, the market price of oil fell with a corresponding rapidity, until the quotations for 1884 show figures as low as 50 to 60 cents per barrel for the crude product at Oil City. In December, 1865, the freight charge per barrel for a carload of oil from Titusville to New York, and the return of the empty barrels, was $3.50.[1] To this figure was added the cost of transportation by pipe-line from Pithole to Titusville, $1.00; cost of barreling, 25 cents; freight to Corry, Pa., 80 cents; making the total cost of a barrel of crude oil in New York, $5.55. In January, 1866, the barrel of oil in New York cost $10.40, including in this figure, however, the Government tax of $1.00 and the price of the barrel, $3.25. [Footnote 1: It is stated that in 1862 the cost of sending one barrel of oil to New York was $7.45. Steamboats charged $2.00 per barrel from Oil City to Pittsburg, and the hauling from Oil Creek to Meadville cost $2.25 per barrel.] The question of reducing these enormous transportation charges was first broached, apparently, in 1864, when a writer in the _North American_, of Philadelphia, outlined a scheme for laying a pipe-line down the Allegheny River to Pittsburg. This project was violently assailed by both the transportation companies and the people of the oil region, who feared that its success would interfere with their then great prosperity. But short pipe-lines, connecting the wells with storage tanks and shipping points, grew apace and prepared the way for the vast network of the present day, which covers this region and throws out arms to the ocean and the lakes.