September twenty-sixth, 1875, from a shale and slate at nine-hundred feet, the Crocker well flowed one-hundred-and-seventy barrels. This opened the gay ball which was to transmute the Tuna Valley from its arcadian simplicity to the intense bustle of the grandest petroleum-region the world has ever known. The valley soon echoed and re-echoed the music of the tool-dresser and rig-builder and the click of the drill as well as the vigorous profanity of the imported teamster. Frederick Crocker, who drilled on Oil Creek in 1860 and devised the valve which kept the Empire well alive, had won another victory and the great Bradford field was born. He lived at Titusville fifteen years, erected the home afterwards occupied by Dr. W. B. Roberts, sold his Bradford property, operated in the Washington district and died at Idlewild on February twenty-second, 1895. Mr. Crocker possessed real genius, decision and the qualities which “from the nettle danger pluck the flower success.” Active to the close of his long and useful eighty-three years, he met death calmly and was laid to rest in the cemetery at Titusville. Scarcely had the Crocker well tanked its initial spurt ere “the fun grew fast and furious.” Rigs multiplied like rabbits in Australia. Train-loads of lively delegates from every nook and cranny of Oildom crowded the streets, overran the hotels and taxed the commissary of the village to the utmost. Town-lots sold at New-York prices and buildings spread into the fields. At B. C. Mitchell’s Bradford House, headquarters of the oil-fraternity, operators and land-holders met and drillers “off tour” solaced their craving for “the good things of this life” playing billiards and practising at the hotel-bar. Hundreds of big contracts were closed in the second-story room where Lewis Emery, “Judge” Johnson, Dr. Book and the advance-guard of the invading hosts assembled. Main street blazed at night with the light of dram-shops and the gaieties incidental to a full-fledged frontier-town. Noisy bands appealed to lovers of varieties to patronize barnlike-theatres, strains of syren music floated from beer-gardens, dance-halls of dubious complexion were thronged and gambling-dens ran unmolested. The free-and-easy air of the community, too intent chasing oil and cash to bother about morality, captivated the ordinary stranger and gained “Bad Bradford” notoriety as a combination of Pithole and Petroleum Centre, with a dash of Sodom and Pandemonium, condensed into a single package. In February of 1879 a city-charter was granted and James Broder was elected mayor. Radical reforms were not instituted with undue haste, to jar the sensitive feelings of the incongruous masses gathered from far and near. Their accommodating nature at last adapted itself to a new state of affairs and accepted gracefully the restrictions imposed for the general welfare. Checked temporarily by the Bullion spasm in 1876-7, the influx redoubled as the lower country waned. Fires merely consumed