Oil Creek State Park Trail

The Oil Creek State Park Trail is a paved rail trail that follows Oil Creek for about nine and a half miles through the gorge between the Drake Well Museum at Jersey Bridge and the park office at Petroleum Centre. It runs on a historic railroad grade through wooded state park land, with the creek close alongside for most of the way. The grade is rail-trail flat, easing gently downhill southbound toward Petroleum Centre. Historical markers, restored oil field tableaus, rain shelters, and restrooms sit along the route, and the Oil Creek and Titusville excursion train runs on the opposite side of the valley. Bicycle rentals, a visitor center, and creek access are at the Petroleum Centre end.

• Colonel Edwin Drake struck oil at a depth of 69.5 feet just south of Titusville in August 1859, the start of the world's oil industry.
• By the summer of 1866 more than 3,000 people lived in Petroleum Center, with a bank, two churches, a theater, and a half dozen hotels.
• Petroleum Centre had no government, law enforcement, sanitation, or public works, and was called the wickedest town east of the Mississippi.
• President Ulysses S. Grant visited Petroleum Center in 1871, two years before the town was essentially abandoned.
• The 440-acre Blood Farm lease at the south end of the park produced more oil than all the other farms in the oil region in 1861 and 1862.
• In the autumn of 1865 the Ocean Well on the Benninghoff farm proved oil could be drilled on a steep hillside, producing 300 barrels a day and earning Mr. Benninghoff about 6,000 dollars a day.
• Pithole, six miles from the valley, grew from a January 1865 oil strike into a city of 15,000 by that September.
• The Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad, which runs through the park on the other side of the creek, operates the only working Railway Post Office in the United States.
• Crumbling stone walls that once protected oil wells still stick up in the middle of Oil Creek.
• Oil Creek has four waterfalls, best seen in spring, and Boughton Run, Toy Run, and Jones Run hold brook trout.

Edwin Drake's well, 69.5 feet deep, struck oil beside Oil Creek in August 1859. Thousands poured into the valley after him. Derricks replaced trees, and boomtowns sprang up along the creek. The first well at Petroleum Centre was drilled on the George Washington McClintock farm in 1860. By the summer of 1866 more than 3,000 people lived there. The Blood Farm at the south end of the park out-produced every other lease in the region in 1861 and 1862. On the Benninghoff farm, the Ocean Well of 1865 proved that oil could be drilled on a hillside. Roads were impassable with oil and mud, so rails followed the creek. Today's excursion line on the east side of the valley began as the Buffalo, New York and Philadelphia Railroad in the 1880s and passed to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1900. By 1871 production in most of the boomtowns was dwindling. Petroleum Centre was essentially abandoned after 1873. The forest returned, and the gorge looks almost as it did before the boom. Pennsylvania made the valley a state park, and the trail was built on the historic railroad grade that parallels Oil Creek between Petroleum Centre and the Drake Well Museum. In 1986 the Oil Creek Railway Historical Society bought the surviving line from Conrail and ran its first tourist train that July. The bike trail was extended into downtown Titusville in 2003, where it meets the Queen City Trail.

• Jersey BridgeMILE 0Directions
• Miller FarmMILE 4.5Directions
• Petroleum CentreMILE 9.5Directions

• Pennsylvania DCNR · Biking at Oil Creek State Park
• Friends of Oil Creek State Park · Oil Creek Bike Trail
• Pennsylvania DCNR · A Pennsylvania Recreational Guide for Oil Creek State Park (2017)
• Wikipedia · Oil Creek State Park
• Allegheny Valley Trails Association · Oil Creek State Park Bike Trail
• Pennsylvania DCNR · History of Oil Creek State Park
• Wikipedia · Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad
• Wikipedia · Petroleum Center, Pennsylvania