The scale on which petroleum production increased during the period immediately following Drake’s discovery is indicated by the fact that though the total American production in 1859 was 2000 barrels, in 1869 it had risen to 4,215,000 barrels. It must be remembered that those who started the oil industry in the United States were in almost every instance poor men who attained wealth with its development. As the news of the new industry and its possibilities spread, more and more wells were sunk along Oil Creek and the Allegheny River; farm lands containing oil prospects began to command enormous sums, methods of extracting the crude petroleum from the depths of the earth improved and gradually American inventive genius began to be applied to the industry with enormously fruitful results. The Civil War undoubtedly interrupted development at the outset, and the new oil fields gave many a brave soldier to the Northern cause. The really sensational developments in connection with the oil fields began as the Civil War was drawing to a close. Then they commenced to assume the romantic and fevered aspect of California in the days of the early gold rush a decade or more previous. Unfortunately, the oil fields possessed no Bret Harte, as did California, to write the epic of good-fortune and ill-fortune. The story of the City of Pithole, not far from Titusville, is, however, as romantic as anything in the annals of gold discovery. It sprang to full life in 1865, a mushroom city with all the vices and excitements of frontier life. Fabulous tales have been told of its population, which probably never exceeded 20,000 but 20,000 men and women all excited by the fever of speculation and money-getting gave life in Pithole a gusto not equalled at that time on any other part of the continent. Gamblers and adventurers flocked there in company with many legitimate oil men. In the speculation that ensued fortunes were made and lost daily. Then, after a year or two, the wells which had shown such riches began to decline and Pithole was quickly deserted. A few years later a visitor found only two inhabited houses in a city that had for a time been the home of thousands of restless mortals. Later still some of the abandoned wells were made productive by new processes, but the glory of the mushroom city had vanished forever. In other parts of this continent there have been oil crazes, but nothing approaching the story of Pithole. And it is famous for another reason; it was the scene of the establishment of one of the earliest pipe-lines, a system which has been an invaluable auxiliary to the growth of the American industry. [Illustration: Early activity; the famous Red Hot Oil Field near Shamburg, Pa., in 1870] [Illustration: Where Pithole stood--the main street of a Pennsylvania oil town, which had a population of 20,000 in 1870, as it looks to-day]