A fascinating New York Times 1866 story on amazing flowing wells of Oil Springs appears on Martin Dillon’s Petrolia Heritage website https://petroliaheritage.com/ and fortunately, he was willing to share it with our website. You can find it on our Find Out More page under the Contact tab at the right top of the screen.
The most famous flowing well, the Black and Matheson, well produced 7,500 barrels a day! It also reports on James Miller Williams, who brought in the discovery well of Oil Springs in 1858. Interestingly, it says Williams was refining the gum beds for illuminating oil before he struck oil in 1858.
The oil museum is the site of the Williams well and Fairbank Oil contains the site of most of the 33 flowing wells.
Some years back, Martin spied this New York Times story on eBay, and bought the issue. Getting it on to the Petrolia Heritage website was not easy. It’s a cumbersome size. The story runs the full length of the broadsheet paper and it’s three columns across. He had to cut it into two halves, top and bottom.
Fortunately, we had some extra technical help from Nicole Aszalos, who heads the Lambton County Archives and Courtney Semenuik at CR Creative, the company which designed our website. They waved their magic technology wands and now, you can read the whole piece easily. Check it out!