Mather’s petroleum industry legacy, the Drake Well Memorial Association would purchase 3,274 surviving glass negatives for about 30 cents each. Then fire erupted from ruptured benzine and oil storage tanks.Īn 1865 John Mather photo of derricks at Pioneer Run - Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. “On rushed the mad waters, tearing away bridge after bridge, carrying away horses, homes and people,” one newspaper reported about the flood’s devastation. A wall of water and debris swelled towards Titusville and its oil works, seven miles downstream. On Sunday morning June 5, 1892, and after weeks of rain, Oil Creek’s overflowing Spartansburg Dam failed at about 2:30 a.m. His more than 16,000 glass negatives were later described by the trade magazine Petroleum Age as “so perfect in finish it stands the test of time.” Flood and Fire at Oil Creek Returning to the oilfields with his camera, Mather’s rolling darkroom and floating studio traveled up and down Oil Creek. petroleum industry would learn some hard lessons, including disasters like the fatal Rouseville oil well fire of 1861. Many tried, but few in the increasingly crowded oil region would rival the wealth of the celebrated “Coal Oil Johnny.” Years later, Mather acknowledged that excitement of the drilling for “black gold” was so great that he “forsook photography for the oil business.” His unsuccessful effort was among the last wells to be drilled at the infamous oil boom town of Pithole. He tried again on the Holmden Farm off West Pithole Creek. Mather’s investment in exploratory wells at Pithole Creek did not lead to commercial quantities of oil. Above, the interior of his Titusville studio, circa 1865.
John Mather photographs courtesy Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine and Drake Well Museum, Titusville.
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