The completion of the first commercial oil well in North America occurred in 1858 at Oil Springs, Lambton County, Ontario and was quickly followed by more oil at Petrolia, Ontario. The man's name was James Miller Williams. This was a hand dug well and the first drilled wells came in 1862. Some of these flowed up to 7000 barrels per day, often before anyone thought to build a storage pit or tank. Some of the early oil flowed down creeks to be wasted in the Great Lakes, but it had been doing that for eons before, from natural seepage.

The Great Oil Rush– A Tale of Three Towns 

The great oil rush of the 1800s was a major drama staged in three Ontario towns – Oil Springs, Bothwell and Petrolia. Their “black gold” enticed men by the thousands. Here is a fast romp through the highlights of these three oil towns that are still producing oil today.

 

Oil Springs

      The aptly named Oil Springs is where the modern oil industry first sparked. In the early 1850s, The Geological Survey of Canada was inspecting the sticky tar-like gum beds where oil had seeped to surface.

      By 1852, Charles Nelson Tripp and his brother Henry were already on the scene and using the gum beds to produce asphalt for paving. They knew there was a ready market; Paris, France had asphalt sidewalks since 1838.

       The brothers formed the International Mining and Manufacturing in 1854 and the next year their asphalt won honourable mention at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. The city even ordered enough asphalt to pave its streets! Alas, the Tripps were mired in financial and transportation woes.  They sold their land to James Miller Williams in 1855.

       Williams was not interested in asphalt, he wanted the gum beds so that he could produce an inexpensive lamp oil. The world was hungry for this product too. In 1854, Dr. Abraham Gesner of Nova Scotia had the U.S. patent for making it from crude. By 1858, James Miller Williams had dug the well that changed the world and he was producing lamp oil. Both men have been called The Father of Refining. This same year rail was built between London and Sarnia.      

       The oil rush was on! Hundreds of men arrived. By 1861, 400 wells had been dug or drilled. The pioneers invented on the run and the population ballooned to 4,000. One new arrival was John Henry Fairbank who would later become Canada’s largest single oil producer. He was in Oil Springs a year before Canada’s first gusher came in when Hugh Nixon Shaw drilled to a new depth. It was 1862 and it gushed out of control for days. It was one of 33 special “flowing wells” of Oil Springs that needed no pump. But the boom was short-lived.

       By 1866, the action all swung to Petrolia where another boom was underway, one that would last for decades.

 

Bothwell

       Both the Tripp Brothers and Williams had first explored Bothwell before moving on to Oil Springs. In 1852, George Brown, the founder and editor of The Globe who later became a Father of Confederation, bought 4,000 acres in Zone Township. He saw opportunity because the railway would cut right through his land. He founded the town of Bothwell and named after his mother’s hometown in Scotland. Using his newspaper, he advertised Bothwell lots in 1854 and thanks to the rail, people began came.

       The Globe was also reporting on Oil Springs so when John M. Lick struck Bothwell’s first gusher in April, 1863, producing 200 barrels a day well it was big news. It took four days to bring it under control. Like High Nixon Shaw in Oil Springs, Lick refused to sell despite exorbitant offers. The news spread rapidly, spurring another mad oil rush.

      Lick’s well blew up after producing 30,000 barrels but black gold fever ran unabated with some 1866 wells boasting 400 barrels a day. Refineries flourished in Bothwell too.

      But things were changing. The American Civil War had ended in 1865, the Petrolia boom first hit in 1866, and the Fenian raids raised the spectre of war between the U.S. and The Dominion of Canada. More importantly, the wells started pumping water instead of oil. John Lick died destitute.

      Then in 1893, another Bothwell oil strike spawned another oil boom. This strike led to more discoveries. Hiram Walker, the whiskey magnate, was here producing oil. Also, John Henry Fairbank’s son, Dr. Charles Fairbank, along with his partner Frank Carmen leased land to produce oil. In 1896, they built a powerhouse to power 150 wells and today it is central to the Bothwell-Zone Oil Museum. One Carmen well was pumping 90 barrels a day. A year later, fire destroyed Mr. Minhennick’s powerhouse An important oil producer, Minhennick also served on the first board of Imperial Oil in 1880.

    In the spring of 1898, Bothwell shipped 7,000 barrels of oil. By 1902 there were 200 wells in Bothwell producing 5,100 barrels and the great oil decline had begun.

 

Petrolia

       Like Oil Springs and Bothwell, Petrolia began with a bang and a boom. In November, 1866 Captain B. King struck Petrolia’s first gusher with a well producing 265 barrels each day. It triggered a boom that stretched on for more than 40 years and made Petrolia the oil capital of Canada. It was here that the industry blossomed, not only in production but also with ingenious technology. These were tumultuous times with explosions of nitro-glycerine, fortunes won and lost, rapid expansion and fires.

     John Henry Fairbank had already established his hardware store here in 1865 and bought lots of land. Industries sprung up almost overnight - refineries, tool making, the Oil Well Supply, horse-drawn wagons and plenty of hotels. By 1867, Petrolia was financing its own railway spur to link with the major east-west line in Wyoming. This was also the year when a disastrous fire struck the King wells. It roared over 20 acres and burned for weeks.

       In the 1870s, Canada’s first pipelines began here and for the first time, oil producers united in Petrolia to regulate prices. And in 1879, Jake Englehart built the gigantic Silver Star refinery, the largest in the country. It sprawled across 50 acres.

      The 1880s were ushered in with 19 refiners forming Imperial Oil in London with Jake Englehart as its first vice-president. Within four years, the company moved its barrel plant to Petrolia, bought Englehart’s refinery and made Petrolia its headquarters. By the end of the decade, Petrolia was bustling and major manufacturing businesses began like the Stevenson Boiler Works and the Petrolia Wagon Works. Brick buildings lined the main street, handsome houses were built including J.H. Fairbank’s mansion, and the stately Victoria Hall was erected, complete with opera house, town hall, fire station, police station and jail. This was also the decade Petrolia’s famous Foreign Drillers began taking their expertise to the far-flung corners of the globe to open new oil fields.

     The 1890s were a roller coaster. The Stephenson Boiler Works had to be rescued from financial collapse. And in a crushing blow to Petrolia in 1897, Imperial Oil moved its head office to Sarnia. Soon, it moved its refinery. After this, American oil magnate J.D. Rockefeller’s company, Standard Oil Trust gained control of Imperial Oil.

     Petrolia reeled but did not falter. By this time J.H. Fairbank was the largest single oil producer in the country and had interests in lumber, farming and rail. In 1903, Canadian Oil Fields Limited built the largest powerhouse in Canada, the Fitzgerald Rig. Its bull wheel was 23 feet across (almost 8 metres) that could pump 350 wells at once. (This is now part of Petrolia Discovery.)

     In time, the oil waned, leaving a rich legacy.

Some Great Books on the History of Oil In Lambton County Here